Review for upcoming "Kingpole" Magazine

"The Legend of Salt and Sauce"
By Jamie and Jim Clubb
Published by Aardvark Publishing, 2008, ISBN 9781872904368, £20

This book's subtitle is "The Amazing Story of Britain's Most Famous Elephants". I am not sure that elephants have "fame" outside the world of those interested in circuses or zoos, but the book certainly lives up to the claim to be "amazing"! It is perhaps amazing that it is possible to produce a biography of two elephants at all so the authors deserve great praise for coming up with such a detailed story.

The attractive glossy paper cover of this A4 148 page book features the elephants themselves on the front, and an attractive Broncho Bill's Circus advert on the back with a few notes to put us in the picture, plus two recommendations - one from Nell Gifford and the other from Dr. Heather Valance. Thus, anyone picking up the book casually should soon be persuaded that this book is going to be a good read. As the blurb says, "Never has the story of their lives been told in its entirety. Until now…"

After a short prologue the story begins with a dramatic telling of a tragedy that occurred in Salt and Sauce's lives in 1904, resulting in the death of George Lockhart. It is proof that a good story does not always begin at the beginning, as describing this incident makes sure that reader comes face to face with the "amazing" qualities of the story without further delay. Once our attention has been grabbed the authors return to the chronological approach we would expect of a biography but we have to follow it with the knowledge that the heroines of the tale are as much the subject of "legend" as of truth.

The book therefore cleverly proceeds on two levels. On one level we follow the eventful and colourful life of two elephants - meeting many interesting human characters along the way. On another level we pursue a detective story - the Clubbs searching for the elusive truth. It is this constant attention to the business of disentangling the story while telling it that makes the book so fascinating. Only authors with an ability to penetrate the circus world could have dealt with such complexities.

The Clubbs are well served by the witnesses and archives that have been available to them. My only regret is that I was unable to "organise" a meeting between the Clubbs and John Swallow - the grandson of Broncho Bill. John had helped me explore a little of the story of Salt and Sauce when I had been researching a book in the 1990s. As a result of a misunderstanding I had the impression that he was no longer interested in helping anyone explore his grandfather's part in the story. The truth turned out to be that John Swallow was not well. Once I discovered this, and found out his new whereabouts I was able to send him a copy of the book. John died on Tuesday 15th July but I gather that the book meant a great deal to him during the last few days of his life - and helped him to connect with an enjoyable part of his past. Just before he died he wrote: "Now my two best boyhood pals are giving me thoughts about what I would have never have known about them."

John was a schoolboy when he developed his friendship with his grandfather's elephants and they obviously meant a great deal to him. The book shows that Salt and Sauce meant a great deal to lots of the people they encountered. Whether that is true of all circus elephants or whether Salt and Sauce were extra special you will have to judge for yourself, but the book will give you plenty of food for thought. So, once again I must congratulate the Clubbs, father and son, who have produced a book that lives up to its claim to be "amazing", creates an interesting tension twixt "fact" and "legend", and leaves the ready with plenty to think about. Read it and buy copies to give to your friends - it deserves a wide readership.

Ned Williams

For details on the quarterly publication "King Pole" please follow this link http://www.circusfriends.co.uk/kingpole.html

Signing and Review Updates

My parents' private zoo will be, for the first time ever, holding an Open Day for the general public to view their facilities on 21st August. Signed copies of "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" will be on sale, and my father and I will be on hand to answer questions. For further details on this exclusive event please call 07743905852.

We also have details of a signing in Wolverhampton, once home to Salt and Sauce, where I hope to meet residents who saw the two magnificent elephants walking their streets. Details below supplied by Ned Williams:

'13th November 2008: "Wolverhampton's Elephants"- the amazing story of Salt and Sauce....will be presented on Thursday 13th November at 6.30.pm at the Light House Cinema, Wolverhampton, byJamie and Jim Clubb, authors of a new book on the subject.The event is jointly presented by the Black Country Society and the Wolverhampton History & Heritage Society and will be chaired by Ned Williams, President of the BCS.The evening will include visual material, hopefully including material on film relating to circus elephants.Admission (at the door) £1'.

And finally the 1st July edition of "Circus Report", an American publication, has a glowing review of "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" by Don Stacey. Stacey said "I can't rate this book highly enough" and praised my father and my "meticulous research". Hopefully this will generate interest in the USA where the tradition of elephant training is now much stronger than it is in the UK.

No Absolutes!

When I first made the decision that my story, "The Legend of Salt and Sauce", was going to be a book I thought it would be finished by 2002. Sure enough, by this time we had enough information to produce the life story of these two famous elephants. We knew where they started off, the names of all their owners, how one of them died and, so we thought, how the other died. We also had some good photos. However, as I sent off my proposals to various publishers we started to uncover yet more information. The story changed - not only the content, but my writing style too. As time went on I started hearing words of advice like "you must have a cut off point" - mind you, this was coming from someone who had surpassed Dr. Johnson's ten years in writing his book and five years on he still hasn't had it published! I began to realize that writing an historical book despite having its strict parameters was a completely organic process and one where it was not easy to estimate when its "life" would end.

As time went on I met some terrific writing coaches who helped me develop my writing style. As in the writing of any book, a huge amount of time was put into refining my writing style and then into editing. Please read my friend Geoff Thompson's philosophical article on this particular area, "There is No Such Thing as a Locked Script" http://www.geoffthompson.com/detailArticles.asp?id=86 My book changed from its initial conception, as a type of "Pulp Non-Fiction" (this style is retained in the book's prologue), to being a first person narrative of my father and my investigation into the story of Salt and Sauce (this is retained in the book's footnotes, introduction and afterward), and then finally into the book that it is today - a straightforward fact-based biography. The people who enabled me to take this route were Jonathan Burt, a social historian and author, Laura Longrigg, a literary agent who noticed that I had become infected by the Victorian writing style of the material I had been researching, and Ian Lewis, a retired teacher who did a tremendous amount of kind work for me.

Now, this is just the writing side of things. The trouble with history is that the content is also very temperamental. New evidence crops up all the time. And it was this side of things that became a constant source of jubilation and frustration. By October 2007 I was happy that I had researched all that needed to be researched. I had covered every important area of the elephants' lives that needed to be covered and I had all my sources noted and verified as far as practicable. The story was completely finished. I was happy with how it read. Now my father and I were completing the final tasks. We were listing all the photographs, putting a timeline together for the elephants lives and writing the introduction and afterward. We had a deadline and we were assembling everything to be sent off on time. The book was scheduled to be published by March with the first proofs through by January. Then, the emails came in. Emails from family connected to people who had owned the elephants. These people had more information that filled in gaps, presented new interesting and related anecdotes, and even new photographs. They had to go into the book.I worked hard to include the new material and photographs and still felt that I would make the deadline. As it turned out my publisher moved the deadline back, so I need not had worried at that time. After doing all this I began work on this blog with the very kind help and coaching of historian/author, Heather Vallance of http://www.penandspindle.blogspot.com/ I also started promoting elsewhere to garner local support. The next thing I knew Robin Stott a local historian was in contact with me regarding Sam Lockhart, the elephant training brother of George Lockhart, one time owner of Salt and Sauce. He gave me more information for my appendix on Sam, which I hurriedly included and begged my publisher to include. It made it to him on the eleventh hour. I sent Robin my completed appendix, but there was yet more information he had and a few errors in the appendix. This time my publisher could not allow it and this will be reserved for the second edition of the book.In my introduction to "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" I wrote that my book was not intended to be the "final word" on the lives of Salt and Sauce. Now I realize the weight of that statement. Over the past two years I have become more sceptical in my nature, which has been quite a liberating process. I have come to understand something that I have pondered for most of my life: there are rarely any absolutes in anything. It is a bitter pill for many people to swallow, but when you are in the field of history or science it is essential that you understand that research goes on and that even so-called facts are temporary conclusions. We need to embrace the idea that our work will attract constructive critics who will add to our research and present new information.

I carry this same concept over to my martial arts/self-defence classes. By not listing any techniques in my grading syllabus we have created an atmosphere of constant questioning, researching, testing and individualistic development. Nature seems to tell us that everything changes and develops or it dies. The same goes with history and science, however, this changing should only happen through objective research and the presence empirical evidence. Therefore it is fine to say "that's just a theory", but the theory with the most evidence temporally prevails.

The human desire for knowledge, however, is all too often checked by the human desire for assurance. This is why it is very easy for scientists, historians, religious people, politicians, philosophers and academics of all descriptions to rest on their laurels or become immovable in the face contradictory evidence. The same passion that drives assurance appears to be similar to the passion that drives belief in the improbable. Conspiracy theorists, alternative historians, pseudoscientists and their ilk are all driven by the need of wanting something to be true. We can all empathise with this feeling, so we should perhaps be a little wary of being too scornful of such "believers". I doubt there are many people who hear about the latest reports from Mars and don't get excited about the idea of there perhaps being "signs of life" - anything, please, a fossil of an amoeba will do.

However, being sceptical and accepting the concept of change is exciting too. In fact, it is through this questioning and progressing procedure that exciting prospects and new levels of awareness are initiated. An old maxim of mine was "love the flower but respect the root" and now I see that perhaps I might become a root. I remember getting quite frustrated with a lot of my original sources - books like George Lockhart Jnr's "Grey Titan" - and say "this bloody thing led me completely down the wrong road altogether". However, looking back it did present me with some fairly sturdy facts that actually gave some structure and helped fill the first third of the book - which doesn't even cover a decade - with vivid first hand accounts that were rarely equalled. There may come a day when an historian, who is interested in the areas of my research, picks up a copy of "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" and says "look how far we've come on from this". Putting my ego to one side that is a day the true historian in me wants to happen.

First signing date for "The Legend of Salt and Sauce"

I am happy to announce that "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" will be launched at Blackpool in conjunction with the Circus Friends Association AGM and rally on Saturday 7th June. I will be reading an extract from the book accompanied by my father, who helped me out on a lot of research, and will also be giving a Power Point display of photographs. The exact venue has not yet been confirmed - I was hoping and partly assuming it was going to be at Blackpool Tower Circus (as reported in the above link). Further details will follow in future blogs.

Blackpool is a great location for the launch of the book, as the elephants worked there at the Tower Circus at various times. The Tower was also the place where Lockhart Jnr. continued to cement his reputation as the "Doyen of ringmasters".

A Woman's Book Of Allegory by Heather Vallance

Heather Vallance is a thorough historian whose interest in the more obscure areas of history has led her to unearth some amazing stories about some incredible people. This new book, written by her, is a more personal contribution, collecting together various pieces she written regarding women: "our purpose, place, and propensity to betray ourselves".

This book is also available as a paperback on http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1434830071/ref=cm_plog_item_link

Ivor Rosaire: Hero of "The Legend of Salt and Sauce"

The 24th December 2007 marks the second anniversary of the death of Ivor Rosaire, a legendary figure in the circus world and a key character in my book “The Legend of Salt and Sauce”.

In 2002 I finally made the decision to meet Ivor Rosaire. Ivor was the last living person to have been involved in the presenting and training of Salt and Sauce the elephants, the focus of my book “The Legend of Salt and Sauce”. By all accounts he was an extraordinary individual, even by the standards of his profession and the circus family he was born in to. According to the author, Rupert Croft-Cooke, who spent a great deal of time on the Rosaire’s Circus and wrote three books on the family; Ivor was “the best showman of Rosaire’s Circus. Confident, with a little amiable vanity, as though he is aware that women in the audience consider him a handsome fellow, he yet succeeds in getting everyone’s attention for Salt and Saucy, who move with trundling certainty through their series of tricks. They stand on two legs, squat on their vast haunches, and one of them, to the delight and alarm of the audience, carries Ida round the ring in her mouth. Ivor, in breeches and a sun-helmet, directs them coolly and takes his applause as his two lumbering charges leave the ring”.

My father and I went to visit Ivor when he was still living at Billericay at the Rosaire’s old circus winter quarters, now the permanent home of his niece Joan, a hugely respected horse trainer in her own right. Joan set the meeting up for Dad and me. Dad knew “uncle” Ivor, as did most circus people of his generation. Ivor had always been seen as dynamic figure in the circus world. He was known to be very amiable and with a good sense of humour, but also a straight talker and a tremendous fighter. He and his brothers had boxed in the circus ring since the age of eight, often having to fight each other when no other youngsters came forward for a bout – this would have been in the very early 1920s.

After settling down to tea with Joan, a loud and expressive voice heralded the arrival of Uncle Ivor. My first impression of him was of a man who had lived life to full and, now in his nineties, had no intention of letting anything get in his way. He had recently broken his hip, but this did little to worry him. His walk was confident, even if slippers adorned his feet. He was smartly turned out. “Do you like my shirt?” he asked not long after we exchanged greetings. It was in the cowboy style, a fashion very common with circus artistes throughout the Salt and Sauce era. His long grey hair was pulled back into a ponytail: “I am an old age pensioner”, he proclaimed in defiance, “and they wanted to charge me £9”. After a few jokes and the obligatory teasing that goes on amongst any close-knit culture, we got onto the business of the interview, the full results of which you can read in “The Legend of Salt and Sauce”.

Here is a short excerpt:

“Ivor Rosaire was born on 8th July 1911 in Pontefract, where Rosaire’s Circus was showing. Ivor grew up into a proud, powerfully built, chestnut haired man who seemed as much at home walking into an acrobatic act, stripped to the waist, as he did when immaculately attired in safari style breeches, long boots, shirt and pith helmet. e was never photographed in the circus ring nor on stage without a confident showman’s smile stretched across his face. It was such charisma that made him shine out even among his colourful signally impressive brothers and sisters.

He claimed he was never taught anything in his life. The only person he ever credited for influencing him in any way was Jimmy Fossett, who was the son of the original ‘Sir’ Robert Fossett, the founder of Sir Robert Fossett’s Circus. Ivor claimed Fossett had helped get him over his hesitation in throwing a back somersault off a table”.

Ivor was already an accomplished artiste by the time John “Broncho Bill” Swallow joined Rosaire’s circus as a business partner in 1933. Swallow brought along his two elephants as a major incentive to help the small family circus grow, one of the very few things left over from the weekend he auctioned off his circus in 1930. Before Swallow joined Rosaire’s Circus they had been an almost completely family-run enterprise with members of the family working in nearly every single act. This was the way Rosaire’s circus had formed. The “Count” and his “Countess” had grown their circus from a small sideshow act, appearing in music halls and on fairs into a full family affair, bringing all their children up in their enterprise. They had suffered incredible hardships, losing plenty through the First World War, but had persevered and attracted the attention of two very notable authors, Ruth Manning-Sanders and Rupert Croft-Cooke, both who spent a considerable amount of time living on their show.

Ivor took over the handling of Salt and Sauce when one of John Swallow’s grooms left his employ to start a family – in fact, according to Uncle Ivor, the family had already started ahead of time and the groom had to rush back home and do the decent thing! It wasn’t long before Ivor was presenting the act, as Swallow’s health deteriorated and he lost his main presenter the South African sharpshooter, Charles Van Niekirk. Presenting and eventually training elephants would become Ivor’s niche. He always remembered Salt and Sauce as his favourite elephants, even after the day Salt killed one of her grooms in 1937. Ivor also influenced John Swallow to adopt a new routine for Salt and Sauce to perform: the tableau act. This classy performance involving dancing girls (Ivor’s sisters and later Clara Paulo) had been inspired by an act given by Charles Schmidt at the Agricultural Hall Islington.

Not long after Swallow left Rosaire’s Circus, Ivor joined him on Paulo’s Circus in 1939 and continued presenting the elephants before his papers came in and he was sent to fight in the Second World War. Ivor was made a sergeant and a PT instructor. However, he was to see Salt and Sauce again. After being discharged he worked in a barrel act (an acrobatic number) on his parents’ show before being employed by “Long” Tom Fossett to bring his old friends out of retirement. John Swallow had died in 1945 and his elephants had passed to his son who donated them to Dudley Zoo. For a year they had stayed at the zoo, where no-one had been able to handle them and legends amount their infamy had spread. Then Tom Fossett had decided to bring them back out on the road again. He bought them from Dudley Zoo and Ivor Rosaire was brought in take them back through their old routines. It was a successful move and Ivor presented them on Fossett’s Ringland’s Circus before Tom Fossett’s son, Dennis took over.

From the postscript of “The Legend of Salt and Sauce”:

“[Ivor] went back to work with his sister Zena again in 1948 as a barrel jumper in the act “Jumping Ross and Partner”. He also became a part of the aerial act, “The Flying Desmonds” that same year. His skills as an elephant trainer were required again when Chipperfield’s Circus booked him that Christmas at Bingley Hall in Birmingham. He took the group on the continent for the next three years and worked with Chipperfields in England until 1954. During his time there he worked an act of sixteen elephants and also, at one time, a group of five bull elephants. In 1957 he was back working for another branch of the Fossett family presenting five elephants. Their show was known as ‘Sir Robert Fossett’s Circus’. He worked there until 1965.

This act became one of Britain’s most famous elephant acts and Ivor one of Europe’s most celebrated elephant presenters. Knowsley Safari Park called upon his skills and knowledge in elephant care some years later. He eventually retired to Billericay, Essex when his wife, Lucy, became ill. He celebrated his ninetieth birthday in 2001. He won the Circus Friends Association Lifetime Achievement Award that very same year. In 2003 he was interviewed at the Circus Friends Association’s annual general meeting, where he gave a talk in front of a packed house on his experiences with elephants.

He later broke his hip and moved to live in a nursing home close to his daughter, Juliet, in South Harrow. Despite suffering a few health problems, Ivor continued to be a stubbornly independent and a hugely respected man in the circus industry. He eventually died on Christmas Eve 2005”.

I feel very privileged to have met Ivor Rosaire. He was the only person I have seen who corrected my father – “shoulders back!” was his remark to Dad just before we went to leave Billericay. Dad laughed and agreed he needed to work on his posture. A year later I would feel like a bodyguard to “Uncle” Ivor at the Circus Friends Association AGM. We had our only photograph taken together, where I too sported a ponytail – it was purely a coincidence (the hairstyle was a leftover from when I presented my Gothic martial arts act), but it felt like a type of tribute to this heroic figure in the circus world. Looking at the lawn outside the venue where the photograph was taken, on a sunny day, Ivor remarked “a few years ago and I’d have thrown a roundoff/flipflap/back somersault over there”. It was a sweet reminiscence, but I never felt that Ivor neglected the present. At the time of the interview Ivor had already been training his granddaughter tumbling and a year previously he had visited his brother Derrick in America. Ivor Rosaire was an example to us all, a man who exemplified Timothy Leary’s “correspondence theory”: he lived for the present, eyes towards the future, but with a firm grasp on his past.

Interview with Heather Vallance, author of "An Unconventional Soldier"

The following is an interview I conducted with Heather Vallance, an exemplorary historian and co-founder of the Pen and Spindle historical blog http://penandspindle.blogspot.com/ This blog is an excellent source for specialist historical information and research, promoting lesser known aspects of history and obscure yet significant characters of the past. My interview focused on her new e-book, "An Unconvential Solidier", which appears to be the embodiment of the Pen and Spindle's mission.




Jamie Clubb: Where did you first hear about John Young Filmore Blake?



Heather Vallance: I first came across John Blake around 1997 or 1998. I was helping Cathy Barrett with some research on Texas Jack, the Wild West Show proprietor who gave Will Rogers his entertainment break in South Africa in 1902. As you know, Cathy has spent the last 12 or so years trying to piece together the real Texas Jack because he left us with no memory of himself. Every once in a while she calls on me for research back up. This was one of those occasions. I was scanning material from the early 20th century and I happened on John Blake's book, *A West Pointer With The Boers*. I remembered the stories that had been handed down to me about the Boer War, and the Irish and Americans who fought for the Boers. I was intrigued, but at first I accepted what everyone else said, that John Blake was a bit of a loser and a mercenary.





Jamie Clubb: Outside (and inside) America, the South and the Confederates are often presented as the suppressors. In many ways "An Unconventional Solider" turns this on its head, both in the way that Blake's Confederate family are persecuted and in the way that Blake fought for the suppressed. Please could you elaborate on this?



Heather Vallance: The Civil War symbolizes two clear-cut viewpoints. For those who still embrace the Confederate flag, it represents a very deep cut. For the remainder of Americans, the Civil War and the period prior to it represent the struggle to return dignity to an enslaved people. But, wars are complex and messy things, and at the time they happen the reasons for fighting are very personal and often unrelated to the causes we later associate with them. For a body of Southerners the Civil War was not about the right to own slaves, it was about the right to own the land that they, their fathers and grandfathers had been awarded in government treaties when Indian ancestral lands became fair game for settlers and prospectors. This has been forgotten. General Stand Watie led his volunteer Native Americans into battle during the Civil War because he believed that the Union government was once again going to strip Indian land from the Five Civilized Nations.



Even those Native Americans who fought for the Union were fighting for the same reason. The Indian factor in the Civil War was about protecting what little they had left of their share of America. Stand Watie was Cherokee and most of his men were Cherokee, the rest came from other Indian Territory nations. The letters from well-placed Arkansas men pleading with Watie to lead the Cherokee into battle were not about slavery. These letters were about the preservation of Indian Territory lands. What the Native Americans perceived in the run-up to the war was yet another betrayal, another whole scale land theft in motion. Some may have conjoined racial prejudice to their land struggle, but in the story I am telling, this was not the case.



Jamie Clubb: The Clan-na-Gael was a Masonic/terrorist organization that is virtually unheard of today, but at the time they were clearly a feared and influential group, comparable to the "Scowerers" in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1914 Sherlock Holmes novel "The Valley of Fear". Could you provide a little background on them and the role they played in the South African gold mine situation in the late 1800s?



Heather Vallance: The Clan-na-Gael, like all Irish rebel organizations, was created as a response to the British imperial confiscation of Ireland. Members saw themselves as exiles whose only way to get at their enemy was to take the other side, no matter what that 'other side' was. The Irish rebellion motto was *England's disadvantage is Ireland's advantage*. Of course, this is the idealism that drives rebel membership. Beneath the membership lies the politics. The Clan-na-Gael was an incredibly powerful political organization, as you say. It was powerful because its executive was made up of Irish Americans with formidable networks and often high profile positions in government and in the military and it was tied, in many ways, to the early rise of America as an imperial power. For a period of thirty years, from the 1870s through to the turn of the 20th century, the Clan-na-Gael dictated policy internationally.



The intriguing thing is that British Intelligence only recognized the threat the organization posed in the 1880s. Before that, the Clan-na-Gael seems to have been lumped into the same pot as the 'Fenians' who were perceived as a bunch of loose but controllable Irish canons. I am not even sure if the financial and advisory contribution made by the Clan-na-Gael to the first Anglo-Boer War registered as a warning signal. It seems that those in the British government responsible for security issues were somehow blinded by confidence in their own ability to read the Irish. That, of course, was a huge mistake. They weren't technically dealing with the Irish. They were dealing with Americans some of whom were first generation Irish. Southern Africa was mineral rich and all organizations whether they are government or rebel organizations need money to stay afloat. Gold had been discovered in the 1850s on Boer lands known as the Transvaal Republic. The Boer executive did everything short of murdering those who mentioned 'gold' to keep the discovery under wraps.



The British annexed the Transvaal Republic at the end of the 1870s but their surveyors could find no trace of gold. So, try to imagine a chess board with randomly animated pieces and a gaggle of players with hands raised in anticipation, waiting from any sign of movement on the board. That is what conditions were like before the official discovery of gold in the 1880s in the Transvaal Republic. The Clan-na-Gael was one of the players at the table.



Jamie Clubb: You say the material was "hard-to-access". Do you feel that it was suppressed in some way or is this so much "conspiracy theory" for the "buffs"?



Heather Vallance: *Suppressed* is a loaded word. Information about this period in history was written by those who took control of African gold under the banner of an Anglo-American alliance. By the very laws that govern the nature of information, sources that do not support the dominant written history of an epoch carry little or no value. Information that carries little or no value, in turn, is 'weeded' – a perfectly legitimate archival process of keeping for posterity documents that are important and perceived as beneficial to our knowledge of the past. Of course, perspectives change, histories are re-evaluated and re-written, and the flaws in the methods of knowledge preservation are again highlighted. The act of *suppressing* information, if you will, is more often than not unintentional, almost knee-jerk, and dictated by the worldview of epochs, cultures, rulers, ideologies, and even the supposedly neutral archivists who are custodians of the past. Should they all be lined up and shot before dawn? Not if you are of the opinion that your decisions are as fallible as theirs.



When we research a subject or event we need to be rational about how we look at the context in which the information came into being, and then trace how this information was shaped by the contexts of each era of hands through which it has passed. If we fail to do this we start subjecting our ancestors to some very weird accusations. Conspiracy theory, on the other hand, and those who keep crying conspiracy theory are, for me, a little like those who insist that everything is the fault of the Devil. There is either no real thought going on in the heads of both groups, or they are somehow in on the scam. I have a nasty feeling that a cry of 'conspiracy theory' is just another way of beating researchers into submission, discouraging them from asking really hard questions. It's a wonderful catch-all. Don't believe what he or she says because it is conspiracy theory stuff that isn't valid. The only so-called gain from attitudes like this lies in the fact that important research often lands up on the trash heap and, you have to ask yourself, who exactly benefits from this?



Jamie Clubb: *An Unconventional Soldier* is about the war for gold in Africa. Where do Wild West Shows fit into this story?



Heather Vallance: What does Hollywood have to do with oil in the Middle East? Politics rides on the back of what works. What works is what blurs the boundary between reality and fiction, and keeps the masses from questioning the motives, direction and deeds of the governing classes. The British royal family and government benefited from association with the Wild West Show and its performers in the same way they benefit from the iconic cult of Diana. Theodore Roosevelt created the Rough Riders straight out of the pages of the Wild West, and he fought a war powered by the myth of good versus evil. Go as far back as the earliest expressions of an epoch, as far back as the first rune or glyph and you will find that popular culture is both the drug of the masses, and the impetus which drives the political will of a nation or an empire.
The 'Wild West' was the international standard in popular culture from the 1870s into the era of silent movies. In the same way Hollywood defines our vision of the world as we know it, Wild West Shows defined the vision of America and the world as John Blake knew it. If we want to understand the epochs we research we have to understand these in the context of their popular culture. *An Unconventional Soldier* takes place at the time Africa became the new frontier in the 1880s and 1890s. Americans flocked to subSaharan Africa, taking with them all their preconceptions of their world which had been shaped by American popular culture. Wild West Show performers, like movie stars today, metamorphosed into expressions of the politics of the time. John Blake was often referred to as not unlike Buffalo Bill. Stars themselves over-stepped the boundaries between their fictional world and the real world, placing their mark directly on the political truth of the day. No different, to any number of actors and actresses who rise through the political ranks or become outspoken critics of ideologies today. We simply can't ignore their influence on or their presence in history. The same can be said about the Wild West and the shows it spawned.



Jamie Clubb: Why do you say that the term "cowboys" entered our vocabulary as a result of the Civil War?



Heather Vallance: The Civil War destroyed the South. It left a lot of men and women scraping about for a living. Among these were some of the future artistes of Wild West Shows. They used what they knew to create a story that would bring in enough money to pay the bills. Buffalo Bill popularized the 'cowboy' in his Wild West Shows. He created the 'universal protector of good against evil' with his guns by his side, riding into the sunset. This icon in real life was a humble cattle driver who, before the rise to fame of the Wild West Shows, had never been heard of by British queens or Danish princes, and certainly not by Boer farmers.



Jamie Clubb: When we think of Wild West Shows we think of Indians as people who attacked stage coaches while wearing headdresses, people who lived in tepees and remote places. You claim that this is not the whole picture in *An Unconventional Soldier*, why?


Heather Vallance: Native American culture has been hugely misrepresented in popular culture, and in the history of 19th century politics. Native American society throughout history has been as diverse in its political ideologies and attitudes toward things as any other culture. Popular culture was allowed, in a sense, by the political pundits of the day, to pack this diversity into a single image – the feathered barbarian. The single image facilitated the aims of those who wanted to annihilate the Indians as a political force in American society – to assimilate them. *An Unconventional Soldier* contains stories of Native Americans who were indistinguishable from their settler neighbours, not only in dress but in daily life and activity.


Jamie Clubb: Without revealing too much of your material, just how did the American Indians end up fighting for the Boers?



Heather Vallance: *An Unconventional Soldier* is all about gold, yes, but it is also about the struggle to save land from those whose intention it was to claim that land as their own. Evidence suggests that the struggle for land rights was a universally shared ideology at the turn of the 20th century, much in the same way that you get associations of labour unions today. This is a part of history that really has to be excavated more fully. I say 'excavated' because here is a classic example of the destruction of historical sources because those who weeded information thought that Indians were irrelevant to the history of their own culture, whatever that culture was at the time.



Jamie Clubb: What has attracted you to the material that we see mainly promoted on the Pen and Spindle Blog?



Heather Vallance: The vision behind the Pen and the Spindle is to provide a virtual home for stories that have either been weeded out of traditional history or stories that are too humble to be considered important by the keepers of documents. I am also attracted to these stories because they reveal more about the truth of the times in which they play out than the written-to-order histories that perpetuate the same tedious themes and ideologies we are fed from birth. The world is, and was, a far more exciting place than we're led to believe.


Jamie Clubb: When I first corresponded with you, you and Cathy Barrett were on the trail of Texas Jack who was yet another figure who was famous in his time, but yet almost forgotten today. What attracts you to these figures? Cathy still has some unravelling to do on Texas Jack. She hopes to have his story out to pasture within a few more years. And, as you ask, what is it that draws me, and other researchers like Cathy, to characters who have essentially lost their history?



Heather Vallance: The answer is quite straightforward, actually. We are attracted by the challenge of reconstructing lost histories from the shadows that remain behind, shadows that tell us that something once existed in that spot. 1. Another topic I have seen reoccur in your writing is the subject of platonic relationships and how, all too often, modern day historians jump to assumptions regarding the friendship people have with each other. How do you feel this obscures history? I think that the popular culture of our own era is to blame for the contemporary approach to perceiving historical and present day relationships as sexual only.
We're trapped in a sort of fifteen-year-old, giggly girl approach to deciphering the complexity of human nature and interaction, and that disturbs me. Knowledge building is not a plaything. It is the method of survival of identity, of culture, and nationhood. By adopting a Butterfly Express method to our intellectual asset building for the future, we treat learning as a superficial, self-gratifying game that takes us down the road to our own obscurity. I suppose I've never understood people who are consciously and deliberately self-destructive, and part of that self-destruction is to water down the interaction between and among people to its most basic form. We're a bit more complex than that and a bit more interesting, and so I always look for the power of collective and platonic friendship in history and in life. There is just so much more to explore.



Ultimately, from an historical perspective, we have replaced the *Who's Who*study of Great Men with the *Who Slept With Whom* study of social history. Neither furthers our understanding of past epochs or of ourselves as a species trying to survive under increasingly difficult conditions.



Jamie Clubb: *An Unconventional Soldier* will form part of a larger piece of work you hope to finish in two years time. Can you give me more information on this book and will be published in a hardcopy format?



Heather Vallance: *An Unconventional Soldier* is a stand-alone story whose core research will play a role in a more complete story about the politics and popular culture of the late 19th and early 20th century. It was published initially as an eBook because the cost of hard copy and shipping these days discourages many potential readers whose international currency exchange is horrible. eBooks can retail for half the price of a hard copy but contain exactly the same information. I will probably produce a hard copy in early 2008 which will include verbatim copies of public domain sources important to the story. This hard copy will be for the serious researcher, but anyone simply interested in the story will benefit from the eBook, for the exact reason I gave in the beginning, - cost.



Jamie Clubb: Where do you see the Pen and Spindle blog going? It certainly seems to be gathering steam.



Heather Vallance: I would like to see it become a respected resource and a touchstone for people who are truly curious about the past.