Comments on: Early modern swimming (2)

By: Kristine

Kristine — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 18:20:58 +0000

Mmm, I’m not sure. I don’t think the DNB is sure either, apparently the Digby family is more complicated than they used to think.

By: Jonno

Jonno — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:39:04 +0000

Thanks Kristine! Curious isn’t it - so the DNB doesn’t tell us what the actual relationship was - or was the swimming Everard the *uncle* of the plotter then?

By: Kristine

Kristine — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 07:48:52 +0000

Interesting question. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, the two were indeed related, but they were not father and son. Our Everard Digby (d. 1605), Church of England clergyman and author of the treatise on swimming, was indeed a scion of the Digby family of Stoke Dry, Rutland, the DNB says, but not, as your source Fulton thinks and apparently more historians used to think, a member of the main branch, as the conspirator was. The swimming Digby was probably born in Welby, Leicestershire, and not in Stoke Dry -- he later moved their when his cousins brought him up after his father's death. Sir Everard Digby, the conspirator (1578-1606), was the son of an Everard Digby, but this is not our swimming man -- this man died in 1592. The NDB has a paragraph on the swimming treatise as well, I hope they don't mind if I reproduce it in full:

Digby's next and most original publication was De arte natandi (1587), a Latin treatise on swimming. The Swiss writer Nicholas Wynman had written a dialogue on the subject, Colymbetes (1538), which Digby's treatise resembled in discussing the history and value of the art, but he surpassed Wynman by systematically describing a large number of strokes, feats, and manoeuvres. The text was illustrated by forty-three detailed woodcuts, making the treatise also a landmark in the use of pictures to convey techniques. An abridgement in English by Christopher Middleton, entitled A Short Introduction for to Learne to Swimme, appeared in 1595 with the same woodcuts, and Digby's work was copied by other writers on swimming in the seventeenth century, notably Melchisedech Thevenot, whose L'art de nager (Paris, 1696) drew extensively on De arte natandi and reissued its illustrations in updated form. Since Thevenot's work circulated in both France and England until the late eighteenth century, Digby may be said to have influenced the understanding and teaching of swimming for the next 200 years.
Nicholas Orme, ‘Digby, Everard (d. 1605)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7625, accessed 1 Sept 2007]

By: Jonno

Jonno — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 06:31:52 +0000

How was this Everard Digby related to the Everard Digby of the Gunpowder Plot, father of Kenelm? I don’t have my books handy - was the swimming philosopher the plotter’s father, as per Fulton, Notes and Records … 1960, p.199? The sad plotter was born in 1576 or 1578, when this guy was still at Cambridge …? There is now and there probably was then a fair bit of water in the park at Gayhurst/ Gothurst/ Goathurst where the plotter Everard and then Kenelm and Venetia lived … did they all practise the toe-cutting stroke there?

By: kristine

kristine — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 16:13:36 +0000

I just discovered that Ramage was inspired by our philosophizing over images and reproduction rights, and reproduced a picture of a running Turkish soldier from one of the sources you mentioned.

I am going to try to do something I should have done in December: reproduce the image of a man swimming while cutting his toes, here in the comments section. Not the engraving from Digby, but from the book Peacay found: Monsieur Thevenot's Art of Swimming, translated from the French in 1699. Here he is:

By: peacay

peacay — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 05:47:44 +0000

Or…..try this :

http://www.history.navy.mil/library/special/pre1700.htm

;- )

By: peacay

peacay — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 05:46:51 +0000

Look down at the bottom of this page - some amusing images from Thevenot (just stumbled upon them!).

By: kristine

kristine — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 10:02:36 +0000

Well, yes, that’s the thing. I am sure I could scan the sixteenth-century book and publish the images on my website, since that is long out of copyright. But what I have is Nicholas Orme’s publication that reprints the Middleton translation of Digby’s book, and that makes it a different case, I think. But I have to admit that I never looked into the regulations for copyright on images on the internet. I’ll definitively take a look at the Curiosities of Literature site!

By: peacay

peacay — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 09:49:29 +0000

Actually, begging your pardon - I see know the book you got was published in 1983. And it contains the older book. Hmm….I still wonder about all this - if I had books and a scanner I’d ask misteraitch’s advice because he does this all the time. I just pilfer already uploaded material.

Anyway, not a picture but this gives a really interesting breakdown of the publication history of poor Digby’s hugely plaigarized work. (search on ‘De Arte Natandi’ and first result in googlebooks - if the link doesn’t work which it may not because of the need for one to be logged in)

[not sure why this has caught in the craw of my attention but, there you have it]

By: peacay

peacay — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 08:54:28 +0000

I must ask…why wouldn’t you scan some images from a very old book? As long as it is properly attributed there ought to be no worries surely? Actually it would probably be ok to scan and post the whole book (were the space available say) just like misteraitch is doing at Giornale Nuovo with his Curiosities of Literature project.

I am not trying to act as any authority here (at all) but ‘fair use’ and ‘out of copyright’ ought to be sufficiently protective t’would have thought.

Oh actually…that reminds me to check out googlebooks to see if any Digby/Orme/Middleton is available. If I find anything I’ll post a link !