Book Review: The Royal Art of Poison, by Eleanor Herman
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez
“The Royal Art of Poison” by Eleanor Herman
c.2018, St. Martin’s Press $27.99 / $36.50 Canada
It must’ve been the salad.
You had three helpings of Aunt Rudy’s famous family reunion contribution and it sure tasted good. Until later that night and then… not so good for the rest of the weekend and into Monday. It must’ve been the salad because, as in The Royal Art of Poison, by Eleanor Herman, you spent awhile on the throne.
Young Gabrielle d’Estrées wasn’t quite so lucky, though. She was the mistress of King Henri IV of France, but her love of the King and his people made him want to marry her after she helped him attain shaky calm between Catholics and Protestants in 1598. Alas, thirty-six hours before the nuptials, Gabrielle suffered a “’dreadful’” death. Rumors flew that an enemy poisoned her – but was it true?
Good question.
Throughout history, especially in Medieval and Renaissance times, royalty and royalty-to-be often had abundant reason to be fearful of poison in their food and drink. Jealousy was common. Enemies could be anywhere and, to avoid big problems, most monarchs employed a taster or, in the case of Louis XIV, 324 of them.
That didn’t help much, says Herman, because nasty substances weren’t just used to steal a crown. Lead was found in cosmetics then; sulfur was used to powder wigs; and mercury and arsenic, along with human remains, were prescribed as medicine. Urine was used by the clothing industry. Bloodletting was employed to reset “humors.” Rooster dung was given to induce vomiting (duh!), and even the air that the average person breathed could be poisonous.
Long live the King.
While today’s knowledge can correct historical inaccuracies and determine that a real culprit was illness or disease, early physicians surely tried to determine what happened when monarch or mistress mysteriously perished. Postmortems were sometimes done out of curiosity but more often were performed to settle any debate as to a cause of death and, though rudimentary (by our standards), an autopsy saved kingdoms and lineages. They also saved lives: many a cook breathed easier when poison-as-murder was disproven, and many physicians were surely equally relieved.
So you think, with all those names and dates, that history can be stuffy? Not so much when murder is afoot and “The Royal Art of Poison” is in your hands.
But this book isn’t all about murder – or history, for that matter. Author Eleanor Herman spends a good amount of time telling about Royal as well as everyday lives and how people lived in the 14th-through-18th-centuries. She then explains how we know what we know now, and why the heyday of poison, if you will, ended.
Or did it? Current events tell us otherwise, and Herman writes about a modern-day leader who’s reached back into history to employ tasters in his kitchen.
Be aware that this book is filled with blood and guts and other unsavory things, so it’s not for the squeamish. Curious folks will love it, though, and European history lovers won’t want to pass on “The Royal Art of Poison.”
The salad, though. That’s another matter.
The Bookworm is Terri Schlichenmeyer. Terri has been reading since she was 3 years old and she never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 13,000 books.