There is a splendidly ornate German castle which I toured once – a stone confection perched on a perfectly conical hill above the Mosel River in the little burg of Cochem am Mosel. That landmark little castle has all the towers, battlements, and archaic medieval Gothic ornamentation which one would wish for. However, it is all a 19th century confection, which anyone familiar with the mad romantic enthusiasm of that era for the high medieval can deduce at half a glance. The wealthy German industrialist who purchased the genuinely medieval ruins had it all rebuilt during the 1870s as a private residence for his family, with every romantic element of decoration that historical enthusiasts could imagine, (and they could imagine a lot) all jumbled together, more or less harmoniously. But it is all relentlessly the early 19th century’s vision of medieval splendor.

Mark Twain sourly blamed this mad enthusiasm for all things medieval and chivalric on the very popular novels of Sir Walter Scott – and he might have had a point. International fan fervor for the novels went as far as staging a lavishly-reenacted tournament and banquet at Eglinton Castle in Ayrshire, Scotland in 1839 (which was attended by thousands and nearly bankrupted the minor noble who had organized it) and the State of Maryland has jousting formally as the official state sport.
Which brings me to contemplate Scott’s best-known novel, the one which fired the 19th century romantic vision of the time of chivalry, inspired the Eglinton Tournament, and the passion for jousting in Maryland; Ivanhoe, which after numberless stage presentations following upon initial publication of the novel has also been made into at least three movies (more if counting derivative or foreign-language versions) and about as many television series dramatizations. The turns and twists of the plot are sufficiently incoherent to make me wish that someone like Anna Russell would deconstruct it for comic effect. The initial chapter reads as pointless, tedious and uninteresting … apparently grabbing reader interest from the drop was not in Sir Walter’s toolkit, even allowing for an inclination for a leisurely set-up in ye olden tymes. Neither did he have anything like Charles Dickens’ facility for evocative and fitting names for characters. A heroic swashbuckler named … Wilfred. Not exactly a name which rings with heroism… But the narrative grabbed an audience, heart and soul and set a certain aesthetic in concrete, as well as a model of chivalric behavior that was impressed on generations of gentlemanly Americans, Britons and Europeans. (A code of conduct shredded to ribbons on the battlefields of WWI, but which still limps on, here and there.)

Anyway, this came up as I watched the most recent TV serialization of Ivanhoe this week, recognizing none of the leading actors but Ciaran Hinds (as the Templar knight Bois-Guilbert), Christopher Lee chewing up the scenery as Saruman … no scratch that, the malevolent hunter of heretics de Beaumanoir – and a brief walk-on from Siân Phillips, as Elinor of Aquitaine, laying down the law to her kingly sons. It’s a rather good production otherwise – although the Saxon characters are generally excessively hairy (one can tell them from the Normans as the Normans are a little more tidily groomed. Also, the Saxons have round shields and the Normans have kite-shaped ones), and all the peasant characters are also excessively hairy, grubby and drably clad.

I was reminded again in watching the series of a certain observation, when it comes to creating a literary or a cinematic version of a past times; that as hard as one might try, the contemporary always sneaks in around the edges, although this may be more true of the visual arts like movies, television and paintings, just as it was in the recreated castle at Cochem am Mosel. It is screamingly obvious for instance, that Gone With the Wind was filmed in the 1930s, Désirée (with Jean Simmons and Marlon Brando) is from 1954, and that John Wayne’s Alamo, Dr. Zhivago, and the Elizabeth Taylor version of Cleopatra were all filmed in the 1960s. Curiously, this is even more marked over time; we will spot the contemporary-time-of creation sneaking in around the edges, the farther that we get from that time of creation the more clearly we can spot the historical anomalies – just as I could readily see the age of Victoria imprinting over that castle in Germany.