More Fallen London Trivia
This is more well known than the last bit, but here’s some trivia on the origin of the semi-mysterious and repeating phrase “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Now most people assume this a reference to the T.S. Eliot poem Little Gidding. This is a sensible assumption, there are a metric ton of references to Eliot in Fallen London, and his poem does contain the line a few times, if lacking two ‘all shall be well’s before the ‘all manner of thing shall be well.’ Certainly it can be analyzed and have its themes go alongside Fallen London.
Buuuuut Eliot himself was even using the line to reference someone who came well before him: Julian of Norwich, from the late 14th century, the first recorded woman author in the English language (with the associated Margery Kempe following shortly after), also notably an early adopter of using English rather than Latin to write. She was an anchoress, pretty much a person (around her time usually a woman) who led a solitary monastic life in a single room built against a church (hers was the Church of St Julian, in Norwich. Hence the name she’s given, being we have no clue what her name actually is). They were hermits, to the point that upon their anchorage there was held for them what was effectively a funeral.
Suffice to say, she was rather religious. Well, at one point she comes down with an illness. A rather intense one that had her near death. In her state she looked upon the crucifix and saw Jesus bleeding, whereupon she had 16 visions of Christ and the Virgin Mary over the next many hours. Upon waking she was miraculously cured and set to writing her visions, or revelations as she calls them, in what she titled “The Revelations of Divine Love.”
Here’s where we get to the relevant part. At one point during these revelations she dwells on sin and how horrific it is, and why god didn’t stop its creation so everyone could be “clean and like to our Lord as he made us (Julian of Norwich 68). She then continues “And then in my folly, before this time, often I wondered why, by the great foresaid wisdom of God, the beginning of sin was not letted, for then thought me that all should have been well” (68). In this questioning and sorrow though Jesus answers her, “but Jesu, that in this vision informed me of all that me needed, answered by this word and said, ‘Sin is behovely, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” (68). Bold mine, naturally. So it’s as simple as “why god is there sin, when we would be well without it?” “Ah, but all Will be well even with it.” She then goes on to talk of Christ’s suffering and his Passion, with mention of how she shouldn’t blame God for Sin, for God doesn’t blame her for her Sins, but rather he sweetly comforts her.
So, a promise that despite the horror caused by an action, that against questions that wouldn’t things be well without that thing, that all will still be well? That sounds…familiar.
Sometimes my education in Literature can give some nice insight into such matters as these references abound in Fallen London, so I think I might do more of these if anything more of note comes to my attention (besides the blatant ones to Eliot’s The Waste Land).
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