Hamilcar Barca was a Carthaginian general and Hannibal’s father. I’ve known that at least since the age of four, when for some reason it was one of hundreds of pieces of esoterica that was drilled into me by my father as being part of the essential knowledge base expected of any educated person in the US of A. You will no doubt be as sad and astonished as I to learn how infrequent a topic of conversation is the First Punic War and that I have had no opportunity of worming Hamilcar's name into any discussion to date.
As a child, I liked nothing better than becoming the willing repository of useless information dispensed by my father. Although, I had to wonder why he was so anxious that I should be able to distinguish between a bactrian and a dromedary camel, for instance. Did he foresee a day when some avaricious caravan operator would try to charge for two humps while providing one? Had it happened to him? Or, had he been the subject of ridicule for misidentifying a dromedary at the petting zoo in his own childhood?
An early exercise involved me reading and memorizing the titles and authors contained in an encyclopedic list of the world’s most famous or influential literature. I don’t recall the source of the list, but it helpfully had little illustrated vignettes of the books content along with a portrait of the author. I loved pouring over the list and committing to memory who wrote what. The payoff for me would be when I was trotted out at one of my parent’s parties and introduced to the guests as the reclusive child genius in residence. I couldn’t sing or dance but I could answer trivia questions for the diner’s amusement.
“Go ahead and ask her who wrote a famous book” my father would encourage his company. I’m not sure my father realized, or perhaps he did, but the guests themselves were somewhat put on the spot if they could not come up with an appropriately challenging title.
Finally, someone would venture something along the lines of "Who wrote Tom Sawyer”? and I would respond “Thamuel Clementh, also known as Mark Twain” in my adorable childish lisp, the result of juvenile toothlessness.
After such a softball, my father would snort “Please, give her something harder. That was a gimmee”.
The sweat would break out on both the guest’s and my own forehead simultaneously. In order to free the ice dam created by the frozen brains of the dinner guests, my father would then take over as emcee and begin shouting out “The Divine Comedy!” “Vanity Fair!” “Madame Bovary!” and the like while I responded with the correct attributions to the (fake) awe and astonishment of the assembled guests whose gravy was congealing and whose potatoes were petrifying on their plates during this interlude of paternal pride.
There did come an evening when one of the diners asked with a somewhat sardonic smile “No Exit”? and was astounded that I was unfamiliar with Sartre.The dining room literary trivia game was permanently dispensed with shortly thereafter. My parents agreed that I had grown a bit long in the tooth and had lost my former gamine appeal which is what made the precocious prodigy demonstration marginally entertaining in the first place. Plus, they were familiar with Sartre even though I was not, and the guest’s sly little riposte had hit home.
What was the point of that anecdote? you may ask. Who cares about Hamilcar Barca and who wrote The Marble Faun? Strangley enough, I do. In another life I would have gladly been an Irish monk, carefully inscribing some treatise on medevil gingivitis, even if it took a decade of my life.
My father’s odd insistence that I know obscure or irrelevant to most factoids instilled within me a simple desire to KNOW in general. One never can tell when some bit of arcana will come in handy. Most often it rarely does, but I am waiting nonetheless to unburden myself of a bit of my knowledge bank should it be helpful to anyone at any time. And like a squirrel with acorns, I never tire of finding new bits of information to hoard away in my trove. I have found that the only way to learn new things is to read voraciously and to listen to others who know things that you don’t.
I stumbled across something just the other day. This particular acorn filled me with astonishment that I had lived the number of decades that I have passed WITHOUT KNOWING ABOUT THIS.
Did you know that there existed a group of people who were persecuted and maligned and isolated and castigated by the inhabitants of western France and northern Spain for hundreds of years? These people were forced to live separately from the other native populations and to even enter the churches through their own doors and to sit in their own pews. Only a few professions were open to them and marriage outside of their gene pool was frowned upon. They were whispered to have web feet and were not allowed to go barefoot. They were forced to wear either a real or an emblematic goose foot on their clothing in order to identify themselves as members of this so-called “Accursed Race”.
Why the need for the goose foot? Because they were unidentifiable in terms of language, religion or any specific physical traits. For all intents and purposes they looked and spoke and worshipped like any other run-of-the-mill person within their milieu! To call them a “race” is a misnomer. To cap it all off, no one really knows to this day why this group of people became the targets of the animosity and the prejudices and scorn of other French people. Over time, the reason for the bigotry itself became lost, yet all the devices and machinations of bigotry against them maintained even when the cause had been lost to the ages. The group of people is the Cagots
Here is a bit of background about the the Cagots: The Last Untouchable In Europe
And: Cagot- Wikipedia
How did I even tumble across this bizarre story? As is always the case, one Internet search leads to another. I was looking at the bibliography of Elizabeth Gaskell, a prominent Victorian author and saw listed a book I had never heard of:
An Accursed Race which started the whole quest for more information about this forgotten group of pariahs.
Well, that’s today’s journey down the Path of Forgotten Knowledge. Thanks for joining me. Please share any acorns from your own stash, if you would care to.
Books In My Life is a diary published most Friday mornings about books that have had a particular resonance in ones life for some personal reason. If you would like to write a diary in this series please contact Phoebe Loosinhouse by Kosmail to schedule a date