Luca by Alberto Moravia (1948)

Translated from the original Italian, the title of this ought to be Disobedience, but this translation is included in an early 50s American volume entitled Two Adolescents, and follows on from Agostino, so its title was changed to fit. The translation reads masterfully, and research confirms that Angus Davidson, who was responsible, remained the major translator of Moravia for most of his career, and also worked on pieces by Mario Praz, Giuseppe Berto and Natalia Ginzburg, among others. Moravia's scheme here is to relate to the reader the workings of the mind of a young intelligent adolescent as he matures. It's not easy to say exactly how he succeeds, only to know that he does. And of course this is why someone of the class of Davidson as translator is so important. Moravia's subtle grip on the combination of egotism, wonder, sensuality and spoiltness in Luca's mind, and on how those and other elements concatenate and influence one another, spurring changes and eras of thought, is phenomenal. It's also very interesting to note the tendency toward existentialism that dominates the first part of the book, as Luca feels a growing sense of betrayal by his parents' (and the world's) vulgarity and the development in him of a 'desire for death' as a rejection of the terms of living, if these abject examples are the only currency. Two sexual adventures then intervene, one a non-starter with a governess which doesn't shift his perspective other than as an experience of frustration and fascination, and the other with a home nurse after his health has collapsed in fever. This second affair occurs after he returns to full consciousness with a sense of passive but fundamental reinstillment of belief in life. Moravia leaves us with Luca travelling to a sanatorium which his mother has organised to complete his cure, on a train high in the mountains, and the sense that this passivity itself, currently seeming to Luca like the great answer to all his philosophical questions about how life should be lived, is yet another era whose endtime will have to come. In its limpidity and psychological truth, this is quietly brilliant.

Commonplace Book

'"Oh, yes, the English are consummate hypocrites. But there's only one objection to their hypocrisy - it so rarely covers any wickedness. It's such a disappointment to see a creature stalking towards you, laboriously draped in sheep's clothing, and then to discover that it's only a sheep..."'

from The Invisible Prince, a piece in Comedies and Errors by Henry Harland

Commonplace Book

'Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of frenzies, and whirled them round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire...'

from Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (Chapter 44)

Eve in Egypt by Jane Starr (1929)

This is an emanation of its era in a few ways. It is light and funny in the style that is now seen as 'classically' twenties, but with the underhang of the erudition and gravitas of the period directly before it lending it a sense of artistic balance. It has a little of what is now known as casual racism scoring through it, defining its belonging to the colonial era. In a literary sense, it is also an example of that much-discussed thing between the wars, the essay-novel, astonishingly giving it the cred of being at the very outside edges of modernism! Jane Starr was the pseudonym of Stella 'Tennyson' Jesse, sister of the well known novelist and crime writer F. (Fryn) Tennyson Jesse (the 'Tennyson' is an adoption based on their father's name). It could so very easily have been sluggish in comparison, less 'professional' than her sister's work, simply a vanity project. It is thankfully nothing of the kind; Stella was as much of a born writer as her sibling. Her project is to translate a travelogue into fictional form. Based upon an actual journey undertaken by the sisters, Fryn's husband and a bachelor uncle a few years before, it is the story of four people who take a journey in a dahabeah up the Nile, visiting sites of significance and learning about the culture as they go. Stella translates the original four into two couples where the women are indeed sisters, but the other man is now an eligible, knowledgable and capable young bachelor who has to come to terms with the fact that he's in love with Eve, the younger unmarried sister. She has a spirited and fizzing character, and is captivated by Egypt, wanting to learn all he knows and more besides. She also has to come to terms with the fact that he has captured her affections. The slow progress of this familiarity is offset by the continual change of scene, and some quietly delightful witty dialogue and situations, as well as genuine reverence for the fascinations of Egypt. The aspect that marks this out as more than just froth is the writer's understanding of balance. It would be very easy to simply hash material like this together; she wrote it as a ten pound bet with Fryn's husband, the playwright H. M. Harwood, after all. But there is some instinct in her which knows how to pluck charm from each episode, in a flowing run of greater or lesser impact, which gives enormous satisfaction to the reader. It also gives the lie to all the agonising over whether or not the essay-novel was a viable experiment; it was, if the writer knew their stuff.

The Heart of Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott (1818)

The reading of this was marked by a strange chance. I had started on one of the Notable Scottish Trials series, the one on Captain Porteous, and was a fair way through. I started then on this, quickly to discover that the historical incident involving Porteous was its starting point. Strange how these things coincide. This fact also allows a special insight, which is to watch how Scott interprets and magnifies real history in his fictionalising. Only the bare bones of history make it here, almost exclusively in the first part, where the Edinburgh 'mob' become incensed by Porteous' actions at the execution of a well-liked and understood smuggler in 1736, in the fact that he 'authorises' firing by the city guard when it looks like the crowd might try to cut the smuggler down from the gibbet. They are already pelting the guard with sizeable stones. The 'real' history explains that this was all a murky area, where it's not at all certain that he authorized anything, or indeed fired himself. But Scott has felt the need to come down on a side for the advancement of the story, which I understand. Then Porteous himself is imprisoned for his 'lead' in the affray, where several members of the public have been killed. That public wanted his blood for that, which is also understandable. Members of the officialdom of the city feel that he's been hard done by (and probably rightly, according to the trial) and send off to Queen Caroline in the hope of a pardon, which is eventually granted. The Edinburgh public are outraged by this, and rumours abound as to their wish to carry out Porteous' hanging themselves, royal pardon or not. Then the famous city-capture and prison break-in is successfully undertaken by a mob of persons unknown, and the grisly deed done. Scott keeps pretty well to the history here, but surrounds this story with one of a pair of sisters, one of whom has been undone by one of the original smuggler's mates in crime. She is also in prison at the time, for the probable murder of the resulting child. Her calmer, more upright elder sister is then involved in a long journey to London, also to try to obtain a pardon, as real evidence for her sister's crime is virtually non-existent - they have no idea what happened to the child; it was very possibly spirited away as soon as it was born. This journey is complicated by a strange meeting with the nefarious father of her sister's child, this time in his true identity as the young lord of a Lincolnshire estate. Astonishingly, attained of London, she enlists the help of the Duke of Argyle - and manages to meet Queen Caroline and gain her sister's pardon. The last third of the novel takes place in the west of Scotland as she comes under the protection of the Duke, her sister is released and disappears into the disgrace encumbent on a wronged woman, and life begins again in new surrounds, with her beloved (and obsessedly comic) father joining her, and her sweetheart also, a young clergyman for whom the Duke finds a local living. Years later it emerges that her sister has found her undoer and married him, becoming the celebrated and witty Lady Staunton that all British society is talking about, without of course knowing her chequered history, or that her husband was once the ne'erdowell associate of an infamous smuggler! The last act in this mosaic of intersections is the discovery by that husband of the fate of their son, who has indeed survived and become a marauder in a band of Highland banditti. Destiny closes in on him, as he is ambushed by them before being able to identify his son; he is shot in the skirmish, very possibly by the boy himself. The boy escapes on a people-smuggler's vessel to America, where he gets into more and more trouble, finally disappearing into the wilds to live out his life among the native Americans and an unknown end. Scott leavens all of this with bursts of humour associated with larger than life subsidiary characters. A plenitude of colour and crazy coincidence keep this one cracking along, though I will say that it sometimes seemed a little less disciplined than previous novels.

Commonplace Book

'Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death...'

from Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (Chapter 29)

Commonplace Book

'...In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers...'

from Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (Chapter 9)

The Persimmon Tree and other stories by Marjorie Barnard (1943)

I am already a fan of Barnard, so reading this was well anticipated. I read the Virago 1985 reprint which includes three extra stories at the end, selected I'm thinking by Barnard herself. The remainder of her solo stories were collected together a couple of years later in another volume called But Not For Love. These twenty are typical of her, in that they cover the smaller themes in life, as they represent the larger. Thus a woman having a hairdo becomes a meditation on loss in relationships, whereby depression reigns until the 'armour for living' is back up to full strength; a redesign of the cafe of a department store which includes canaries in cages high above the eaters reveals out-of-place passion in the hearts of the little birds who sing intensely once the orchestra begins to play, striking the entire chattering cafe dumb for a few precious moments; the ribbing and jealous sidelong glances of a group of ferry-travellers on Sydney Harbour toward a fellow who is a regular belies the fact that the winner of a lottery is in fact his wife who can't cope with his rigidity and controlling behaviour, and who has packed ready to leave him when he gets home; a family goes ahead with holding a Christmas party and dressing a huge tree despite the loss of the youngest child very recently - the jollity is finally too much for the mother who, at the end of the night, goes upstairs and empties too many sleeping pills into her hand; in Vienna, during the 1934 uprising, a woman goes out for seed for her little bird who is still singing madly despite starving - caught in the ongoing melee, she is struck and slowly dies on the pavement, while her little bird slowly goes silent in her now deserted apartment. A couple of these stories deal with returns to family locations where a person has moved on while other family members haven't, or a new import causes ructions. All bar two are set in Australia. The other thing they do superbly in their love of simple detail is give a strong mental picture of the 1930s, when most, if not all, are set. The one detraction is minor: I think Barnard is at her best when she can cumulate power, meaning that her novels written with Flora Eldershaw are more regal and mythically flowing. But these are far from miserly in their impact as they detail the sadness and vulnerability of those who hope, the bitterness of those who've lost too much to, and the puzzlement of believers in the face of pitiless fate.

The Swan in the Evening by Rosamond Lehmann (1967)

This is the closest Lehmann got to an autobiography in non-fictional form. I hadn't read her for an age, and soon after embarking I had a deep-set recognition: yes, this was the vivid writer I remembered. She achieves here that same sense of vibrating immediacy that made her reputation as a writer pretty well unassailable. And yet here, in subject terms, she has put herself on the line, allowed a huge space for assailants. It starts out with a depiction of her own childhood at Bourne End in very (acknowledgedly) comfortable conditions. There are a significant number of servants, a huge garden, the rowers her father coached always about and on the river, three siblings to clash and conspire with, local notables who visit and so on. Always there is the bright angle of description whereby we get this information in what seems a new-minted way. This clarifies for me the depth of her success, and the starkness of her capability: she manages to turn the traditional zone of the softly poetic away from its sticky path into much more glowing territory; a transmutation occurs which strips away the plodding and replaces it with vision. There is also a revelation here of an important fact for later on: there is a sense of her as a child being prone to what might be called nerve-storms; she's often kept in the dark by the family on hot topics, or we hear of her exploding almost unreasonably about sensitive issues. Then follows the story of the childhood of her daughter Sally. This ends with the horrifying news, not long after Sally's marriage to PJ Kavanagh, and their move to Jakarta, that she has died from a lightning-fast case of polio. Lehmann is shocked and crushed as any mother would be. Crucially, though, as she struggles through the waste land of initial grief, certain signs show that her super-febrile senses are sifting for answers, questing for solution. It soon begins to emerge that she can sense Sally about her, gain impressions of even physical signs of her presence, and, critically, communicate with her on a level which is partially verbal, partially not. These experiences lead her, over the ensuing years, to a fascinated and full exploration of "life after death". This, of course, is where she lays herself open to all sorts of opposition at the best, and abuse at the worst. My turn of mind is generally scientific; on the whole, I would feel a sense of caution about her claims. But, I feel very hesitant about the Stephen Fry-esque fingerwagging and catcalls of FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD! at about the same pitch. These seem to me to be responses to the no doubt prevalent charlatanry in this field, which Lehmann herself acknowledges. She is however openly interested in a calm and even-handed manner in investigating her experiences. It is this evenhandedness that claims me. "I've had an experience; it seemed real to me; I want to know about it and if there is any system of thought that backs it" seems her modus, and I have no desire to send a grenade in her direction as a result. I wonder whether or not it was that profound sensitivity, which mounted to nervous tension as a child, that is a clue here, and the reason why these 'connective' happenings were so strong. Interestingly, too, there is an incredibly strong sense, in her description of the first uprush of recognition of Sally's presence and its impacts, at the house of some friends soon after her death, of the sort of emotional burst of energy which comes from substances like MDMA; the intense feeling of wholeness and loving warmth, and the sensory qualities being super-energised and meaning-filled. I wonder whether whatever human substance it is that is released in an MDMA experience was made available to Lehmann's brain via the stress of her grief and the supersensitivity of her emotional nature. A vivid and intriguing memoir of troubled territory, purveyed with dignity and clarity.

Commonplace Book

'...How could he ever explain to Helen the bleak reasoning that saved his own sanity and supported him while it did not comfort? This was the knowledge that to lose, to suffer, to die were as much a part of living, as natural, as birth and happiness. Men and women took on the human lot and when it could not be changed stood by it for the dignity and integrity of their souls...'

from Tree Without Earth, a story in The Persimmon Tree and other stories by Marjorie Barnard

Young Lives by Richard Le Gallienne (1899)

This is a critical piece in my understanding of Gallienne. Up until now, I've been wondering about what his reasons were for writing as he did. His writing had always seemed to me a little bloodless, with the beefier exception of a novel from later in 1899 entitled The Worshipper of the Image, where ideas and execution married to the point of much greater wealth of impact. This one is a return, stylistically, to the novel before. It's the story of young people of the 1890s, just starting out in their lives. In that former novel, tragedy struck in the form of an interloper in a relationship. In this one there is no such challenge; the main characters, a Birkenhead (translated into 'Sidon', as against Liverpool's 'Tyre') brother and sister, have one main area of negativity in their lives: their father's conservative attitudes that won't allow them easily to pursue their modern ideals. A minor issue is also penury, but it is surprisingly quickly got over in their lives, and that of their partners; quick successes come easily to him, a writer, and her lover, an actor. Because Henry, the brother, is a writer, an excuse is given for Gallienne to outline, through a visit by him to London when he's just starting to be noticed, exactly what his lights are. I get the feeling, by the way, that this novel is largely autobiographical - Henry seems very likely to be following a good part of the author's own path. The idea he gets across, by having Henry meet some part of the avant garde of the London literary scene, is that both realism and aesthetic decadence, as they were seen at that time, were dead end reaches of the stream of literature, and that the place Henry occupied, and by association Gallienne himself, was much closer to the centre of the warm flow of literature's great river. He was "alive", they were "dead"; he was the true inheritor of the great novelists of yesterday, they were misguided. Although I can accept that this is simply what the author thinks, I have to say that I think he misunderstands a crucial issue. This is that it's not what authors' underlying notions were that determined their success, but something much more ground level and substantial, which comes down to a sense of believability in what's actually on the page and an idea of balance in verbal illustration which meant that their stories rang 'true'. It is precisely this which seems to be something which doesn't occupy Gallienne overly, meaning that his novels often feel sweet and light, like children's literature of the time, rewritten for adults with a few adult themes. He genuinely didn't think that his writing suffered by it, I think, and what I call 'sweetness' he would have called a terribly straightforward and necessary goodness, denied by dead late 19th century realism and aestheticism. Even though he is quite thin in impact as a result of espousing these angles, I can't say that it isn't interesting to read him, as it is anyone who doesn't 'fit the standard bill'. Now I need to read on, ballasted by new understanding, and see if the damage he was doing to the powerfulness of his fictions dawned on him at any further point of a very long career.

Commonplace Book

'Certainly one day, but that is far in the unimaginable future, I shall be forced to bear the ultimate in unsupportable reality; and also, strange but true, the voice of a bird will draw me through the moment of transition into the moment of release from action and suffering: into being; into a reality I, somehow, must have earned, although it was too bright to bear for long - or I too dark to bear it.'

from The Swan in the Evening by Rosamond Lehmann (Part Two, Section 2)

Commonplace Book

'...In an age of great biologists and electricians, he came upon children prettily talking about fairies and the philosopher's stone. In one of the greatest ages of English poetry, he came to London to find young English poets falling on their knees to the metrical mathematicians of France. In the great age of democracy, a fool had come and asked him if he were not a supporter of the house of Stuart, a Jacobite of charades.[...] and never once had he heard the voice of simple human feeling, nor heard one speak of beauty, simply, passionately, with his heart in his mouth; nor of love with his heart upon his sleeve. Much cleverness, much learning, much charm, there had been, but he had missed the generous human impulse. No one seemed to be doing anything because he must. These were pleasant eddies, dainty with lilies and curiously starred water-grasses, but the great warm stream of English literature was not flowing here.'

from Young Lives by Richard Le Gallienne (Chapter XXXIV)

Afoot in England by WH Hudson (1909)

Hudson here details a number of walks and a couple of bicycle rides he took, mainly in the south west, a couple elsewhere. They speak of a greener England, and a quieter one, by such an amount as to seem almost fantastical. To think of those parts of the country unencumbered by anything remotely resembling a motorway is to feel like one is dreaming. Of greater interest again is the obvious plenty in terms of creatures round about; flitting in the hedgerows, in the sky, tucked into a countryside teeming with variety and activity are innumerable species of animals, insects and birds, many of which are now rare or even gone, I'm sure. As always, this leaves me with vying sentiments: a terrible feeling of loss, particularly of peace and beauty, and a contrasting self-suspicion that I'm partaking of little Englanderness and too much interest in golden ages. In the end, the loss is more definable and undoubted. Hudson documents in a gentle style the stories of those he meets, from disgruntled and frightening cottage wives in lonely corners of moors, to warmly vocal vicars, to houses tucked away in villages where he knows he can get a meal, to dogs who adopt him because of his wandering ways. He also speaks of the changing landscape with even-handed concern, except where motor-cars are concerned; they are messengers of evil in every way. And he was right according to his lights; his England of lanes and slowness was the one they were in the process of doing away with. He also voices much more seemingly modern concerns: he's right against the dead-spirited depredations of hunting and very aware in general of species loss through human activity. His main concern though is with birds; their lives, seasons, mating habits, communication and interreactions form the most part of the animal portion of these chapters. He also occasionally refers back to his time in early life in South America, the contrasts of which gently ballast these musings. The softness of much of this book could be construed as 'chocolate-box' by the needlessly cynical. It does very occasionally leave one wanting more, but by far the greater impression is of a tenderness and simplicity which are honest in intent and creative of answering echoes in the reader.

Commonplace Book

'O that unbedding of the lark! The world that was so still before now all at once had a sound; not a single song and not in one place, but a sound composed of a thousand individual sounds, rising out of the dark earth at a distance on my right hand and up into the dusky sky, spreading far and wide even as the light was spreading on the opposite side of the heavens - a sound as of multitudinous twanging, girding, and clashing instruments, mingled with shrill piercing voices that were not like the voices of earthly beings. They were not human nor angelic, but passionless, and it was as if the whole visible world, the dim grassy plain and the vast pale sky sprinkled with paling stars, moonlit and dawnlit, had found a voice to express the mystery and glory of the morning.'

from Afoot in England by WH Hudson (Chapter XXI)

I Speak of Africa by William Plomer (1927)

This was Plomer's second book, coming after the critically applauded excoriation of South African society Turbott Wolfe. Both are now very much eclipsed in popular terms; this one was arguably never really in the spotlight. This fate is not deserved, though I think I can put forward a theory as to why the quiescence may have occurred. His later books appear to be a lot 'softer' in their approach, quite a bit more middling. I say that having only dipped into them; this is a prognostic which I will gladly revise on fuller reading, and equally am interested to see how it happened if it did. There are included in this book 'three short novels', 'seven short stories' and 'two plays for puppets'. What binds them together is fierceness - an intensely realised dislike of limited, racist, domineering, white South Africa. The three novellas, Portraits in the Nude, Ula Masondo and Black Peril, as well as the first of the 'short' stories (actually longer and more involved than Black Peril, so no idea why it is so denominated) called Saturday, Sunday, Monday, all deal at sour length with limitation-blighted white or black lives, or poisonous relations between the races. The whites are usually locked into defensive patterns of prejudice and the blacks usually provide them with reality checks, which must have been quite liberating / shocking in those days. White women often use rape-allegations as a weapon against black men who don't oblige them in whatever way, or whom they want to be rid of. Whether Plomer had personal experience of this method being used during his time growing up there, or had his own prejudgments, is another issue to be grappled with. Portraits in the Nude also has a place in the history of modern gothic I think, with its tale of a white farmer whose mind has gradually curdled into religious fanaticism, around whom his whole family have built a frightened and yet protective barrier. His strange outbursts at times of tension, and peculiar behaviours and beliefs (taking all his clothes off and running the gamut of the town after church) are redolent of TF Powys' mad obsessed figures, and of the later monomaniacs of Flannery O'Connor. The short stories and playlets bring the same subject matter of stymied people into very bright focus, where all hinges on a single situation, or conversation. A couple of them are sketchlike slices of life, and attempt a slightly lighter tone, but there is no escaping Plomer's frustration and bitterness with what he clearly regards as a shower of foolishness and race-hate. The anger accords this its backbone - I hope I'm wrong about what seems to be his later diminution.

Commonplace Book

'We are all pretty familiar from experience with the limitations of the sense of smell and the fact that agreeable odours please us only fitfully; the sensation comes as a pleasing shock, a surprise, and is quickly gone. If we attempt to keep it for some time by deliberately smelling a fragrant flower or any perfume, we begin to have a sense of failure as if we had exhausted the sense, keen as it was a moment ago. There must be an interval of rest for the nerve before the sensation can be renewed in its first freshness. Now it is the same, though in a less degree, with the more important sense of sight. We look long and steadily at a thing to know it, and the longer and more fixedly we look the better, if it engages the reasoning faculties; but an aesthetic pleasure cannot be increased or retained in that way. We must look, merely glancing as it were, and look again, and then again, with intervals, receiving the image in the brain even as we receive the 'nimble emanations' of a flower, and the image is all the brighter for coming intermittently. In a large prospect we are not conscious of this limitation because of the wideness of the field and the number and variety of objects or points of interest in it; the vision roams hither and thither over it and receives a continuous stream or series of pleasing impressions; but to gaze fixedly at the most beautiful object in nature or art does but diminish the pleasure. Practically it ceases to be beautiful and only recovers the first effect after we have given the mind an interval of rest.'

from Afoot in England by WH Hudson (Chapter XX)

A Passion of the South by Alphonse Daudet (1880)

This in the original French was titled after its main character, Numa Roumestan. The English title gives emphasis to a major theme - it is the story of a man of the south of France, who in Daudet's eyes typifies that region. He has the 'gift of the gab' in a relatively subtle sense; it is his capability also to utilise his intelligence in this gift's decoration - he has the power to inspire the public, but also to inspire those close around him, with his words. These not only detail his plans in public service - he is a popular minister in the French government on the road to greater things - but also his promises to those nearer by: promises he can only sometimes keep. So, there is a sense of danger in his utterances and his envelope of romance - will he be able to keep to his undertakings? Will his pleasure-seeking nature be at odds with what is required of his position, and how will he try to wrangle or popularise his way out of tight corners? His largesse impresses many; it causes a few to be badly burnt. This southern, emotional, charming way of personality has initially taken in his wife, Rosalie, the wary, wealthy daughter of a well-connected northern family. But she has had her eyes opened by an affair early in their marriage, and looks on steelily as Numa, on a reasonably rare visit to the south from their Parisian abode, promises too much to a celebrated tabour-player about what fame he could achieve in the nation's capital with his help. The player and his family fall for the allure hook, line and sinker. Typically, when they pitch up at his office in Paris a little while later, Numa, busy with many other petitioners to whom he has also covenanted much, is disconcerted and disturbed by what he himself has promised. Rosalie's vibrant younger sister, Hortense, falls for the tabour-player, even though he is much lower than her in class terms. Numa has also promised to a vivacious young singer, Alice Bachellery, a place at the Opera. There are two problems with this: she's not a fine singer, just an entertaining one, and Numa has made this assurance mainly because he fancies her. She gets her position when he gets his expected promotion, to the frenzied opposition of the leader of the Opera. They start their affair. Meanwhile, the tabour-player's debut has not fulfilled Numa's prognostications. He and his family, having sold their farm in the south to make this new career happen, now begin to slip in the social rankings from whatever tenuous point they had previously occupied on the basis of Numa's championing. The player's sister, Audiberte, a tough cookie who won't be gainsaid, makes a friend of Hortense on the basis of her predilection for Valmajour, the player. Unfortunately, Hortense's interest begins to slow as does Valmajour's career. Audiberte is furious that her safety-line is looking like slipping, until she overhears some fellow southerners talking of Numa's little flirtation with Alice Bachellery. She makes sure that the now pregnant Rosalie hears of it, and Numa's life is headed toward destruction and scandal. At the same time it is realised, on a holiday in the south, that Hortense has the beginnings of consumption. She begins to waste away. She begs Rosalie to forgive Numa as a deathbed wish. Rosalie cannot but accede, and their child is born to united parents, though on Rosalie's part surely doubtfully so. Daudet charts here another slowly drooping course to disaster, which I'm beginning to see is his specialty. But the advent of the child and their conditional reunion form a heartening, if compromised, counterpoint.

Commonplace Book

'...That is the cruelty of poets; they soothe you, they calm you, then with a single phrase they quicken the wound they were about to heal.'

from A Passion of the South by Alphonse Daudet (Chapter XVIII)

Commonplace Book

'...And yet how much better it was to be as they were, than as most scions of aristocratic lineage, whose present was so often nothing and their past everything. How humiliating to be so pathetically inadequate an outcome of such long and elaborate preparation, - the mouse of a genealogical mountain! Yes, it was immeasurably more satisfactory to one's self-respect to be Something out of Nothing, than Nothing out of Everything. Here so little had made so much; here so much had made - hardly even a lord. It was better for your circumstances to be inadequate for you, than you to be inadequate for your circumstances.'

from Young Lives by Richard Le Gallienne (Chapter XIV)

Commonplace Book

'...these clerks, without so formulating it, merely exercised the right of all oppressed beings liberally to interpret to their own advantage, where possible, the terms of an unjust contract which grinding economic conditions had compelled them to make. They had been forced to promise too much in exchange for too little, and they equalised the disparity where they could.'

from Young Lives by Richard Le Gallienne (Chapter X)

Commonplace Book

'...the Southerner is not a home man. It is the people of the North, the poor climates[,] who have invented "home," the intimacy of the family circle to which Provence and Italy prefer the terraces of ice-shops, the noise and excitement of the street.'

from A Passion of the South by Alphonse Daudet (Chapter VI)

Commonplace Book

'...For it is true that our schools are factories, with a machinery to unmake and remake, or fabricate, the souls of children, much in the way in which shoddy is manufactured. You may see a thousand rags, or garments, of a thousand shapes and colours, cast in to be boiled, bleached, pulled to pieces, combed and woven, and finally come out as a piece of cloth a thousand yards long of a uniform harmonious pattern, smooth, glossy, and respectable...'

from Afoot in England by WH Hudson (Chapter V)

"Good-bye, Sweetheart!" by Rhoda Broughton (1872)

If Broughton is to be repromoted, the inescapable likening would need to be Austen I think. This is not to say that they are in any way identical, but their novels live at the same magnification, there is something in the size of the scene, the centrality of the small number of female characters, usually sisters, and the underlying wit or lifeworn humour. Broughton is late nineteenth century in her embracing of more tragedy, and she is less of an obvious wit than her predecessor, preferring instead a species of what I have hitherto called cheekiness - it might better be typified as a kind of amused small-scale daring. This fourth instalment in the bibliography is again about a pair of sisters, Jemima and Lenore Herrick, with the later intrusion of their settled superficial elder sibling, Sylvia. Jemima is 28 and quite plain and sensible, has never had an admirer. Lenore is 19, and is the beautiful indulged baby of the family. She has always been able, since an early illness as a little one, to command everything she wants and not brook any interruption or opposition. On holiday in Brittany, they encounter two young Englishmen - Paul Le Mesurier is not terribly handsome, not terribly impressed with any woman, and has a cold, commanding manner; Charlie Scrope is big, blond, handsome and very easily led. Lenore is shocked by Paul's indifference - he's the first man who appears completely unmoved by her beauty, and she immediately conceives a fascination with him and the challenge he holds out. Charlie is very taken with Lenore, a circumstance which many other women might be delighted with, but his pretty amiability bores her. We follow as Paul and Lenore circle one another and gradually begin to get over their initial antagonism - which has involved them in some amusing contretemps. They fall in love, but their relationship is fraught with argument and friction as their primary natures rub and scrape at one another. Paul leaves for England, among other things in order to prepare his conservative family for the advent of Lenore. In the remainder of their holiday, a bored Lenore flirts quite strongly with Charlie to keep herself occupied. Back in Wales, at Sylvia's comfortable home in the country, Lenore and Paul prepare for marriage, but Paul's now savagely jealous nature has detected that there just might be something Lenore is hiding about what occurred after he left France. On the day of the wedding, all finally explodes as Lenore's flirting is exposed, as is her unwillingness to edit herself for genteel respectability. Paul leaves permanently. Lenore travels quickly from rage to a kind of nervous prostration. On the rebound, and pining desperately for Paul, she agrees to marry Charlie who has been unable to keep himself away. That move is quickly exposed as impossible; Lenore is not able to care for Charlie as she does for Paul. Trapped by her own pride and wilfulness, her health begins to suffer, but the family think she'll get over it if they head to warmer, clearer climes. In Switzerland, out on a solitary walk, Lenore, to her amazement, meets Paul coming in the opposite direction. As he speaks of his forthcoming marriage, all her hopes of reconciliation are dashed. There is also an embarrassing meeting with the Scropes who are staying in the same hotel. Charlie renews his courting, but Lenore will have none of it, keeping his devotedness hanging on a string as usual. Then she begins to look feebler, thinning out even more than beforehand, and it slowly becomes clear that consumption has caught up with her weakened state. The Herricks are trapped at the Swiss hotel for many weeks, unable to move Lenore. In a last desperate attempt, Charlie is sent off to fetch Paul, so that Lenore can see him one more time - but he returns alone; he has arrived on Paul's wedding day, meaning that there is no conceivable way Paul can accompany him back. This is the end for Lenore. And the novel ends there, which is not the most upbeat of endings, despite I guess being a very artistically sound one. That's not Austen - would it disturb her enthusiasts? Probably.

The History and Adventures of an Atom by Tobias Smollett (1769)

This satire of politics, royalty, finance and governance appeared anonymously in 1769. It has been attributed to Smollett, but apparently this attribution has been contested at various times. I don't feel skilled enough to comment firmly, and can only hedge my bets: it seems Smollettian in a sense, but also is markedly different to his novels, so who knows? Perhaps a reading of his continuation of David Hume's A Complete History of England, or his own The Present State of All Nations would give a clue as to his non-fictional manner. As it is, this piece is classic eighteenth century satire, replete with scatology, bluster and fantastical names. It purports to be a recent history of Japan, retailed to one Nathaniel Peacock by an atom within his brain. This atom has had a long and colourful history, as do most apparently, while travelling through the systems of all and sundry right across time. We never really find out how this particular one became able to communicate, and why it chose to talk to Peacock about "Japan". Now, the gen is that this story is really England's, and that all the players are disguised versions of the main protagonists of the period of The Seven Years' War. An aside here: my internet 'research' has uncovered the extraordinary fact that this conflict was in fact the first world war, its conflicts reaching across most of the continents then in communication, especially colonially, and involving the majority of European powers in one way or another. So, our First World War was actually the second, our Second the third. Anyway, 'Japan' is caught in asset-draining wars with almost all of its near neighbours; its emperor is caught in the sway of self-interested 'cuboys' trying to rub one another out sneakily so as to consolidate their own power, whilst also himself becoming manically obsessed by parcels of land which are impossible to defend; great orators control the beast of public opinion and vie with administrators in influencing policy. All the while this same public are completely asinine, and led up the garden path into glaring contrarieties of opinion, falling moblike into greater and more fulsome folly. The main players have such a variety of names - ranging from the almost culturally accurate like Mura-clami, to the obviously nonsensical like Nin-kom-poo-po, and journeying through Fika-Kaka, Got-Hama-Baba, Brut-an-Tiffi and Gotto Mio among tens of others along the way. The rumbunctious, noisy, grunting satire is amusing for a reader like myself with next to no knowledge of the era, but I can only imagine that the appeal would multiply accordingly as the inside straight was understood. This also has no particular ending, almost as though it was an unfinished project. It simply stops dead with nothing resolved, which is a little disappointing. The journey is crazy enough to make it worthwhile; whether it's Smollett's work or another wag's, it entertains.

Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey, 1905-1914 (1998)

This does resoundingly what books like this should do best - provides a widescreen viewing into the background of a previously lesser-known relationship. I came to this not having read any of Brooke's letters, and knowing nothing of Strachey except his Freud-translation credentials. This book was the first to print a good number of letters, revealing the true extent of the homosexual underpinning of their friendship - which materials had been prohibited in the past due to the prejudices of the main players in the 'Brooke industry' and to the long lives of some surrounding people whose feelings had to be considered. The correspondence begins with the two of them at the end of their school lives and just about to embark upon the adventure of Cambridge. They are quickly established as exemplars of Edwardian decadence, both in its male-fascinated and its intellectual determinors. They were not only a tight-knit small group in themselves, but had in their enemies and rivals similarly-nuanced individuals. Brooke came from a pretty well-connected upper middle class background, Strachey from a slightly dissolute, particularly outre coterie, an upper middle class family with introductions into and familiarities with aristocratic echelons. The two of them had, seemingly, very different moods and effects - Brooke's much-vaunted beauty with windswept light hair and serious charm; Strachey's darker, bright-eyed impishness with intellectual strength beneath. It becomes clear that Strachey, like so many, was bowled over by Brooke, who, in his turn, thought Strachey well worth cultivating. Brooke seems best summarised as a fluid egotist, who had become habituated to adoration and attention of all kinds, which made him skilful in corralling it to his needs, in both its sexual and non-sexual manifestations. They both join the most notable intellectual 'secret society' of the time, the Apostles, and enjoy for a good few years their mainly homoerotic adventures and life of the mind, as well as a fair swathe of gossip and infighting. Every now and then in the first half of this compilation I was aware of a sense of a stumble in the verbal rhythm, where I think perhaps something had been mistranscribed - sentences just not reading right: Brooke's script does look undecipherable in the visual examples given, so that is forgivable. The change comes in the last couple of years of their correspondence. Brooke has slowly adventured into female relationships as well as male, and Strachey is thinking of following suit, I guess in what would be considered in that time as a natural progression - several women of their acquaintance come under consideration. Brooke at a particular point gets ill, and appears to have a kind of breakdown. This triggers not only a reappreciation of much of the tenor of his life to date, but probably also latent mental illness associated with anxiety and jealous paranoia. So, with emerging heterosexuality, distrust of former friends and associates, a sizeable ego, and also what many a man will recognize as a typical stage that many go through, one of 'cleansing' and visions of what constitutes a 'right' life, Brooke made a strong break. His particular angles meant that this had an egotistical element, a superemphasis on masculinity, a hounding dislike of 'half-men' like Strachey's brother Lytton and even Strachey himself (and, I guess, of Brooke himself as he formerly was). This led him, in 1914, to an embrace of war and death in it as glorious, which great fate he of course fulfilled. Strachey continues in an extraordinarily loyal way trying to support his beloved friend, whilst being thoroughly honest about hating him from time to time. We are left in no doubt that he was highly critical of the later Brooke, and conversely that he was one of the great loves of his life. A brilliantly stimulating record, not only of a relationship, but of an era of intellect and behaviour whose fascinating development was utterly halted by conflagration.

Red Doc> by Anne Carson (2013)

The predecessor to this, Autobiography of Red, was by turns fun and irritating. The irritation lay mainly in a lot of "posy" appendices and supporting paraphernalia, and occasionally in encountering gloopy approximation or overly knowing reference in the work itself, a kind of loose late 20th century poet-speak which lacks impact, or turns the reader off. I'm pretty sure a good quantity of the easily impressed are very taken with these dips to 'profundity' couched in pseudo-Beat language. Carson is capable in different areas; those I've just mentioned are her weakest mode. All these tropes are repeated here, with one exception: the crappy apparatus is gone - hooray for that. This takes Geryon from the first book forward to a period where he is known by the poet simply as G. I'm not sure, but the feeling I get is that his friend here, Sad But Great ('SBG' or mainly just Sad) is his old flame from the first book. They catch up with each other, and with a wild friend, Ida, and also later connect with an army survivor, 4NO, who may be a development of Sad's character, or may be a separate individual. This indicates quite how fluid and impressionistic this piece is. The journey starts with G and Sad and the road north, on and on, into icy territory - Alaska? The Rockies of the northwest? A territory of the frosted mind? They turn up at what is revealed as their destination - a kind of mental health facility, where they re-encounter Ida and meet 4NO. This is the locus of the second half of the book, where their encounters with one another, re-enacting scenes from the past, playing out their traumas, giving one another impressions, realisations of healing and blockedness, interactions with the staff and the program, form the narrative. Carson is occasionally luminous, pulling out an impression which really speaks, and occasionally drab and limited, seemingly just writing in a kind of common 'literary' automatism. This mixed impression is the key. Her intention seems both cool and serious and individual in the best moments, fussed and posy and over-referential in her worst, and often thinly middling. The more she can clear out the need for the latter and embrace the former, the more powerful she'll get. I wonder whether an illustrator would have helped; the transformation into a graphic novel may have assisted in bringing this piece more to life, in making its effect more memorable. As it is we're left with a piece with striking images and moments whose impact is destrung by many more of self-absorbed 'cleverness' or waffly indistinction.

Commonplace Book

'It is a circumstance never to be enough deplored by the female world that marriages and drawing-rooms are broad daylight ceremonies. Mature necks and faces, that the great bold sun makes look as yellow as old law deeds or as the love letters of twenty years ago, would gleam creamily, waxily white, if illumined only by benevolent candles, that seem to see and make seen only beauties and slur over defects. Even the lilies and roses of youth - unlike the smooth perfection of their garden types - are conscious of little pits and specks and flaws when day holds his great searching lamp right into their faces. Day repudiates tulle and tarletane; they are none of his; and as he cannot rid himself of them he retaliates by behaving as glaringly and unhandsomely as he can to them...'

from "Good-Bye, Sweetheart!" by Rhoda Broughton (Part II, Chapter VII)

Commonplace Book

'...I must just write and tell you about Mumps. I had them when I was 16. Of course it's infinitely worse at 23.[...] It's not so much the pain, - though that's incredible, - as the Disgrace, - and the madness.[...] At first they just swell and swell and swell, till they're tight and shiny and cracking, two monstrous red balloons. Then, all of a sudden, they go hard, - hard as a rock. You lie and stare at the mountain under the bed-clothes, and pretend it's your knees. The doctor strips you and eyes them till you have an erection, and then thinks you're a bad lot. You cannot pumpship and your semen turns green. And night and day the thought and torment of these vast twin scarlet bleeding pineapples is with you. It lasts for months. I suppose the fatal cases are when they grow too far and explode...'

from a letter from Rupert Brooke to James Strachey, dated April 27, 1911, in Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey, 1905-1914

Commonplace Book

'...A man feels a secret satisfaction in seeing his neighbour treated as a rascal. If he be a knave himself (which ten to one is the case), he rejoices to see a character brought down to the level of his own, and a new member added to his society...'

from The Adventures of an Atom by Tobias Smollett

The Snow Man by George Sand (1858)

What a splendid thing this book is. Set in Dalecarlia, a region of central Sweden nestled next to the Norwegian border, in around 1770, the action takes place in a frozen landscape. The centre of it is a lake in which there is a rocky island topped with an old castle. The lake is a plane of white, its upper part frozen solid, so the island is very accessible. On the edge of the lake the new replacement castle has been built, much more in the modern style. All in view is swathed in snow. It is the story initially of a strolling puppeteer, up from Italy, the famed Christian Waldo, an orphan who was raised by gentle loving Italian adoptive parents. He is Ronald Colmanishly handsome: stylish, gentlemanly, capable. He takes up illicit accomodation in the Stollborg, the old castle on the island, and starts to prepare for at least two performances for the huge assembly of young aristos in the new castle. The plot is incredibly, satisfyingly intricate. It involves a local lawyer who also ends up at the Stollborg, the garrison of young local army officers, a young countess of the new castle party who falls for Christian, the ancient, evil and disturbed baronial owner of the whole estate, his crafty servants, and so on and so on...It takes place via hidden doors, concealed and mistaken identity and lots of guessing. The history behind it is one of inheritance, whereby in the past the brother of the evil baron has been murdered, his wife ostracised for her religion and exiled, a child born to her spirited away. What marks this novel out is Sand's dedication to the points of view of the characters: there are many, and they all know some things for sure about others, other things they assume or guess (some of which are wrong and actually attributable to others), while many actions which are taken are hidden or misinterpreted. There is a fantastic establishing scene of great length early on, where Christian attends a ball at the new castle as someone else, in order to gauge his surroundings before he announces his arrival. At this stage the darkness of the plot has not been established and he goes in this way as a piece of fun, causing fascination in some circles, puzzlement about who he is in others, as well as getting his foot forward in understanding the potentially sinister reputation of the place. This long scene, set across a suite of bright rooms in the new castle, with cross-hatched intrigue and romance, would make a superb setpiece in a film of this work, given the exotic locale. Needless to say, Christian discovers through diligent work by the lawyer, hints from old retainers and his own suspicions, that he is much more intimately involved with the historic story than he could ever have imagined. He has come home, unwittingly. With violence, despair and nefarious complicated plots the story slowly unwinds, uncoiling colour after colour in this supposedly monotonal domain. All ends well for him, of course, but not without having gone a scintillating journey. Sand proves yet again what a mistress of prismatic plot she is, when writing at length.

Despoiling Venus by Jack Lindsay (1935)

It's strange that Lindsay's first three novels of ancient Rome are regarded popularly as a trilogy, when this one, his fourth, is just as related to the other three as they are amongst themselves. No answer for that. Anyway, he has now developed a very toothsome prose style, having left off the poetic riffing so prevalent in the previous instalment, where short stabs of sentence were used in an attempt to build up a very immediate semblance of the feel of events. One of the other major pillars of his modus is his insistence on psychology - following an individual's mind through its many changes and tensions as events pull it into and out of shape. Here that is again key, as Marcus Caelius Rufus details the topography of his affair with, and love of, Clodia. It starts with fascination and flirtation, and then develops into strong obsession, all fairly faithfully recorded by Lindsay's passionate, muscular style. Then a point is reached where Marcus is drunkenly forced into an odd action by Clodia, then reacts to having done what he's done in hindsight quite strangely, then teams up with her previously despised brother Clodius in a not quite believable way, and then nervously and unaccountably commits a murder: an extraordinary string of events where Lindsay's insistence on psychology completely undoes him. The hoops through which he has had to jump unbalance his story terribly. What I'm not sure about is how much of this is recorded history; in which case, has he developed a theory about how this series of events unfolded on the one hand, a theory about who these people were and what moved them on the other, and desperately tried to meld the two? If so, the result is a dog's dinner from a psychological point of view. His muscularity and passion keep up, which kept this reader involved, but of course my appreciation of the plot was fatally compromised. At the end, he seems aware of this, and has Marcus break from Clodia and Clodius very finally, as if coming up for air. In his meditation on what happened he puts the whole thing down to the frustration he and the already married Clodia felt at not being able to commit themselves in wedlock. It's a feeble reasoning, and a mismatch for the character of Marcus, and indeed Clodia, as they have been built up. In much that it attempts this book is successful, but ultimately it's a case of a vital element failing.

Commonplace Book

'"...whoever accepts the duties that await him subjects his feet to chains and his heart to bitter trials. It remains to consider whether the man who has found himself confronted by duty at the moment of his greatest strength, and has turned aside to avoid it, can still be happy in his heedlessness and say that he is content with himself."'

from The Snow Man by George Sand (Chapter XX)

Commonplace Book

'"She is so young," says Frederic, deprecatingly. "I should hope that one might be able to mould her ---"

"Mould her!" echoes Paul, derisively. "My dear boy, it would take you all your time. She would comb your hair with a three-legged stool."'

from "Good-bye, Sweetheart!" by Rhoda Broughton (Part I, Chapter X)

Yellow Man by Shusaku Endo (1955)

This is a novella ensconced in the grim enervation of a country nearing its defeat in war. Japan is very short on food in 1945. There is an air of gloomy suspicion everywhere, and an attitude of bitten desperation as people starve and bombing raids increase. This piece is set in a provincial area nearby to an aircraft factory, so the sense of being a target is magnified. Two French Catholic missionary priests have been resident there since the early thirties; a church has been built and a small congregation gathered. The story is related in flashbacks taken from a diary of one of the priests, and from a letter from an uncertain young convert by the name of Chiba. These pieces relate how one of them came to an unexpected disgrace through his lust for an abandoned young woman who was somewhat shunned by society. His initial motive had been to help her but, in common with many of the motivations expressed by the characters here, he seems to suffer a kind of apathetical malaise and stumble on into a lowering fate. It is this fate which seems to be Endo's subject, or more particularly the fact that while the whites see it as 'God's will' and tussle with it endlessly, the Japanese, even the converted ones, cannot quite escape their cultural heritage of seeing it calmly as just the way things are, 'neither judgment nor punishment', and not to be fought. Interestingly, Endo attempts a white view of the Japanese by quite clearly labelling their responses to fate as enigmatic. The story in flashback moves on into the war period with the disgraced priest, Durand, grudgingly allowed to sit behind the door of the church during services. It is noticed that he is ill - consumption has begun its grip on him. Privation begins, and his former missionary partner, Breau, still in office but regarded suspiciously as an enemy alien, occasionally slips him a little money for food. Breau has a gun from his old days in Indochina which he leaves with Durand - private guns are prohibited for enemy aliens, and Breau has leverage over Durand through the help he is giving him. There is a moot point here as to whether Breau intends that Durand may want to use it on himself if his illness gets too bad, or if Breau himself, his lifeline in some ways, is killed or removed. Durand grows steadily weaker, his morality more and more morassed, the surveillance of them both by military police becoming more and more obvious, until the scale tips and fear takes over. Durand breaks into Breau's house and hides the gun clumsily behind some items in a cupboard in his study. In their last meeting Breau makes it obvious to Durand that he knows what he has done, and forgives him as their religion decrees. The police arrive and Breau is taken away. Chiba, the yellow man of the title, ill himself and in a very drab state, meditates over the tragedy of both these white men in a detailed, seared examination of the variance of attitude between the priests and the Japanese, and comes to the conclusion that he can at least see the selfishness and struggle of Durand as understandable, while the 'pure white world' of Breau is supremely distant. The last act is set up with Chiba and his married lover Itoko having a grim liaison in the shack of an old family retainer, making love blindly thinking of Father Breau's arrest. Afterward, he sees someone who looks like Durand behind the hedge, throwing a tiny package into the yard. It is the diary which recounts this story, and which we learnt at the very beginning Chiba was sending on to Breau in prison with his letter. The piercing warning buzzer has been sounding for a while, indicating that a raid is due. Chiba chases after Durand, the bombs drop and Durand is killed. Though the lack of true understanding between the two cultures and the difference of their attitude to life is the point, this piece also feels almost gratuitously uncomprehending, locked in a dance in which all the characters and their fates have a flat inevitability. In contrast, the portrait of the hardbitten want of a country near defeat is perhaps its defining clarity.

The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki (1924)

The advent of this last volume of hitherto uncollected works, pulled together by the author's sister, must have been exciting news for devotees of Saki. I wonder whether the advance notices contained the information that not only would it include some of his last short prose pieces, and two short plays, but as well the nearest thing there was to a major work yet to be published, his very fine three-act play The Watched Pot. The short prose pieces are variable in their wit, but always entertaining. The short plays only allow scope for minor elaboration, but still amuse. The real star of these proceedings is the big play. It is set in a Somersetshire country house with a young gentleman at its head who is extremely eligible. However, Trevor is under the thumb of a fabulously domineering mother. Hortensia, likened by Saki to a 'permeating dust-storm', is running the estate in all but name. She is fiercely Victorian, not to be messed with, and has an iron in every fire. She is a huge supporter of Trevor's uncle Ludovic, who lives with them and is interested in getting into parliament. He isn't prepared to venture it under current circumstances, given that Hortensia, as family matriarch, would attempt to control the whole proceeding. His only hope is that Trevor will marry, meaning that his new wife would be installed in the house, relegating Hortensia to the dower house and relative obscurity. The action of the play takes place over a few days' stay by a group of young women, all of whom, in one way or another, would love that position. There is a fine counter-twist at the end, and along the way the wit sparkles as all of these threads of plot wind round and round one another, with strong personalities, hidden enmities and sneaking strategies all attempting to fox and outdo one another. By way of potential casting, one thing is almost certain - Eileen Atkins would make a superb Hortensia, though it would be unfamiliar to see her defeated in the end. Also included in this volume is a long memoir of her brother by Saki's sister Ethel, which is revealing of their shared, rather wrangled history. They were sent to aunts in Barnstaple when their mother died and their father went back to India. These aunts were huge personalities and often at loggerheads - I strongly suspect the elder one of being the model for Hortensia. The tension and lunacy which this vying between them produced, on top of their Victorian bans on certain freedoms, and their truly comic oddness of character, go a long way toward explaining both Saki's depictions of ogres and dominators and his frustration-induced wit in undermining them. This finale of a magnificent career, published 8 years after the demise of its author, firmly attests his genius.

Commonplace Book

'"Ancestors will happen in the best-intentioned families. Every social sin or failing is excused nowadays under the plea of an artistic temperament or a Sicilian grandmother. As poor Lady Cloutsham once told me, as soon as her children found out that a Hungarian lady of blameless moral character had married into the family somewhere in the reign of the Georges, they considered themselves absolved from any further attempt to distinguish between good and evil - except by way of expressing a general preference for the latter. When her youngest boy was at Winchester he made such unblushing use of the Hungarian strain in his blood that he was known as the Blue Danube. "That," said Lady Cloutsham, "is what comes of letting young children read Debrett and Darwin.""'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Flannelled Fool by TC Worsley (1967)

This is a plainly written early autobiography, remarkable for its discussion of homosexuality in the context of British public schools, both as a student and a teacher. Worsley's father was an extraordinary man, an athlete and womaniser who was one of those never-quite-satisfied types, always pushing for more, or for something different. The astonishing thing, given this personality profile, is that his early life was spent, on the whole most successfully, in the church! His charm is the probable reason; he was seen as an asset for reasons other than those of belief. The effect on his children, and particularly the author, of this testy, niggled, distant person was pretty numbing. Then the inevitable explosion of boredom and wrongdoing occurred and all the family's lives were turned upside down. He left, disgraced in the church, and was not much seen by them again. Worsley also recounts his time at school, echoing his father in terms of athletic prowess, and very slowly, with painful innocence and childishness, discovering his true nature of preferring males sexually. Though the substance of this material is not new, it is still fascinating and welcomely plainly put. He moves on to Cambridge, and thence to a junior mastership at a public school. There he causes a stir among the more traditional types by advocating modern types of tutorship, teaching and house-mastering. Supported by the more liberal members of staff and bolstered by a head who is sufficiently diplomatic to work around all the combatants' foibles, he achieves headway in some issues alongside some notable defeats. This part of the text highlights a minor issue for me, which is one of the suspicion of re-creation of events in re-ordered form to serve the purposes of drama. Thus two masters who are fighting catch one another at the same time trotting up to the head's office to blab, and both do a peculiar choreographed little curlicue and head off sheepishly in different directions. In another instance, the head returns a copy of a disputed Lawrence novel to Worsley on a silver salver with a pithy note attached. All too artfully convenient for my liking - he openly admits to the wish to alter events to make a more dramatically appealing narrative at another point. Otherwise, though, there is an admirable self-critical candour in this book. He's quite happy to admit to feeling profound interest in some of the better-looking or more seemingly needy young men at the school. Some of this will be a little difficult to read for some, but I think most of what he says has a refreshing honesty about it which can only help to make clear how filaments of emotion and longing can reverberate in these hothouse circumstances. So,with its portrait of the young post-war generation discovering the modern in their dislocated world, of the developing consciousness of left-wing politics that was prevalent in the 1920s and 1930s, this narrative also openly depicts taboo subjects with engaging simplicity.

Commonplace Book

'...Then I perceived that all such weakenings are the result of self-pity, the wish to be understood by a world which is interested intensely in a million things but not at all in understanding the bruised hearts of you and me.'

from Despoiling Venus (first part) by Jack Lindsay

Commonplace Book

'"I might break Sparrowby's neck."

"No one could have any reasonable objection to that course; Sparrowby is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"...Government by democracy means government of the mentally unfit by the mentally mediocre..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"...He comes into the category of those who are born to command."

"Possibly. His trouble so far is that he hasn't been able to find anyone who was born to obey him..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"Personally I am a pagan. Christians waste too much time in professing to be miserable sinners, which generally results in their being merely miserable and leaving some of the best sins undone..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot(Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"You ought to marry."

"You think that would improve matters?"

"It would elevate you. Suffering is a great purifier."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act II), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"...We usually set out on these affairs with the intention of devoting a certain amount of patient effort in making the natives reasonably glad at the introduction of mission work; then we find ourselves involved in a much bigger effort to make them reasonably sorry for having killed the missionaries."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act I), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"I've lost my mother."

"Do I understand you to mean that your mother is dead?"

"Oh, nothing so hackneyed. I don't think my mother will ever die as long as she can get credit. She was a Whortleford, you know, and the Whortleford's never waste anything..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act I), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'...One can never repeat too often to oneself that it is one's most simple-hearted impulses which are likely to get one a bad name.'

from Despoiling Venus by Jack Lindsay (first part)

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo (1831)

The main concerns here are repetition and romance. By repetition I mean that some of the central relationships go through tests over and over again; same motivation, same result, nothing learnt. By romance I mean that tendency toward blushing inaccuracy - events often occur at the height of possibility: Paris squares are so littered with dead that they are impassable (even though a remnant escape from within them, a soldiery invade them to counter), blood flows in rivers, corpses are piled up, injuries so sickeningly significant etc etc in such a way that one would swear, if Hugo were being attentive to actuality, there could be no more action. Yet somehow, an impassable square is traversed, the invaders don't get blood-soaked trouser-cuffs, and the horrifically injured resurrect magnificently and fight on very effectually. Now, I'm not saying that some tendency of this kind isn't par for the course in adventuresome nineteenth century fiction; it's just that Hugo takes it to a completely new level, and it does get a bit tiresome nearing the end. The repetition is also patience-testing. Quite how many experiences of brick-wall-hitting confrontation Claude Frollo would have needed to finally understand that Esmeralda didn't want him, given that he had stayed alive, is anyone's guess. I guess it's a mercy for him, and us, that he dies. I certainly don't think I could have abided yet another puzzled, insight-lacking attempt to convince her. I won't retail a great deal about the plot, but I think it's worthwhile to comment on what seems to be one of Hugo's main concerns - what Paris was like in the late fifteenth century. I'm guessing that this is a part of this book which would get a lot of negative attention; we get a lot on architecture, layout, social systems within those, which is unapologetically essayesque in construction, and which I didn't mind on the whole. The colour is phenomenal and the action is dramatic; both are over-egged. A reasonably enjoyable, if somewhat frustrating, hyperbolic panorama.

Commonplace Book

'"Hortensia under existing circumstances is like a permeating dust-storm, which you can't possibly get away from or pretend that it's not there. Living with a comparatively modest establishment at the dower-house, she would be merely like Town in August or the bite of a camel - a painful experience which may be avoided with a little ordinary prudence."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act I), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"...The theory that Hell is in serious need of population is a thing of the past. Why, to take your family alone, there are any number of Bidderdales on our books, as you may discover later. It is part of our system that relations should be encouraged to live together down here. From observations made in another world we have abundant evidence that it promotes the ends we have in view..."'

from a piece entitled The Infernal Parliament, in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'...There must, by the way, be one considerable advantage in being a child in a war-zone village; no one can attempt to teach it tidiness. The wearisome maxim, "A place for everything and everything in its proper place" can never be insisted on when a considerable part of the roof is lying in the backyard, when a bedstead from a neighbour's demolished bed-room is half-buried in the beetroot pile, and the chickens are roosting in a derelict meat safe because a shell has removed the top and sides and front of the chicken-house.'

from a piece entitled The Square Egg, in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

The Art of the Publisher by Roberto Calasso (2013)

This little book both irritated and inspired me. It is a collection of essays and short non-fictional bits by a noted author whom I've not read before. Calasso is also the publisher of Adelphi Edizioni, one of Italy's major literary publishers. I have to mention here that I am also a publisher on a very small scale, so I can be expected to have an inherent interest in this meditation, and do. Calasso is both perspicacious and woolly. He will match a splendidly pithy statement on the world's current dumbness to considerations of quality, for example, with an artfully vague portrait of a world swathed in zeroes and ones, boggled with them, if our current interest in technology continues. He'll match a fascinating comment on the relatability of some concept, in intriguing fact many concepts, in the philosophical framework behind publishing and books, to a precept which is represented in the Vedic texts to a seemingly inanely incorrect statement that the notion of a series is an obsolete one, or that it's shocking that the page is "a neutral and standard element". The constant counter-reminder in reading this that the author has enormous reach, and a contrasting startling limitation, can be a bit lurchy and stomach-churning. I still can't quite make out how he happily combines both tendencies; perhaps he's just more honest than most of us in fully explicating his contradictions? I'm not convinced he knows them to be that. Anyway, I can't say that I wasn't entertained. Perhaps the only other thing which needs mentioning is that some of the negative elements derive from what I would loosely call self-absorption; his natural Adelphi-centredness / Italy-centredness means that exceptions or contrary examples which might have provided balance were not cased. An intriguing, niggling, very personal set of studies on the current state of play in a neglected art.

Commonplace Book

'...There are about seven men in every hut who are expecting important letters that never seem to reach them, and there are always individuals who glower at you and tell you that they invariably get a letter from home on Tuesday; by Thursday they are firmly convinced that you have set all their relations against them. There was one young man in Hut 3 whose reproachful looks got on my nerves to such an extent that at last I wrote him a letter from his Aunt Agatha, a letter full of womanly counsel and patient reproof, such as any aunt might have been proud to write. Possibly he hasn't got an Aunt Agatha; anyhow the reproachful look has been replaced by a puzzled frown.'

from a piece by Saki in The Bystander, dated June 1915, quoted in the section entitled Biography of Saki by Ethel M Munro, in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

In Subjection by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (1906)

There are two main considerations in appreciating this novel. One is its look to a reader of this era - its depiction of the place of a woman in marriage and the relations between the sexes is not ours. The other is more the province of the connoisseur - it's about the change coming over Fowler as her career progresses. I've said before that by modern standards Fowler is frankly ludicrous: her idea, which began with her magnificently successful first novel, was that a novel with a strong Christian element could also be engagingly witty. Her works, on the whole, are also something else which modern readers find enormously unpalatable - they're comfortable, and very assured in their own rightness of attitude. This attitude is an echo of the Establishment feeling of her times in its profound conservatism; something interpretable today as Empire smugness. The irritation caused by that tends to obscure what she actually achieves, which is a brilliant even flow, and much pretension-pricking humour - she's not afraid of sending up stuffy nonsense (as seen from the perspective of her times), and in the process gives us a taste of her independence of mind. This book takes the story of the main character of Concerning Isabel Carnaby, that first novel, forward a good few years. Isabel is married happily to Paul Seaton, aware of his deficiencies, but loving him absolutely. This is an interesting trope in fiction of this time, and echoes the tolerance displayed by Edith Ottley toward her husband Bruce in Ada Leverson's trilogy, though Paul is nowhere near as mortifyingly stupid as Bruce Ottley. Isabel and Paul welcome a 'project' from India, a wealthy young Anglo-Indian woman, Fabia Vipart, who needs to find a husband. She's not a cipher, rather a headstrong character, easily bored by British reserve. Fowler's treatment of Fabia illustrates her middle-position in terms of enlightenment on racial subjects. Fabia's breadth of character testifies well, her typification as elemental and slightly godless not so well. We follow as Isabel and Fabia cross swords, and forge into new arrangements and liaisons, surrounded by a cast of some humour. There is an inexplicable disappearance, an initially disastrous marriage, an unexpected impersonation, and a revelation, when the disappearance is solved, which stretches credibility enormously. There is also much philosophic talk about the right subjection of the female in the marriage contract, with Fowler saying that the compensations as she sees them are more than adequate for the loss of personal power. But Fowler's sang froid keeps the nonsense humming. In thinking about this book, one other conclusion is inescapable: it is that the author's epigrammatic power is waning - it's impossible not to feel, I think, how "comfy" she is becoming, and how much less we are treated to caustic and sharp observations, compared to prior works. They are not absent - they are diminished. Despite her disadvantages, and the lack of hope for modern readers to bother with her, I would wish her the regaining of that cut- through.

Commonplace Book

'...For my part, I know but two things, and those two things make a simple precept: to love mankind and pay no heed to its prejudices...'

from The Snow Man by George Sand (Chapter VI)

Commonplace Book

'...it is the things which we cannot do that we are called upon to do in this life - not the things which we can. How often we notice that sickness is sent to those who lay unnecessary stress upon the advantage of bodily health, and poverty to those who set undue store upon the possession of riches; while such as exaggerate the happiness of human companionship are doomed to a solitary life, and such as crave inordinately for fame and distinction are condemned to ineffective obscurity.'

from In Subjection by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter XXIV)

Commonplace Book

'...He stirred up in the depths of his heart all his hatred, all his malevolence; and he discovered with the cool eye of a physician examining a patient, that this hatred, this malevolence, were but vitiated love[;] that love, the source of every virtue in man, turned to horrible things in the heart of a priest, and that a man constituted as he was, by making himself a priest, made himself a demon. Then he laughed frightfully, and suddenly became pale again, in contemplating the worst side of his fatal passion, of that corroding, venomous, malignant, implacable love, which had driven one of them to the gibbet, the other to hell-fire; her to condemnation, him to damnation.'

from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo (Chapter 43)

The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson (2011)

This book is two-directional. On the one hand it convinces of being a worthy aphoristic successor to writings of philosophic contemplation in the wild like those of Thoreau. On the other one wishes that Tesson came to this a little later in his life: he's very fond of also philosophizing about how a particular type of cigar makes a particular philosophic impact at a certain time, compared to some other type; or drinking himself into oblivion tens of times with various forms of vodka, and seeing that as somehow illuminating, or significant. Near the end he says he knows he'll be back - given how good this is when the above are not being compassed, I can't wait. I want creaking-middle-aged Tesson to not be able to start, or have an interest in, playing these young man's games, leaving his focus far less dimmed, getting further into the colours with which the wilderness floods him (and reflecting on the struggle for physical survival in those conditions, given that he may feel the running-down of his body's energies?) This takes the form of a journal of six months' stay in a cabin on the shores of Lake Baikal, from winter to summer. So we start out in a white world, storing supplies in the ice, treating tiny birds whose appearance in those conditions seems a miracle to titbits of food, forging long journeys out on the surface of the silent lake (except for the giant creaks of ice-masses moving), traversing passes carefully in the mountains behind to seek the lie of the land. This is my favourite part of the book, where he is ensconced for long periods in his cabin, learning to look through the window for hours, watching small changes of snowfall and rare animal movement, reading for days at a time, cooking his supplies scrimpingly. He scrapes a hole in the ice to fish, and so opens up a fresher taste-horizon. Then, as the thaw approaches, the world opens up a little. Wet storms, rather than icy ones, start their ravage. The ducks multiply, as migratories fly in. Bears make more of an appearance, as do seals. And then the insects go crazy - the air is full of them in mass hatchings; mosquitoes particularly. Spotted through this natural history are visits from locals, mainly Russian cabin-holders, or rangers for the national park. Suddenly Tesson's musings take on a different aspect, as their tough personalities and obsessional bugbears make themselves felt. These are a good counterpoint to the more gentle swing of natural meditation, and provide him with food for the more social and political points that need making. I came to the conclusion, near the end, that when all is said and done, his very quotable, very apposite writing led me towards thinking this a brilliant twenty-first century instalment in the mode of Thoreau. But I think that, while this is the case, it is the chance to visit Baikal with him, and enter that spirit of cold wildness, which is my more personal joy.

Commonplace Book

'Cabin life is like sandpaper. It scours the soul, lays bare one's being, ensavages the mind, and reclaims the body for the wild, but deep in the heart it unfolds the most sensitive nerve endings. The hermit gains in gentleness what he loses in civility...'

from The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson (July 16)

Commonplace Book

'Respecting insects brings joy. Taking a passionate interest in the infinitely small helps guard against an infinitely mediocre life. For the insect lover, a puddle can be Lake Tanganyika, a pile of sand takes on the aspect of the Taklamakan Desert, and a patch of brush becomes the Mato Grosso Plateau. Entering the geography of the insect gives grass the dimensions of a world.'

from The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson (July 5)

Commonplace Book

'...Misfortune casts off ties. Happiness is an obstacle to serenity. When I was happy, I was afraid of unhappiness.'

from The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson (June 23)

Commonplace Book

'"Modern complaints always end in itis," continued Mrs Gaythorne. "I disapprove of diseases that end in itis."

"Still, you must admit they might end in something worse," said Carr.

Mrs Gaythorne majestically ignored such ill-timed levity. "When I was young, the complaints that people suffered from did not end in itis, they ended in ache; and nobody talked about them."'

from In Subjection by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter VIII)

Commonplace Book

'Paul smiled fondly at his wife. "Even if you succeed in convincing us that every man is a coward, nothing will induce me to accept the dogma that every woman is a shrew."

"Now for my part," remarked Greenstreet, "I considered that by far the more plausible of the two tenets of Mrs Seaton's creed."

Isabel laughed gaily. "Therefore you must see that when a woman behaves like an angel it is all the more credit to her."

"Doubtless it would be; but personally I have never come across an instance," replied the author.'

from In Subjection by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter VI)

Commonplace Book

'At eight in the morning, a bear of well over six hundred pounds comes prowling around the sandy embankment to the south of the small clearing at Elohin. Volodya has filled some cans with seal fat to attract the animals, and now he murmurs, "Ah, too bad it isn't about a third of a mile to the north, outside the preserve, we could shoot it." I feel suddenly numb with despair. We ought to have a little bit of our neocortex removed at birth to neutralise our desire to destroy the world. Man is a capricious child who believes the Earth is his bedroom, the animals his toys, the trees his baby rattles.'

from The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson (May 9)

Rhoda Fleming by George Meredith (1865)

This seems to me to be what is commonly called a 'holiday novel'. For a start, it's quite a bit shorter than its recent predecessors. A holiday novel, though, like Orlando for example, is usually lighter in tone, contains sparks of silly fun or a playful attitude to concepts. Meredith here turns this idea on its head. As his usual mode is one of sophisticated comedy, his holiday comes in not being comic to any great extent; a holiday in tragedy. It's the story of two sisters from a farm, one of whom, Dahlia, falls for a well-to-do scion of a local family, the nephew of the squire at the big house. Edward Blancove seems a typical gent of his times and enjoys her, making all sorts of promises never intending to keep them. Dahlia travels to London to be maid to a relative, and lets her family know that she is married to Edward. This is not quite the case. Promises have been made but the actuality falls short. As she realises that Edward hasn't meant what he's said, she begins a withering, a falling away of spirit. Trying desperately to keep the reality from her gullible and simple farmer father, and all the rest of her family, she secretes herself away when Edward plans to leave for the continent having tired of her. Meanwhile her sister, the eponymous Rhoda, who is a more forthright and strong character, is frantic with worry at her peculiar evasions and silences. Then follows a complicated search for her: tussles between the farm manager, Robert, who is in love with Rhoda (she's not completely sure about him), and various members of the Blancove set, some of whom know a lot about what's going on, and who have intricate motivations of their own; fights between Robert and Edward, and Robert and Nic Sedgett, a nasty-piece-of-work local who is hired by Edward to give Robert a drubbing for interfering, and who also has plans of his own to get ahead by manipulation of all and sundry. Money also plays a part: it is determined by Rhoda, and then her father, once they know the truth, that Dahlia must marry to save her reputation. Sedgett offers himself for a price (Rhoda hasn't been party to his prior involvement), and she accepts, thinking that Sedgett's plan of emigrating will help Dahlia to avoid scrutiny, and he seems like a nice man. Their uncle, one of Meredith's few comic concessions, who is a long-term bank clerk, has finally succumbed and robbed his employers, and she catches him just at the right moment to unknowingly extricate some of the funds for Sedgett's payment. Dahlia is horrified instinctually by Sedgett, and still believes in Edward, but is so spiritually weakened by her disastrous situation that she limply agrees to go through with it. Sedgett reveals his true colours to Rhoda after the wedding in his impatience for the money and sudden change to a nasty tone. Dahlia collapses in horror at what she's done, pining for Edward, and needs to be taken away to the farm to recuperate. Meanwhile Edward has had a change of heart. His time away has acted as a tonic on his spirits, and he realises that he must right things with Dahlia and make her his wife in actuality. He is seen by the Flemings and their associates as the impersonation of evil, and his letters are stopped before they reach Dahlia. All comes to a head at the farm, with a recuperating Dahlia, a visit from Sedgett demanding to take his wife to the ship for emigration, a letter from Blancove who has arrived at the hall nearby, and a huge realisation on the part of Rhoda and her father that they haven't helped but rather made things worse. Coupled with that is the recognition that Edward has changed and wants to make things right. Initially, though, the stress of Sedgett's visit, strongly supported by their unaware father claiming that Dahlia should think herself lucky she has a saviour in her husband, pushes her over the edge. She takes a draught of something noxious while locked away in her room, and is only narrowly saved. The truth comes out that Sedgett is already married, thus nullifying his marriage to Dahlia, and Edward is forgiven. Sedgett scarpers. Robert and Rhoda have been through so much of this tragedy together, both in sympathy and at loggerheads, that their love is confirmed, and the scene is set for a double wedding. However, the last chapter reveals that Dahlia has endured so long in such a spiritual dampening that the idea of love is now beyond her - she dedicates her life to others, particularly "poor girls", in atonement for her original mistake. This entire piece is strung in Meredith's usual way, at high tension, and with great subtlety, where tiny developments of character's minds count for a lot. It may be a holiday for him, but it's still a fantastic trip for the reader.

Commonplace Book

'"I shall be glad of my tea," remarked Mrs Gaythorne, when the commotion had subsided; "I am thirsty." She spoke as impressively as if she were announcing some great scientific truth. "I have just been taking the chair at the annual meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Church Hymnal among the inhabitants of the Antarctic Circle, and am now on my way to preside at the annual meeting of the Anti-Tomato League, for the suppression of tomatoes as an article of diet; and consequently I require a little refreshment."

Mrs Gaythorne was guilty of one human frailty, namely, an inordinate affection for presiding over public meetings. On this matter she knew neither temperance nor restraint. As some women take stimulants and others sedatives, so Mrs Gaythorne took chairs.'

from In Subjection by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter IV)

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'...This would have been a good spot for Paradise: infallible splendour, no serpents, impossible to live naked, and too many things to do to have any time left over for inventing a god.'

from The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson (May 2)

Commonplace Book

'...The anarchist tinkers with his bombs in saloons, while the hacker arms his programs at his computer, but both need the society they deplore and target for destruction - which is their raison d'etre.

The hermit stays off to one side in polite refusal, like a guest who, with a simple gesture, declines the profferred dish. If society disappeared, the hermit would go on living as a hermit. Those in revolt against society, however, would find themselves technically out of work. The hermit does not oppose, but espouses a way of life. He seeks not to denounce a lie, but to find a truth...'

from The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson (April 17)

Some Account of My Cousin Nicholas by Richard Barham (1841)

This was originally published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1834. It is proof, if any is needed, that Barham was far more than a one trick pony, and that, though The Ingoldsby Legends were a staple of Victorian literature, and are the only thing for which he is now remembered (if our current minimal interest can be called remembrance), he was capable of much more. This harks back to the eighteenth century in its farcical, blustering satiric swipe. It is the story of a practical joker, and exactly what whirlwinds his activities reap. Nicholas Bullwinkle is the son of a minor landed gentleman, Sir Oliver Bullwinkle, who, in true Ingoldsbyish fashion, has confounded and disturbed ideas of his family's importance, for which he relates 'family history' which is highly dubious but heartily and comically believed. The story of Nicholas' escapades, as evidenced by the title, is related by his cousin Charles Stafford, each jape overreaching its predecessor, steadily losing taste and proportion as time goes on. Nicholas is not only a joker, he's also a reprobate, running up gambling and other bills all over the land, and a cad, with queues of the disgruntled and offended ever expanding. Almost all of this we see at second hand through Charles' eyes, which adds to the fun as we discover exactly where in the nefarious web Nicholas' impositions apply along with him. His final joke is catastrophic, but only after a long puzzlement, and much digging by Charles and Sir Oliver. Having felt his own version of love for a young heiress to whom Charles is about to become engaged, he constructs a vast web of imposture, tale-telling, evasion, financial fiddling and nonsense to bamboozle them, and tries incognito to grab the gorgeous Amelia from under Charles' nose. Charles' reputation ends up in tatters and Amelia's father despises him. Through a few different agencies, but mainly his own failings, Nicholas is finally exposed - and then commits what will become his fatal mistake: he advertises that his father has died in a less rigorous newspaper. He has, to all extents and purposes, succeeded to the baronetcy, and tradesmen and fellow gamblers all over will extend him any credit he desires, at least for a while! He doesn't think too far ahead, and is considering "some time away on the continent", to let the heat die down. Hiding out at the family country house, in a final confrontation in the dark of his father's study, he is unknowingly surprised by him trying to steal some cash from his bureau; Sir Oliver shoots him as a burglar, and then is horrified as his identity is revealed. A gloriously funny and lackadaisical novel which updates the 'evil' characters of writers like Smollett to a new century. My edition also includes a classic supernatural tale, The Trance, which covers the alchemical summoning-up of the soul of a loved one in a stylish and serious way.

Commonplace Book

'Then he perceived in dimmest fashion that possibly a chance had come to ripeness, withered, and fallen, within the late scoffing seconds of time. Enraged at his blindness, and careful, lest he had wrongly guessed, not to expose his regret (the man was a lover), he remarked, both truthfully and hypocritically: "I've always thought you were born to be a lady." (You had that ambition, young madam.)

She answered: "That's what I don't understand." (Your saying it, O my friend!)

"You will soon take to your new duties." (You have small objection to them even now.)

"Yes, or my life won't be worth much." (Know, that you are driving me to it.)

"And I wish you happiness, Rhoda." (You are madly imperilling the prospect thereof.)

To each of them the second meaning stood shadowy behind the utterances. And further:

"Thank you, Robert." (I shall have to thank you for the issue.)

"Now it's time to part." (Do you not see that there's a danger for me in remaining?)

"Good night." (Behold, I am submissive.)

"Good night, Rhoda." (You were the first to give the signal of parting.)

"Good night." (I am simply submissive.)

"Why not my name? Are you hurt with me?"

Rhoda choked. The indirectness of speech had been a shelter to her, permitting her to hint at more than she dared clothe in words.

Again the delicious dusky rose glowed beneath his eyes.

But he had put his hand out to her, and she had not taken it.

"What have I done to offend you? I really don't know, Rhoda."

"Nothing." The flower had died.'

from Rhoda Fleming by George Meredith (Chapter XLIII)

Commonplace Book

'...Non-action sharpens all perception. The hermit absorbs the universe, paying acute attention to its smallest manifestation. Sitting cross-legged beneath an almond tree, he hears the shock of a petal striking the surface of a pond. He sees the edge of a feather vibrate as a crane flies overhead. He feels the perfume of a happy flower rise from the blossom to envelop the evening.'

from The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson (March 28)

Commonplace Book

'...Master Gammon was not one who took the ordinary plunge into the gulf of sleep, and it was required to shake him and to bellow at him - to administer at once earthquake and thunder - before his lizard eyelids would lift over the great, old-world eyes; upon which, like a clayey monster refusing to be informed with heavenly fire, he rolled to the right of his chair and to the left, and pitched forward, and insisted upon being inanimate...'

from Rhoda Fleming by George Meredith (Chapter XLII)

Commonplace Book

'...Beer or the local dive, the alcohol of the poor. Beer is a sedative that anesthetizes thought and dissolves all spirit of revolt. With the beer hose, totalitarian states extinguish all of society's fires...'

from The Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson (March 2)