Sunday, November 27, 2016

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.

Thursday, November 24, 2016

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.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

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)

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

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)