Monday, December 31, 2018

Commonplace Book

'The humility of the female passed away with the Victorian era; a modern woman could no more write Mrs. Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese than she could emulate Ellen in The Wide, Wide World. But the sisterhood of women has a far stronger claim upon her than it had upon her grandmothers; and she would do far more for her fellow-women than her great-aunts would ever have done. The proverbial spite of women against each other is a played-out bogey, as dead as many another doornail of the past. Nowadays women admire one another's beauty and talents quite as much as men admire them, and are quite as ready to do justice to and appreciate the same. Moreover, there has sprung up a spirit of camaraderie and loyalty among womankind which was almost unknown in past generations. Except in particular and exceptional instances, women have ceased to be rivals and have become friends.'

from Miss Fallowfield's Fortune by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter XII)

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Commonplace Book

'...one of the results of great wealth - as of great poverty - is the early death of romance. The woman who is so poor that nobody wants to marry her, and the woman who is so rich that everybody wants to marry her, are both too clear-sighted to be taken in by Love's assumption of blindness. They know well enough that the bandage across the eyes of the so-called "little blind god" is all humbug; and that he can see as far into a bank-book as most people, and take aim accordingly...'

from Miss Fallowfield's Fortune by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter II)

Commonplace Book

'...It is a generally accepted though utterly erroneous article of belief that melancholy people have deeper feelings than cheerful people; and that those who are endowed with a sense of humour have of necessity therefore been denied a sense of pathos. A woman has only to wear a sad expression of countenance and talk in a whining voice, and people give her credit for unfathomable depths of sentiment and emotion; while her sister who goes smiling through life and irradiates cheerfulness wherever she may be, is credited with utter want of heart...'

from Miss Fallowfield's Fortune by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (Chapter II)

Sunday, December 9, 2018

The Ingoldsby Legends, First Series by Richard Barham (1840)

I think this strange conglomeration of prose and poetry was first featured individually in Bentley's Miscellany in the late 1830s. They purport, quite lazily, to be snippets of family history saved by the Ingoldsbys at their manor, Tappington (pronounced Tapton, of course) Everard in Kent. I say lazily because none but a fool would think them other than satire. Their intent is to entertain, with stories in verse and prose of vengeful ghosts, foul murder plots, family feuds and mayhem in a welter of different historical periods in Britain, all involving some member or another of the fictitious Ingoldsby family. And of course one of the threads joining them is humour, often scabrous and wild, Barham's specialty. There is an odd point at play here where we are in the twenty-first century: Barham's family actually owned a tiny little old manor called Tappington Hall near Denton in Kent, which seemingly now markets itself as the original of Tappington Everard in these pieces. But it's pretty clear from Barham's descriptions that he intended a much grander sort of house - and there is one very close by, Broome Park. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between. This first series of roistering, much more eighteenth century-feeling pieces than nineteenth, was followed by another in 1843 and Barham's death in 1845. Then a third series was cobbled together and published in 1847. They continued to be extraordinarily successful throughout the rest of the century, only to subside into near nothingness in the following, and on into ours. Not a lot else to say. Some are joyful and splendidly silly, some just miss the mark. And on the whole I prefer his two prior sustained narrative efforts, the pseudonymous Baldwin, and the cracking Some Account of My Cousin Nicholas, but, overall, no complaints.

Commonplace Book

'"Dignity and decency depend up to a point on money," said Clement.

"Indeed that is true," said Dudley. "You have only to go round the cottages. It seems absurd to say that money is sordid, when you see the things that really are."'

from A Family and a Fortune by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter 4)

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Commonplace Book

'"How did you hear?" said Clement.

"Well, well, little birds flit about the chairs of people who are tied to them. And it would be rather a sad thing if they did not, as they would be the last to hear so much, when it seems that they ought to be the first. So the news came, I won't say how."

"I will do so," said her father. "It came through a tradesman's lad, who comes to our house after yours, or who comes to it on the way to yours and to-day chose to come again on his way back."

"So Jellamy was the bird," said Mark.

"Well, anyhow we heard," said his aunt. 'But I should have liked to hear it from one of you, coming running down to tell me."

"We should have been down in a few minutes," said Justine.

"Would you, dear? But the minutes passed and nobody came. And so we came up to hear for ourselves."

"A bold step for anyone tied to a chair," muttered Clement.'

from A Family and a Fortune by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter 4)

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Commonplace Book

'"...When I am a middle-aged woman and Mark is supreme in the home, I shall like nothing better than to have perhaps this very little place, and reign in it, and do all I can for people outside. Now does not that strike you all as an alluring prospect?"

"Yes, it sounds very nice," said Miss Griffin, who thought that it did, and who was perhaps the natural person to reply, as the arrangement involved the death of most of the other people present.'

from A Family and a Fortune by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter 2)

Sunday, November 18, 2018

Commonplace Book

'"It is a pity we have to be human," said Dudley. "Human failings, human vanity, human weakness! We don't hear the word applied to anything good. Even human nature seems a derogatory term. It is simply an excuse for everything."

"Human charity, human kindness," said Justine. "I think that gives us to think, Uncle."

"There are great examples of human nobility and sacrifice," said Blanche. "Mr. Penrose must know many of them."

"People are always so pleased about people's sacrifice," said Dudley; "I mean other people's. It is not very nice of them. I suppose it is only human."

from A Family and a Fortune by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter 1)

Monday, November 12, 2018

Special Friendships by Roger Peyrefitte (1945)

The overriding trope of this piece is ambiguity. But not so much of what is happening, as of what the characters are thinking and imagining about themselves. It is set I think in the 1920s in hyper-Catholic France. A fourteen year-old young minor aristo Georges de Sarre is sent for the first time beyond his local lycee to a religious boarding school. He is egotistical and a manipulator, but not so much so that it's revolting, rather fairly typical of clever ones of his age. He is initially fascinated by another boy of his own age whose cot is nearby his in the dormitory, Lucien, who has 'a great friend' also in their form, Andre. They have what was probably reasonably common at that age in those circumstances - a very strong bond amounting to a romantic connection, where the question of sexuality is probably waiting in the wings without being acted upon. Georges becomes jealous of Andre's connection with Lucien and, at a particular juncture, his manipulativeness wins out. He secretly intrigues for Andre to be 'found out' and expelled so as to have Lucien to himself - he wants what they already have. But once this occurs it seems like Lucien, having narrowly avoided the axe himself, escapes into the overwhelming religiosity of the school, and becomes penitent and a huge observer of all rites and rituals. He doesn't know it's Georges who is responsible for Andre's leaving. Georges turns his attention to a younger boy he's seen round about who is between a year and two years younger, Alexander, who becomes the absolute image of beauty and wonder to him, eclipsing his interest in Lucien by a long way. Lucien's intense passion for religion breaks and Georges is relieved to have someone to talk to again about these issues, while Lucien boldly looks forward to holidays and catching up with Andre. Georges' feeling for Alexander is no doubt teased by how difficult it is to see him alone. They have to keep excusing themselves from class at times when no-one would notice - and Lucien tells Georges of places like the rarely visited school conservatory which he and Andre had frequented. Georges and Alexander's connection is topped with an exchange of blood 'ceremony' which ties them in their minds forever. They occasionally kiss, but there's no sense of anything else specifically on their minds; there is, though, a strong undercurrent of very low-key eroticism. Things reach an apotheosis in a jaunt to the river and naked bathing, where Georges and Alexander steal off to a separate area and partake of a kind of enchanted trance of sharing and togetherness. Coming into this is a priest new to the school who, it emerges, has a fascination with all these goings on between the boys and a nose for hunting these situations out. Again, actual sexuality is extremely low in the mix, pretty well non-existent except for its background glow, and the priest's entire language when talking confidentially to the boys is of maintaining purity and goodness. This is despite his wanting them to exchange pyjamas and tell him all, so as to maintain their innocence! This priest's ambiguity of intention is a perfect emblem of the mixedness of the thinking of this piece - and along with Georges' more childlike manipulations, forms the core of what I think Peyrefitte is after. He enunciates the changeability of the boys' directions of thought, and the priests' orchestrations of the dangerous mix of religiosity and earthly passion in a profoundly believable way. The self-delusion of us all is pictured here in these twistings, ignorings and posturings - the deft changes of emphasis depending on who is one's interlocutor. Of course, in the light of recent revelations about the Catholic church and many others of equivalent overt probity and covert guilt, this narrative takes on significance to a phenomenal level. The confusions and choreography which are 'available' in these circumstances as a blind to others and the self are something to behold. Georges again employs his canniness to catch this priest out and get him removed, only to discover in one of the most established fathers a new nemesis - when he and Alexander are caught out bunking off, smoking and rolling about in the hay in a dilapidated gardener's hut on a visit to a local chateau. This proves, through this new priest's acuteness, to be the potential end of their love. Prevented from seeing each other really at all, Alexander naively proposes that they run away together in the holidays in a note. Georges agrees initially, but soon realises that it's a hopeless task, practically speaking. The priest is Georges' equal in manipulation, and manages to elicit from him a promise to return all of Alexander's notes in exchange for shutting up about the affair. He says that this is to preserve Alexander's as yet unsullied boyhood - they will, through this threat, ensure both silence and the younger boy's saving. The holidays finally come, the boys return home, and Georges, having fought a lot with himself over it, decides that he must return at least some of Alexander's notes, or be exposed. On doing so, he writes Alexander a letter to say that it's only a setback on their path, and that he had to do it, and reiterates his undying love. Unfortunately, the priest shows Alexander Georges' returned notes immediately, before Georges has even posted his letter of explanation. A couple of hours later Alexander is found dead in his father's study, having taken poison. Georges learns of it the following day in the paper and is devastated. The priest visits him, also to some extent heartbroken, explaining that he had hoped Alexander would become a man of the cloth himself. There is the slightest indication given by Peyrefitte that there was some sort of special interest in Alexander from this priest, a tincture of romance, but it's very hazy and undeveloped, which is further fulfilment of the blurred purposes at work here. It ends with Georges going through many tides of emotion in one day as he attends a mass with the priest and then chaperones him to the railway station and returns home afterward. These emotions range from deciding that he too will kill himself, to collapsing under the weight of established religion and purging himself of evil, and finally to deciding that he will take on Alexander's soul as part of his own and thenceforth do everything as two people in one, so that Alexander can keep on living through him. This novel does I'm sure cause consternation because of its subject matter, but I think it's a brilliant portrayal of the cloudy territory where roads of doubt and certainty, truth and lies intersect.

Monday, October 15, 2018

Christopher and Columbus by 'Elizabeth' (1919)

This book spans the ending of the First World War for the author, being set in 1916 and published in 1919. It is the first of her titles to have the war as a proper background, though its oncoming provided the ending of the novel before this one, the pseudonymous Christine. In this, Anglo-German twins Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas, having lost their German father some time ago and their English mother quite recently, are seen as 'too hot' by their uncle in England and sent packing to friends in America. Both girls are typically German in some senses, quite blonde and Aryan, rolling their rs, but with a significant amount of confusion caused by their semi-Englishness at the same time. Anna-Rose is slightly older, shorter, more honey-coloured and curly, and quite outwardly determined. Anna-Felicitas is the younger, taller and wispy, paler, and outwardly more reserved and wandery. On the liner on the way over the Atlantic they meet the American inventor of a patent teapot which doesn't dribble, and has made him millions. Edward Twist is dowdy, motherish, thirty-five and plain, and very warm-hearted toward these two, whom he regards as children, even though they are seventeen. The author sets the scene of potential danger well with reference to submarines and convoys and possible torpedoing; the remainder of the war-referencing is in the nature of interpersonal attitudes toward Germanness displayed by various characters. Once in New York, the plan is to part with Mr Twist, thank him for the constant assisting attention he has paid them on the journey, and meet up with their uncle's friends who have been forewarned they're coming. Unfortunately, they arrive to find that their welcome has been interrupted by the wife of the couple leaving home permanently with another man. It simply won't do for two young women to be domiciled with the husband alone, who is anyway beside himself and barely concentrating on them. They think of Mr Twist, who has been their sole go-to man, and decide that his family must be as warm as he is and will no doubt help them in their desperate state. When they reach his house in New England, the reception is decidedly cool. Mr Twist is flabbergasted to see them, his sister is shocked, and the very cold and domineering mother he hasn't told them about (or her about them) is suspicious and disgusted by what she sees as his defection from loyalty to her alone. A scene ensues, where Mr Twist reaches the point of no return with his family, and a realisation that these girls hold out to him a sense of love and care which is completely absent at home and a sense that the light, vibrant living of life which up until now he hasn't truly realised was what he wanted has become possible. He abjures the old to embrace the new, and agrees to chaperone them to California to go to their 'second option', a couple there who have agreed to house the girls on holidays by arrangement with their uncle. Once at their destination, called Acapulco but not seemingly in Mexico, rather California, they discover that the husband of the couple has just died and it would be insensitive to intrude. This proves a springboard for Mr Twist to provide for the girls on a more permanent basis. He puts into action a plan to purchase and renovate a small pretty cottage in the hills above the town and make it into a cafe and small inn whose profits are to go to the Red Cross for war work. But while all this takes place, the usual fascination which surrounds the girls starts to take hold. Are they in some sort of naughty relationhsip with Mr Twist? What nationality are they? They'd better not be German! Is everything entirely above board? Nice society starts to frown. Mr Twist thinks he'll make them his wards officially and then gets frightened off. Questions are avoided. Rumours spread. But all the while the twins are completely oblivious; fascinated by these odd Americans, they are puzzled by references in careful but nosy conversations to things they don't understand. It is this attitude of non-understanding and over-direct response which is at the core of the comedy here - it has something in common with her earlier masterpiece The Caravaners, but is less hefty satire, much sweeter in tone. In the end, love intervenes in the form of a recovering British soldier, who falls head over heels for Anna-Felicitas. Society has stayed away, in increasing wariness, from their newly opened cafe, and the only customers have been the despised local Germans (sensing the girls' origin) and oddballs like the soldier, John Elliott. Mr Twist has started to see the cafe as a mistake and a millstone around their necks. When Anna-Rose realises that her sister will become English when she marries Elliott and will leave her alone, as she has never been before - they have clung seizingly together since losing their parents - she breaks down. Mr Twist, always in need of a push in the right direction, has been to see the local lawyer, who is one of the only people in the town who will still speak to him in the general paranoia. The lawyer, as an aside, gives him a small but vital piece of advice: marry one of them, that'll make you respectable! Given that Anna-Felicitas is taken, there's only one choice, and he discovers that it's the one he would have made anyway. But will Anna-Rose accept him? Of course she does, and they decide to fulfil Mr Twist's wish to spend more time in Britain, so the girls can remain together. This is obviously a sweeter, lighter book than many Elizabeth wrote, and, strangely for one of those modalities, it is long - 500 pages. It's a little slow to start, but on the whole carries its point well. It may be affected, like Stella Benson's Living Alone, published the same year, by the exhausted-with-war wish for brightness and fancy. Certainly Elizabeth's prior two or three novels were more sharp and had more of seriousness in them. It will be interesting to see if this heralds a new way forward, or an isolated break in progress.

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott (1819)

This is another of Scott's short-lived group of retellings of supposed stories of his country's social life and history through obscure or less well-known incidents which were known under the collective title Tales of My Landlord. It is set around the time of Queen Anne in England I think, and among all the machinations which were happening at the same time in the politics of Scotland. Typical of Scott is the position of the main characters - the male, young Lord Ravenswood, being the last scion of a noble family who, through the actions of his dissolute father, have been stripped of their house and estates. He now lives in a decrepit tower of great age balanced on the edge of the cliffs to the sea called Wolf's Crag, and is struggling to get by, even to eat. The female, Lucy Ashton, is the daughter of the man who took advantage of Ravenswood's father's plight and gained all their estates in the process. There is, though, some hidden question as to whether, even with the culpability of the elder Ravenswood, the purchase of the estate was quite clean, and Lucy's father, Lord Ashton, experiences disquiet on this basis privately whilst maintaining outer confidence in his aggrandized circumstances. Lucy and Ravenswood fall for one another in an incident in the woods between their two habitations where he appears to save her life. Their romance develops, with her father, who is currently at home, providing qualified support, thinking that in an alliance of the two families there may be a veil thrown over any questions as to his actions in obtaining the estate. Lucy's mother is away at this time, but when she finally returns to discover that Lucy and Ravenswood have entered into an engagement, all her ancient family antagonism to the Ravenswoods is ignited. She comes from the opposite side of Scots politics and history and regards Ravenswood as the devil incarnate. She insults him savagely, effectually banishing him. Lucy pines, and the two lovers attempt to keep in touch by letter as Ravenswood is sent by a reinvigorated Scots government on a diplomatic mission to France, his side of politics being at that time given primacy for the first time in a long while. Lucy's mother, who is much stronger than her husband, and very determined, manages to stymie their letter-exchange, so that Lucy believes, after a very long 'silence', that Ravenswood is no longer interested. She pines still further, insisting on hearing the disavowal from Ravenswood's lips alone, even while Lady Ashton devises a new marriage for her with a loyal young lord who has an axe to grind with Ravenswood, though he quietly respects him. Eventually, Lucy has declined to such an extent that she gives in and the banns are undertaken. Just as she is signing the last document, Ravenswood bursts in, having finally received her very last letter which has been forwarded sneakily around the obstructions created by Lady Ashton. But it is too late; they have a scene, and Ravenswood departs dejectedly. His eruption into the scene and the realisation that he was true to her finally unhinges Lucy. Her mother forces the marriage to occur four days later and Lucy goes through with it in a stupor of lightheadedness. But that night, when visited by her new husband, her mind breaks and she stabs him almost to death. She then climbs up the chimney and sits on a ledge completely lost to sanity. She dies a little while later. Ravenswood hears of this and it finishes him in all but name. He comes to the funeral, makes a duel-date with Lucy's soldier brother who hates him as her murderer, and returns to Wolf's Crag a broken man. The following day, Lucy's brother is waiting on the field of action, sees Ravenswood madly riding towards him without attending to the well-known dangers of the place, and watches as Ravenswood disappears in a second, with his horse, in a quicksand mire, never to be seen again, and leaving only a long black hat-feather in the wavelets on the shore. There is a good amount of comedy in the background of this one, mainly housed in the person of Caleb Balderstone, Ravenswood's last retainer, and his overdone family loyalty and pride, and his attempts at bullying and obfuscation to keep up the family name. There is also a Macbethian chorus of local witches (or midwives, or herbalists, or hags) who comment sourly on the story as it progresses. This one has a quality of small-scenedness in it which is a strong contrast to the enormous scope of its predecessor The Heart of Midlothian. It has the mood of an out of the way tragedy, but is no sufferer for it on the whole, whilst not perhaps encompassing such a stirring pull as some of the author's grander canvases.

Sunday, August 19, 2018

Commonplace Book

'...The thought of his Uncle Charles as a temporary refuge for the twins floated across his brain, but was rejected because Uncle Charles would speak to no woman under fifty except from his pulpit, and approached those he did speak to with caution till they were sixty. He regarded them as one of the chief causes of modern unrest. He liked them so much that he hated them. He could practise abstinence, but not temperance. Uncle Charles was no good as a refuge."

from Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim (Chapter XI)

Monday, July 30, 2018

Commonplace Book

'...He was also the reverse of good-looking: that is, he would have been very handsome indeed, as Anna-Rose remarked several days later to Anna-Felicitas, when the friendship had become a settled thing, - which indeed it did as soon as Mr. Twist had finished wiping their eyes and noses that first afternoon, it being impossible, they discovered, to have one's eyes and noses wiped by somebody without being friends afterwards (for such an activity, said Anna-Felicitas, belonged to the same order of events as rescue from fire, lions, or drowning, after which in books you married him; but this having only been wiping, said Anna-Rose, the case was adequately met by friendship) - he would have been very handsome indeed if he hadn't had a face.'

from Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim (Chapter VII)

Monday, July 16, 2018

Scarlet and Hyssop by EF Benson (1902)

This is Benson in mainly serious mode, and sultry with it. Set largely in London, it details a tearing confrontation between two society women, conducted in the most blithe tones. Married Mildred Brereton has been having an affair with Jack Alston, which everybody knows about and doesn't comment on. Jack's wife, Marie, is the other party. She is the only one who has no idea of the affair. She is known in some quarters as the snowflake, because she is seen as a little chilly and unmeltable. She has very little interest in Jack, having some time ago come to the conclusion that she ought to have married her early sweetheart Jim Spencer. When Jim comes back from his post-disappointment exploits in South Africa and other places, Marie realises ever more that he ought to have been hers. They see a lot of each other, and we as readers are let into the knowledge that Marie is anything but a chilly snowflake, admitting to herself her care for Jim, and having to control herself in relation to him so as not to let herself down and cause a scandal. Marie is also known as a cool head in terms of the giving of advice. Mildred's daughter Maud, who despairs of her mother's dilettante, loud and bitchy carry-on, but has no idea of the affair either, turns to Marie for advice about a wealthy young man her mother is throwing at her head as a potential husband. Once she hears Maud's feelings Marie advises her to refuse him, knowing the measure of wedded disappointment so well as she does. Mildred is furious at Marie's interference when Maud reveals it, and devises a scheme to set Marie up as an adulteress (the melting of the snowflake), using Jim as convenient but unaware accessory. She's always deemed Marie her friend but in reality has always suffered dreadfully in comparison to her and has resented her distanced coolness and seeming superiority. When the plan starts to work, and the rumours begin to spread, Mildred doesn't realise how obvious it is that she's the origin. A superbly bitchy associate, Lady Ardingly, takes her to task in a very careful way, making it clear that Mildred could in fact be putting Jack's career at risk with their own affair. With several very deft moves she outflanks Mildred and helps to save Marie from an unfair slur. Jack begins to see Mildred in a new light, and doesn't like the view. He begins to avoid her, and to attempt a reconciliation with Marie, which to her mind is too little too late. At a party in the country Maud and Marie are conferring about her young man, the nature of whose approaches has changed. Quietly occupying a lost corner of the garden, they hear footsteps approaching. It is Jack and Mildred. They overhear Jack attempting, in misery and lostness, to get back together with Mildred after Marie's rejection. Mildred is delighted, and smiles victoriously. It is the first either Marie or Maud know of the affair - the bombshell has dropped. Both are horrified - and the real measure of things becomes clear. Marie escapes unseen back to London. When Jack sees her there the next day, orchestrated by Lady Ardingly, who is his political sponsor in the upcoming election, she agrees to stay his wife as long as they have nothing further to do with each other. Jack, horrified at his own culpability and realising his admiration of her, has yet another meeting with Mildred, who assumes pleasurably that her victory is complete, only to find him deserting her once again. The last scene is of Mildred, as a damaged but fighting survivor of all this, driving in Hyde Park. Her two frisky cobs are getting dangerously flighty, and after a fright head off toward the main road. A series of passers by try to restrain the out of control phaeton which goes slamming into an omnibus. The last passing person who tries to help Mildred recognises at the final moment. It is Jack, who is run down and appallingly mutilated by both the phaeton and the omnibus - she has killed him. An epilogue contains a conversation between Marie and Lady Ardingly at a hotel in Cairo, which reveals that Mildred is becoming yet more loud and shrill in London society, and that Jim and Marie will at last marry. Benson seasons this with plenty of low-key wit in heavily biased exchanges. It is also firmly ensconced within a slightly cynical milieu. In this it reminded me a little of the more broad-based works of another writer, Lucas Malet, having the same sense of thoroughgoing worldliness and sultry bite. But of course where Malet had two main modes, Benson had many. And it has been some of his undoing in terms of reputation that he can't be pinned down; from bright comedy to ghost stories to historical saga to sultriness like this....and on through several other manifestations. His multiplicity was both mark of talent and great confuser for the public. Here's hoping that whatever he continued to attempt, his main attention was given to quality.

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Commonplace Book

'She rose, feeling that the only hope of victory lay in turning away from thoughts like these, and not, under the specious pretext of consciously fighting them, in reality making them familiar to her mind; for familiarity in such things breeds, not contempt, but acquiescence, half contemptuous it may be, but half consenting, and she knew that in face of certain temptations it is cowardice not to run away...'

from Scarlet and Hyssop by EF Benson (Chapter XI)

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Commonplace Book

'"...It is the most difficult thing in the world to say what one likes best until one is forty or thereabouts. All one's youth - which, I take it, extends to about forty - is passed experimentally in determining what one likes best, and one does not know till it is crystallized. By then also it is probably unattainable."'

from Scarlet and Hyssop by EF Benson (Chapter VIII)

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Commonplace Book

'...one of the biggest, and perhaps the best effects of age is to give one tolerance, to make one realize that it takes all sorts to make a world.'

from Scarlet and Hyssop by EF Benson (Chapter II)

Monday, April 30, 2018

Christmas Formula and other stories by Stella Benson (1932)

This is a limited edition volume published a year before this author's untimely death. It contains only three stories, but they are belters. Benson comes from the era, typified and personified slightly later by Katherine Anne Porter, when the ending of a story was considered a vital part of the art. The first and third stories here show mastery in that element, and indeed many others. The second, the title-story, is more impressive for its ideas. The first piece, Tchotl, concerns itself with a 'typical' American living in China in the twenties and thirties. Nielsen is full of egalitarian ideals, notions of the Great American Way, and various plans for the future betterment of humankind. He is, as was consonant with American nationality at that time, a salesman of these notions. Along comes Chin Yu-Ting, a local Chinese with an eager attitude toward intellectualism and with cosmopolitan leanings. Nielsen's sales pitch is fascinating for him, even though he feels slightly at sea with some of the American's malapropisms. Eventually he finds himself waylaid from his deepest interest in comparative theology, and enthused by the idea of a universal language as sold by Nielsen. It is the pet project of the moment of some of his friends back home. Tchotl will solve the world's ills and make brothers of us all. As he goes to retrieve a textbook (cost, only 5 dollars!) for Chin, Nielsen strays across the latest newspaper from home, and sees that his friends have given it up as a bad job through lack of take-up. Of course, he carries on and sells the textbook to Chin, still promoting away, but is secretly intrigued by his friends' latest idea - making food from dirt! The title story is a horrified squeal of worry over what was seen at the time as the inevitable downslide of culture into contentless emptiness. The narrator takes a preoccupied boatride home, so busy that they only vaguely notice that things don't seem quite right. It turns out that they've time-slipped into a nightmare future. As they arrive back in Britain it is Christmas time. But every point of celebration is fake - they are "kissed by Mother" on the gangplank off the boat by an official grey-haired lady with an armband, then shoved along the queue. Before moving on, they receive a drop of Mother's Tears from a little bottle on their foreheads. They're required to pay a Merry-Christmas-Present Levy, which doesn't go to the poor, rather to the Board of Salesmen. They need a Licence to Enjoy-Merry-Christmas. They are welcome to go to Peter Pan as a celebration. But, once there, they discover that no-one really knows what the origin of this old 'Peeting Up Ann' ritual really is, and the huge hall is empty of anything except huge infantile ads up on the screen. While leaving they receive a Merry-Christmas-Present from Auntie - 'to YOU' of a camera, which turns out to be a token made of paper and falls apart in their hands. Inside its crumbled mess is its only picture - of YOU. A skull grins out of the image threateningly. The narrator desperately skedaddles back to the boat, the only passenger on it back to the old world. The last story also has a sinister edge. A Dream is a recounting of as much as was possible of one that Benson had. A very nervous lady, Mrs Wander, is awaiting a medical procedure, and in a flap about it. Her friend Mary, the doctor and the nurse appear to be holding something back. She gets more and more frightened and worried as the anaesthetist draws near. She decides to escape, fearing they will operate on her brain, the idea of which traumatises her even further. She wrenches free and finds herself outside in a blasted valley, where amorphous sound booms down through the searing sky, and the bare ground is littered with cracked boulders and fried bushes. As she reaches the desperately desired skyline, hoping for better in the next valley, things do indeed change. She sees before her a green empty decline, and a leaden sky instead of a fiery one. Tucked in to one side is a tiny cottage with a higgledy garden which she half recognises. As she approaches the door, a memory returns. Her nurse Zillah lives here! Wonderful! Zillah opens the door and is initially welcoming to her 'lambie'. But soon she appears preoccupied and concerned and a little awkward. Mrs Wander realises that something is wrong. The shock hits as she realises the truth. This can't be right, because Zillah is long dead. She confronts the figure of her old nurse with this fact very directly, almost accusingly - "you're dead...". Zillah, in the very last line, responds equally directly - "So are you." These three are incredibly satisfying, and show Benson's mastery of this form with bright, concentrated colouring and powerful skill.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli by Ronald Firbank (1926)

Firbank's last completed novel is as camply exotic and hesitatingly brazen as his others. It deals with a Catholic archbishop in southern Spain who has come to the notice of the Pope because of his 'eccentric' ways, which include not only looseness of method in carrying out his duties, but sensualism of a variety of kinds. This is rightfully sensitive material these days. I don't think it would be right to attempt to excuse Firbank his fascination with these things, rather one needs to record them as emblematic of the period. And it is needful to separate his literary legacy from the legacy of attitudes which contributed to a lot of misery. It is this literary effort which is, after all, Firbank's claim to note. Cardinal Pirelli is omni-sensual, as so many of this author's characters are. He is noted here as a chaser after women, and of the young postulants of uncertain age who form part of the cathedral community. What is undeniable is the by now well-known ornate, name-tasting, exclamatory, fulsome-hinting, bracingly coloured forced bloom of style erupting in stripped bursts over every page. These denominators ramp up into a breathless apogee of High Camp iconoclasm. Having recieved hints of the fact that the pontiff is concerned, Pirelli holidays for a period in the mountains above Clemenza, his diocesan centre. All the intrigue and vying for position among the community and the congregation that has been so lovingly recorded by Firbank carries on in his absence much as before, with the added fillip of gossip about Pirelli. Then, in a dreamlike last scene back home, he wanders at night into the Cathedral, where he has wolfishly arranged a rendezvous with a young chorister, who avoids his physical advances. In a strangely Gothic twist, silent lightning flickers over the scene. We are to presume, I think, that the youthful agility of the chorister wears the ageing Pirelli out in the chase. He slumps to his demise and is discovered nude by a doleful female sycophant who has been keeping loving watch on him. The age of the chorister is remarkably unclear and I think it is this which gives many readers cause for concern, quite rightly. The fact that this superceded attitude is given expression with such extortionately original vitality is, though, the key balancing care.

Saturday, April 21, 2018

The Last Days by Raymond Queneau (1936)

This is the story of a few young men, and three old ones, milling around a part of Paris in the early twenties. The young men are all students and one of the old men is one of their teachers. We don't see them at the ecole, though, rather at various bars and occasionally at their homes. It represents the last days of the title in being the period just before all three old men die, and also being the time just before the young men graduate and divide off into their further lives. It is typically Queneauian in that it has a fair amount of play in it, both literally and in the sense of room for movement. His predilection for enjoying angles which illuminate these characters from odd viewpoints, or celebrate them in a way which treats them half-seriously, toying considerably with their obsessions, seeing through them ruthlessly and yet somehow fondly in an attitude of "it's all a game of cards, let's throw them up and see where they land", is prominent here. His special outlook of amused detachment is decorated in this instance quite sparingly with wordplay - it doesn't happen often, but just often enough to be notable. Words like chathowling, or bombinated, or lumbricated, or anticfray spitter through the text giving it the unmistakable look of the modern for its context. The old man who is their teacher is beset with doubts as to his right to teach geography, given his lack of travel. One of the other old men is a crook, devising schemes by which he might fleece people and acquire the cash to keep his mistress interested. One of the young men is quite retiring and tender and yet envious of his more explosive fellows. Another of them disappears overseas in an attempt to kickstart more of a life for himself. Another prepares to enter the army. Another tries to get a job as an assistant with the crook, but is upstaged by another wilier one, who then grows quickly disenchanted with his new boss' silly schemes. Women flit in and out of some of their lives, but never seem to stick. We take a tumble through all of this, amusedly looking at them without ever becoming haughty in the process - Queneau keeps us grounded. His final view of them is that of a barman who has recurred at points throughout our amble, and who has developed his own semi-mathematical and semi-astrological scheme of predicting events from a combination of cards and calculations, mainly for the purpose, when the time is right, of betting on the horses and repaying a giant debt of his father's, but also for giving advice to anyone who asks at the counter. This comes to fruition after the deaths of the three old men, and in the last chapter he watches with some self-congratulation at his window as the crowds of Paris mill by on all their schemes of life, mulling over how different everyone is, and yet how the same. It's a good point of reference for this gently funny, but also fateful and amusedly sour tour.

Commonplace Book

'...Pfuel was one of those hopelessly and immutably self-confident men, self-confident to the point of martyrdom as only Germans are, because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion - science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally both in mind and body as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured as being a citizen of the best-organised state in the world and therefore, as an Englishman, always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth - science - which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.'

from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Book 9, Chapter 10)

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Love and the Soul Hunters by John Oliver Hobbes (1902)

I am very much enjoying Hobbes' 'recovery' from her perhaps Anthony Hope-inspired, perhaps simply Catholic, perhaps Wilde Trial-wary detour around the turn of the century. This one is a confirmation of her return to her second manner - a tale of Edwardian high society, centred on love and decorated with high aphorism. It also engages what must have been a key subject for the author, given her background - the interconnection and rival status of America in British society at that time. The key American player here is the mother of the female protagonist, who is known as La Belle Valentine; a forcible, handsome and blowsy woman of mixed reputation who would have been perfectly played by Ava Gardner in her prime. She left her dreary English gentleman husband years ago, and hasn't seen her daughter since she was a child. Seeing her again in a hotel in Salsomaggiore for the first time as an adult, she is struck by her daughter's beauty and intelligence. Also staying at the hotel is someone whose profile almost seems a stock one for this period, the exiled prince of Urseville-Beylestein, Paul. He has with him his trusted secretary-assistant, Felshammer. Paul is charming, good looking and well capable of making women feel delighted that he's fixated on them. Felshammer is colder and less appealing, but more intense. Both of these men fall for Clementine, Valentine's daughter; Paul in his usual vein, with ultimately superficial play at the heart of his approach, while Felshammer falls heavily because unaccustomedly. Clementine is gifted some of the best conversational lines in the piece in her awareness of Paul's lack of seriousness (despite his protestations otherwise) and her verbal beating off of Felshammer's unwanted intensity. As fortunes swell and wane and the centre of action moves to London, Clementine confirms to herself that neither of their 'loves' is what she wants, but that, if Paul was able to drop his attitude of flippancy and value her above and beyond other playful conquests, she would more than welcome his advances. She's besotted with him, but also understands his weaknesses and is determined not to capitulate. Felshammer she respects, but cannot bear the idea of love in relation to him. Amongst the lesser characters gambling debts pile up, financial deals are lost and made, trips to America are mooted, society hostesses fight among themselves...and then, in a wooded lane in Kew, Paul is shot while coming away from seeing Clementine. It soon transpires that Felshammer's jealousy has overmastered him. Paul's injury is life-threatening, and this is what he needs to make him realise what he needs to change in his life. He finally renounces all claim to the Urseville-Beylestein throne (much to his dragon-mother's disgust) and opens his heart fully to Clementine. Felshammer feels he must secretly come clean as the shooter, and the two men reach a semi-respectful and very private agreement never to see one another again. This one has a few faultlines, a major one being that we don't really get a sense of Paul's change of heart near the end. But it's still highly entertaining, and the aphoristic prose is a thing to savour.

Sunday, April 1, 2018

Commonplace Book

'...Our greatest passions can be traced to our meanest instincts, and the fine names we have invented for successful selfishness mean no more in reality than the base ones which we contemptuously bestow on the selfishness which fails...'

from Love and the Soul Hunters by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter XXVII)

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Commonplace Book

'...that curious buoyancy which exists in America, which allows a man to gamble away fortunes, keep his credit, and retrieve every disaster. Failures in the United States are even a certain credential; they prove that the man who has sustained them is enterprising; his courage is admired, and he is often accepted as an expert on the very matters wherein he may have committed errors of judgment...'

from Love and the Soul Hunters by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter XXIII)

Monday, March 19, 2018

La Belle Nivernaise and other tales by Alphonse Daudet (1929)

This group of tales form 'Volume VII' in a one-volume edition - I've never seen the individual volumes published separately. La Belle Nivernaise is the most considerable piece, in terms of impact. This story of a young waif taken up by a poor bargeman and his wife who live on the canals between Paris and the country, whose business is mainly timber, is highly sentimental. But it has the saving graces of warmth and genuineness of detail and the contrast of the tough life depicted to help it hit a higher mark. Victor, the waif, is able to be viewed by the reader with a full swathe of pathos which doesn't overly undermine his dignity. The Third Low Mass is a moral story in three chapters detailing the obsessed attentiveness of a hedonist priest to the Christmas Feast which will follow his masses. He skips bits and hurries the congregation in a mad hungry rush for the groaning tables. And of course dies in the night of his overindulgence! A Violet! is a little jeu d'esprit which speaks of an uptight administrator dreading the making of a dull speech. While journeying to the meeting, he spies a cool-looking wood, stops his carriage, and wanders up there in a glum state. A while later, his lackeys come searching for him, and to their horror find him lying face down scribbling verses, released from his prison of duty. The Two Inns is a gothic melancholic number, where a walker comes to a small village with two hotels facing each other at the end of the only street. One is full of life, bursting with noise and voices; the other is tumbledown, forlorn and silent. He decides to try the latter, and hears from the withdrawn landlady the story of her husband's perfidy; he is having an affair with the landlady opposite and has left his wife in penury and despair. The Elixir is another religious tale, this time a satiric one, where an unconventional monk saves his monastery from financial ruin by inventing a splendid health-giving herbal elixir, which also has intoxicating properties. His success in business is matched by his indulgence in the product. After some soul-searching, his fellow monks decide to grant him special licence via indulgences so that he can keep on making it and enjoying himself, rather than lose him for drunkenness and lose his profits! Finally, The Camargue is a poetic travelogue which investigates this very special region. It is imbued with waterlogged, marshy, reedy, mosquitoey tones and delicate imagery of special times of day when extraordinary beauty and peace reign. A lively group of tales.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Commonplace Book

''Uncle' sang as peasants sing, with full and naive conviction that the whole meaning of a song lies in the words, and that the tune comes of itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which exists only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the unconsidered tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily good...'

from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Book 7, Chapter 7)

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Commonplace Book

'...A confidence should never be received either as a surprise, an indiscretion, an apology, or a hostage. It is something understood yet scarcely heard, something unforgettable yet too little our own to be trusted even to the memory; uttered, it must be as though it had never been told; at each rehearing it must seem more distant and delicate.'

from Love and the Soul Hunters by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter XI)

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Commonplace Book

'Timid and trusting natures, once deceived, invariably become more suspicious than the sceptical. One unkind doctor will make them detest the whole medical profession, and a single encounter with some dishonest person will drive them to a really vindictive misanthropy. The gentle Mr. Gloucester now felt that he hated the entire tribe of lawyers; they were all bloodsuckers, knaves, and liars; they all sought his life, he knew; daily they murdered hundreds by tormenting communications, and not a soul was ever the wiser. His eyes brimmed over with tears at the idea of the perishing innocent families - done to death and ruin through the worries of a legal correspondence.'

from Love and the Soul Hunters by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter VII)

Monday, February 19, 2018

The Zincali by George Borrow (1841)

Books about the gypsies have been few and far between, relatively speaking. This, and others of Borrow's authorship, seem to me to have been considered as standard texts, perhaps because they were close enough to only texts, for a long period. It was not until Isabel Fonseca's brilliant Bury Me Standing in 1995 that this book's long reign as a kind of standard text was truly over, though it was a creaking century and a half-old relic by then. Borrow is a strange character. I'm guessing I will get to know him better in slowly reading through his small catalogue, but at the moment he seems quite an egotist, someone in the mould of a hyper-Christian baby Byron. This has its negativities, but it also aids compulsion - his insistence on his conclusions and his strong concern with separating poor scholarship about the gypsies and their customs and language from that which has some merit means that his points carry. This book originated in a period he spent in Spain (the subtitle is An Account of the Gypsies of Spain) where he seemed to travel about a lot with the purpose of converting the Iberian clans of the race to Christianity. He has all sorts of interactions with them, key ones being recounted at specific points where examples are needed for claims being made. Most of these points surround their customs and language, and what the present state of them reveals of the origins of the gypsies. He contrasts the Spanish Gitano language in particular with other expressions of the gypsy dialect in Hungary, Germany, the Balkans and so on. I am imagining that this is where the idea of them being an outcast sect from somewhere in Hindustan was first popularly canvassed. The examples given of their language very much seem to tend toward proof of a Sanskrit origin, with some Persian thrown in some time after, and then imports of all sorts as they moved westward. My memory of Fonseca's book is very thin now on detail, so I can't remember how much further we've come in these discoveries. The other fascinating element is only hinted at here. Was Borrow himself a gypsy? There are tiny thrusts in that direction, indicating that he had had a reasonably long history of contact and felt so familiar that he was at ease in their company and knew how to convince them of his trustworthiness so as to obtain more information. But of course a baby Byron may say that for reasons of bravado - perhaps the reality was a lot less certain, and a little more perilous? Outsider nosiness is particularly unwelcome in gypsy circles. This volume has both a significant sense of outdatedness and a contingent and partial pull of interest; here's to a clearer picture arising from future works.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Commonplace Book

'...There are two kinds of composure. One is morbid and arises from a feeble or fatigued vitality. It betokens a genuine lack of interest in all things and is the least pleasing form of egoism. The other kind, which is magnetic, is the sign of complete sanity - a heart at peace and a physical organisation without weakness...'

from Love and the Soul Hunters by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter II)

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Midas and Son by Stephen McKenna (1919)

The waters are settling firmly, by this point in McKenna's career, over his status as a wit. Though it began that way, with some acclaim indeed, by this point he has found what I assume to be his true metier, which is that of the conservatively elegant writer of tales of today, enmeshed in style, worldliness and politics. This novel followed in the wake of his great success of the year before, Sonia. It inhabits the same world, with some of the lead characters of that book forming the periphery of this one. But where Sonia spoke of the well-established upper middle class and landed gentry, this one deals with a self-made man of reasonably humble background, who has travelled to America and, through his natural savvy, and some frankly exploitative behaviour, made millions there. Back in England, Aylmer Lancing buys a great house in Sussex and spends the rest of his life enjoying the spoils, until illness gets in his way. He has overstretched even his enormous vitality and some sort of family weakness has perhaps shown through. This preoccupation with inherited family 'strains' is classic McKenna, where the taints of the blood have huge impacts on the fate of the generations. Our central character is Aylmer's son, Deryk. Aylmer's wife is long dead and Deryk has been his sole responsibility for most of the boy's life. At the beginning of the novel Deryk returns home after a couple of years' broadening time abroad, full of the independence of spirit of those in their early twenties, and aching to do his own thing, supported by his huge inheritance. But Aylmer is not convinced by his son's wilfulness and puts all sorts of restrictions in his path. Deryk feels let down and domineered, having been largely his own boss over a long period. Troubles are escalated when Aylmer puts the stop to a romance between Deryk and a local girl, Idina Penrose, who has been a longtime friend of the family, but who is not wealthy or worldly. Misunderstanding and misery come between them and Idina marries a slightly nerve-wracked older man, Sidney Dawson, for whose horrendously bitchy sister she has worked, being held in virtual bondage. Dawson pesters her continuously while she is in a low state, feeling unloved by Deryk, and finally breaks her down. She and Deryk become fully estranged, and he struggles on trying to prove pridefully that he can survive without his inheritance, in pique at his father. Aylmer's illness is advancing and reaches its end. Sidney Dawson also sickens and dies, which leaves both Deryk and Idina free. They slowly reconnect, and it seems that their dream of being together will finally be realised; a marriage is arranged. Deryk inherits and begins to realise what a weight having untold sums is, when you're not sure what to do with it. Though one could be flippant about this as a plot element, McKenna actually handles it well. He is convincing about not only Deryk's sense of flummoxedness, but also about the sense of nervous tension it engenders. Deftly combining this psychological element with his less convincing theory about the slight taint in the Lancing blood, he has Deryk slowly build up a sense of panic, ennui, dulled enjoyment of life and worry over Idina. He has discovered that he has changed since their first romance, and in his maturity finds her slavishness toward him and simple nature quite cloying. He gets ruder and less controlled with all around him, with almost a Nietzschean superman attitude rippling through his nervousness. All culminates at a house he has purchased in Pall Mall. The renovations are nearing completion, with only the rooftop garden, which will replace a domed skylight over the great hall, remaining to be completed. One evening, with the war of 1914 just about to be announced and soldiers in the streets, he hosts Idina and two close friends on a tour of the house. When the tour is complete they are on the roof looking at the girders which will support the garden. He tells the others to meet him at his rooms because some ideas have come to him which he wants to sketch for the builders. They depart, and what begins for Deryk is a truth-telling examination of his life, though done under the pressure of depression, tension, and a feeling that he's done all he can in life already, and that any further living will essentially just be an exercise in repetition. He convinces himself, superman-style, that he is taking control where others would quail, and that suicide is his answer. A good part of this realisation is backed by the awfulness of having to 'unannounce' his marriage to Idina, who has been through enough already. McKenna then does something quite interesting. He has Deryk loop a builders' rope around his ankle and prepare to jump from the rooftop terrace into the great hall of the house, I assume to give the indication that he got entangled and unbalanced, so as not to be a suicide, rather an accident, in the eyes of the world. Then, with closed eyes, preparing, Deryk realises he must open them to check that the rope is free to fall and not caught on anything. He steps forward inadvertently while doing so, and McKenna has him utter a startled cry as he falls into free space. Thus we are left with a conundrum; do we count this a suicide or an accident? I'm guessing that suicide was still held in sufficient ignominy in 1919 that leaving the question open was a good hedge for the bet. Still, leaving the story with this ending was a brave move for the times.

Friday, February 9, 2018

Commonplace Book

'But because he didn't have it, he continued to despise what he most desired. In the evenings, after the family dinner, alone again, he watched himself suffer until his suffering became so acute that it disappeared of its own accord, unable to transcend this supreme point. Then he went to bed extremely weary, and the next day started all over again in the same way...'

from The Last Days by Raymond Queneau (Chapter 11)

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Commonplace Book

'"The new great ethical attack has to be launched against the cruelties and dirtinesses and dishonesties which are sanctioned by everyday custom and extolled as part of our competitive theory of survival. Do you think you could educate people out of that frame of mind?"

Deryk assumed an expression of regretful worldliness.

"You can't alter human nature, sir," he objected.

"That, my dear Deryk, has been said in every generation and disproved by every generation. People are lazy; and peculiarly lazy, you'll find, when it comes to radical thinking..."'

from Midas and Son by Stephen McKenna (Chapter VI, Part III)

Saturday, January 13, 2018

Personal Record, 1920-1972 by Gerald Brenan (1974)

This record is interesting in terms of fact. The writing is plain, rarely adorned with poetry. The focus of the earlier parts is Dora Carrington, and the tangle around her in which Brenan became involved, which included the love of her life, Lytton Strachey, as well as her husband, Brenan's good friend Ralph Partridge. It also included Frances Marshall, Partridge's second wife, and the edges of the Bloomsbury set, including Roger Fry, Augustus John and others. Carrington and Brenan had a typically (for her) changeful relationship, in which pretty well everything blew hot and cold, and got twisted up in moodful wrangling. As their connection waned, she took on other lovers (of a kind), but was ultimately left at Ham Spray house with her one mainstay, Strachey, after whose death she killed herself. Brenan is honest enough at this longer distance of time in examining their relationship, and includes in that spirit some information which I think is critical: Carrington told him that he had a quality of sometimes understanding very deeply, sometimes of being really very slow on the uptake. Here she seems to me to have been piercing. This trope is repeated again and again in this book, acknowledged and otherwise. He can be insightful and thoughtful one moment, quite blunt and unseeing the next. Brenan, as comfortable-space-for-the-otherwise-engaged, is next drawn into a relationship with Gamel Woolsey, who is pretty dedicated to Llewelyn Powys. This brings him into the remit of this other circle, the Powyses, who are an alternative to Bloomsbury. Her love affair with Powys, and friendship for his wife, Alyse Gregory, made the connection with Brenan another complicated one. Although Brenan's summary is that their marriage was a good one in many ways, he does admit that there were spaces in their lives in which they were quite separate, almost not knowing each other, or, if knowing, not deeply appreciating. His travel through, and living in, Spain throughout this period, with punctuations in Britain, underlies these stories. The section on the Spanish Civil War and how it affected Woolsey and he in Malaga changes the tone considerably. Again, here, there is the feeling that he had an obtuseness which meant the making of some interesting decisions, like harbouring a fascist, which, although consistent with his ideas of pacifism, and of nobody being hurt despite their views, which I find essentially admirable, has an underfeeling in this section of 'careful' telling and perhaps of recasting for more favourable light, unlike the rest of the book. Overall, I like that I am left with a clear-eyed view of the fact that I may not have felt completely at ease with the author had I met him - this seems a shard of honesty shining through. This, with the countering idea always at the back of the mind that autobiography is a constructed reality, leaving us with the classic conundrum; true mixed picture or mixed picture as reconstructed truth?

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Commonplace Book

'...the air was like a drug. One could walk all day without getting tired and sleep for eight or nine hours at a stretch without stirring. Everything spoke of sleep. The long, low hills looked like bolsters and pillows, the dogs yawned when they tried to bark and even the cockcrows, though they began well, ended in a snore. Only the flowers were awake. They gleamed and sparkled in the clear light like that which one sees rippling under the surface of chalk streams - the light of a subaqueous world, thick, watery yet infused with drowsiness.'

from Personal Record, 1920 - 1972 by Gerald Brenan (Chapter 24)