Sunday Poetry - Wilfred Owen

With Armistice Day only a few days away, I've been reading my favourite war poets. This is a less familiar poem by Wilfred Owen with the poignant title The Next War. Unfortunately there's always a next war. "The war to end all wars" was a phrase that was nonsense almost as soon as it was coined.

War's a joke for me and you,
While we know such dreams are true.
- Siegfried Sassoon

Out there, we've walked quite friendly up to Death,-
Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland,-
Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
We've sniffed the green thick odour of his breath,-
Our eyes wept, but our courage didn't writhe.
He's spat at us with bullets and he's coughed
Shrapnel. We chorussed when he sang aloft,
We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, -knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.

Listening to novellas

Jane Fairchild & Paul Sherringham are lying in bed after making love. Paul is the son of a well to do family & the lovers are taking advantage of an empty house. His parents have gone to Henley to have lunch with his future in-laws, the Hobdays & their neighbours, the Nivens. It's March 1924. Mothering Sunday, the day when servants are given a holiday to visit their mothers. The Sherringham's house is empty & Paul has taken the opportunity to arrange this meeting with Jane. Jane has the day off because she's the Niven's housemaid. Jane & Paul have been secret lovers for several years & in two weeks, he will be marrying Emma Hobday. This is the last time they will see each other.

That's all I want to say about the plot of this stunning book. The events of Jane's whole life are woven through the story of this one day. We learn that Jane is an orphan & left the orphanage with enough education to be able to read (more than just to recognise the word Brasso on a tin) & write, which was unusual in a servant at that time. She's been in service since she was about 15 & is now 22. Her employer allows her to borrow books from his library, most of which seem never to have been read. She will go on to leave service, work in a bookshop in Oxford, live in London & become a writer. All this is conveyed in the third person although we are seeing everything from Jane's point of view. The narrative moves from present to past to future effortlessly. Devastating facts are dropped into a casual sentence, so casually that I had to stop listening & wonder if I'd really heard that.

Graham Swift creates a whole world in just 130pp, 3 1/4 hours of listening. The Great War permeates everything about this story. The two houses, in their country estates, have each lost two sons in the War. The young men stare out at Jane from photographs; their rooms are left untouched. The only well-read books in Mr Niven's library are on a small revolving bookcase next to his chair; even that detail evokes his grief, that he keeps his sons' favourite book near him. Boys adventure stories - Henty, Rider Haggard, Stevenson - that Jane reads avidly. There are a few books, dated 1915 that still look new & unread, among them a book by Joseph Conrad that shows Jane what a writer can do. So much in this world is unsaid. Each house has only two indoor servants, a cook & a housemaid. The bicycles that Jane & the cook ride on their afternoons out must have belonged to the dead boys but this is never mentioned. They're called Bicycle One & Bicycle Two.

The sense of grief is there but also of looking to the future as the Sherringhams look forward to Paul's marriage & his plans to study law. What the characters know or fear is hinted but never spelt out. The transgressive nature of Jane & Paul's relationship across social classes is evident but there's also a sense of time moving on & those conventions changing as everything changed after the war. Paul leaves his discarded clothes on the floor & the bed unmade while Jane thinks about the housemaid's work. Paul is handsome, confident, entitled. We don't know what he's thinking or feeling about this last meeting with Jane although by the end of the book, we can speculate. After he rushes away to meet Emma for lunch, Jane slowly walks naked through the empty house, eating the pie left out by the cook for a snack, in possession for a short time, before dressing & riding her bike the long way, back to her everyday life.

Mothering Sunday is such a beautiful book. It has an elegiac quality that reminded me of J L Carr's A Month in the Country, one of my favourite books. The characters & scenes in this novel will stay with me for a long time.

Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means is also about the aftermath of war but has a very different tone. I heard a discussion of the book on BBC4's A Good Read. I'd read the book years ago but discovered the audio in our catalogue was read by Juliet Stevenson so couldn't resist revisiting it.

In London in 1945, a group of young women are living in the May of Teck Club (named after Queen Mary who was born Princess May of Teck), a women's hostel. The war in Europe has just finished, the war in the Pacific is coming to an end but there's still rationing, there are bomb sites everywhere - there may even be an unexploded bomb in the garden of the Club if one of the older residents is to be believed. Food & clothes are vital topics of conversation,. A group of girls living on the third floor share a Schiaperelli dress which has consequently been seen all over London. The dress belongs to Selina, cool & beautiful, with several men keen to escort her around. Joanna, the daughter of a country clergyman, unlucky in her love for her father's curate, gives elocution lessons. Jane Wright works for an unsuccessful & unscrupulous publisher & spends her spare time writing begging letters to famous writers under the instructions of Rudi. Even if the writers don't send money, an autographed letter from Hemingway is worth something. She is overweight so can't fit into the Schiaperelli dress but feels she should have extra rations as she's doing important "brain work" that requires extra calories.

While the girls wait for lovers or brothers to come back from the war, they continue in their jobs, enjoy what social life they can find, scheme to get up on the roof of the Club through the lavatory window to sunbathe, complain about the wallpaper in the drawing room. The three older members of the Club, spinsters who have been exempted from the rule that members should be under 30, provide a history of the Club & take pride in continuing quarrels about religion & proper Club protocol for as long as possible. One young man, Nicholas Farringdon, becomes involved with Selina. He's a poet who has written an indigestible manuscript full of anarchist sentiments that Jane's boss wants to publish if he'll change it. The feeling of being in limbo at the end of the war ends with a tragic event that scatters the residents of the Club & has an impact into the future for several of the residents.

I loved the satire of the publisher, George Johnson, always with an eye to the main chance, exploiting Jane's willingness to work & her adoration of authors. The war has had an impact on all their lives & now it's as if they're just waiting for the war to finally end for their real lives to begin. Muriel Spark looks with a very beady eye at the girls of the title. The Girls of Slender Means was written in 1963, so not that long after the end of the war. Muriel Spark's sharpness of tone & observation has none of the elegiac quality of Graham Swift's writing in Mothering Sunday. I wonder if it's just the passage of time that influences the way writers think of a period. Of course, Swift never knew England in the 1920s as Spark must have known it in the 1940s & of course, they're very different kinds of writers.

Juliet Stevenson's narration is excellent as always, she's one of my favourite readers. Maybe it was because she also recorded the audio book of Barbara Pym's Excellent Women, but I was reminded of Pym as I listened. After listening to & reading some very long books lately, these two novellas were just what I was in the mood to listen to.

I've never considered listening to audiobooks as somehow cheating or as not real reading. I see them as a way to read even more while I'm cooking, ironing, driving or walking. Apparently some people do but New York Magazine is on my side.

Sunday Poetry - Ivor Gurney

Tomorrow is Anzac Day & I've been reading this new anthology of First World War poetry edited by Tim Kendall so I wanted to feature a war poet in Sunday Poetry today.
Last week I watched this excellent TV program about Ivor Gurney, one of the soldier poets of the Great War (George Simmers's blog is a wonderful resource about the Great War, by the way). Gurney survived the war but spent the last 15 years of his life in an asylum. He was a wonderful poet & musician. He studied at the Royal College of Music & wrote some beautiful songs. Here's a link to Bryn Terfel singing Sleep, one of Gurney's five Elizabethan songs.

One of the poems featured in the program was this one, The Silent One. It was written long after the war, when Gurney was in the asylum. His war experience was central to his life & he revisited it in his poetry during the first years in the asylum. His failure to get his poetry published depressed him further & he seems to have stopped writing after the mid 1920s. He died in 1937.

Who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two  -
Who for his hours of life had chattered through
Infinite lovely chatter of Bucks accent:
Yet faced unbroken wires; stepped over, and went
A noble fool, faithful to his stripes  - and ended.
But I weak, hungry, and willing only for the chance
Of line- to fight in the line, lay down under unbroken
Wires, and saw the flashes and kept unshaken,
Till the politest voice - a finicking accent, said:
‘Do you think you might crawl through there: there's a hole.'
Darkness shot at: I smiled, as politely replied –
‘I'm afraid not, Sir.' There was no hole, no way to be seen
Nothing but chance of death, after tearing of clothes.
Kept flat, and watched the darkness, hearing bullets whizzing –
And thought of music - and swore deep heart's oaths
(Polite to God) and retreated and came on again,
Again retreated a second time, faced the screen.

Sunday Poetry - Siegfried Sassoon

I receive a daily email from the website Interesting Literature. Five interesting things that happened on this day, five things you may not have known about a writer or a book. Last week, there was a post on their list of the ten war poems they think everyone should read. They limited it to WWI &, although there were several of my favourites in the list, there were also a few I didn't know, including this one, Dreamers, by Siegfried Sassoon. It's a quiet poem, with none of the rage that infuses his best-known work. I love the image of soldiers dreaming of home & normality while they're in the middle of the most horrendous, unnatural period of their lives.

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.  
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.  
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win  
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,  
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain  
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.

The Deepening Stream - Dorothy Canfield Fisher

We've come up with several acronyms in my online reading group, including HIU - have it unread (for books that someone mentions that other members own & immediately rush to the shelves & plan to read next). I came up with a new one just recently, RIAL - read it at last. The Deepening Stream was first mentioned in our group at least three years ago. I was enthusiastic, ordered a copy but then, by the time it arrived, I'd moved on & it sat on the tbr shelves. I picked it up several times but didn't actually begin reading it. Then, I saw a review of it on the blog TBR 313 & I just knew I had to read it at once. I didn't even finish reading the review for fear of learning too much about the book.

I loved this book & can't imagine why it took me so long to get around to reading it. It's the coming of age story of Matey Gilbert. We first meet Matey (her name is Penelope & the nickname is never explained) as a small child, living in France with her parents & siblings Priscilla & Francis. Her parents are an unhappy couple, forever trying to get the better of each other. Her father is a literature professor in the States who needs frequent sabbaticals in Europe but only French-speaking countries. Her mother takes up new enthusiasms & new friends, only to have her husband sneer at them. All three children are scarred by the experience of tiptoeing around their parents. Priscilla grows up to be afraid of relationships. When she does marry, it's to an older widower who is looking for a mother for his children rather than a wife. Francis projects confidence but covers up his hurt with a brash exterior. Matey is more vulnerable but learns to cope by avoiding confrontation & through the love of her dog, Sumner. Only when her father is dying does Matey see the real depth of love between her parents.

As a young woman, Matey goes back to her mother's home town of Rustdorf in Dutchess County, New York when she receives an unexpected inheritance. There she meets her extended family, many of them Quakers, including a cousin, Adrian Fort, who works in his family's bank. Matey & Adrian fall in love & their marriage is the beginning of Matey's blossoming. She realises that there can be a true partnership in marriage, without the game playing her parents indulged in. When the Great War breaks out, Matey & Adrian decide to go to France. Matey had stayed in touch with Madame Vinet & her family, with whom she had stayed as a child & Adrian had spent some time studying art in Paris before he decided he didn't have the talent to be an artist. They speak excellent French & when they hear from the Vinets of the hardships that the French are suffering, Adrian decides to become an ambulance driver & Matey to help the Vinets in any way she can. By this time they have two small children &, although they have some qualms about taking their children to Europe in the circumstances, they are determined to do something. The next four years are spent helping refugees & providing a place for soldiers on leave to rest & get news of their families through Madame Vinet's network of friends. When the war ends, Matey & her family return to Rustdorf, to recover from the trauma of their experiences & to try to make their lives valuable & worthwhile in the post-war world.

This is such an absorbing book. I admired the accuracy of Canfield Fisher's psychological insights into the mind of a sensitive child like Matey even though I've never really been interested in books written from a child's eye view. I usually skim the opening chapters of biographies too, especially when they go back several generations. However, here it was compelling. Once Matey grows up & visits Rustdorf, I couldn't put the book down. This is where Matey begins to develop as a person, the deepening stream of her personality begins to emerge from her troubled childhood. We also begin to see her through the eyes of others, Adrian & his father, & she becomes part of their family which is also her own. On the journey to France, with the threat of torpedoes ever-present, Matey realises that no fear will ever really affect her like the fears of her childhood,

It was true. This was not her first encounter with fear. She had met it years ago, and what she felt now could not be compared to that black helpless waiting for catastrophe of the child she had been, tragically unfortified, like all children, by experience. Nothing had then come into her life strong enough to stand between her and her fear - over the oatmeal, bitter as poison on bad mornings - that there was nothing real in life but the wish to hurt. That had been true despair. But this present danger - all that was not physical in her stood apart from it, unthreatened, secure.

The war section of the book is based on Canfield Fisher's own life as she & her husband did just what Matey & Adrian do. I know a little of Canfield Fisher's life through reading Willa Cather's Letters among other things but I would love to read her own letters & more of her fiction. I read The Home-Maker years ago when it was reprinted as one of the first Persephones & I've read some of her short stories. These wartime scenes are wonderful. I loved all the domestic detail of how Matey & Madame Vinet scrimped & saved to put food on the table, how they contrived to get news of soldiers to their families as well as the more personal troubles of the Vinets - Henri & Paul in the Army & Ziza, Matey's closest friend from childhood, keeping her husband's business going in the countryside but with secrets of her own that estrange her from her mother. Matey identifies so much with the Vinets & the French people that she struggles to understand her brother, Francis, when he arrives in Paris with a delegation when America enters the war. His priority is to use America's wealth to win the war & if he makes a profit out of it, all the better. Another instance of how their childhood experiences have shaped their lives. Francis sees his money as a shield against trouble while Matey uses an inheritance from her great-great-aunt Constance to finance the trip to France & their war work. I felt as exhausted as Matey & Adrian when they finally return home & have to pick up the threads of their old lives. There's a real sense of peace at the end of the book which is very satisfying,

Her years with Adrian answered that question, stood before her, beckoning her on. She walked forward again. Had Adrian ever needed words to share with her all she had learned from him? The medium for the communication of the spirit is not words, but life.

Sunday Poetry - Rupert Brooke & Vera Brittain

I finished rereading Testament of Youth last week so two more poems, both quoted in the book, before I move on to something else.

Vera quotes this sonnet by Rupert Brooke, Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, in the aftermath of Victor's death. He was blinded at Arras & Vera returned home from nursing in Malta with the idea of marrying Victor & looking after him. However, Victor died soon after she returned &, as she admits, such a marriage would have been a disaster for both of them.

Not with vain tears, when we're beyond the sun,
We'll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread
Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead
Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run
Down some close-covered by-way of the air,
Some low sweet alley between wind and wind,
Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find
Some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there

Spend in pure converse our eternal day;
Think each in each, immediately wise;
Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and say
What this tumultuous body now denies;
And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;
And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.

In 1919 Vera returned to Oxford to take up her studies. After four years away, she felt lonely & depressed. She was also suffering from what would today be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She had dreams of Edward & Roland returning or that they were still alive but so badly wounded that they didn't want to be seen. She also had hallucinations, imagining that her face was changing & that she was growing a beard, like a witch. This almost unbearably sad poem, Boar's Hill, October 1919, was written at this time & later published in the 1920 edition of Oxford Poetry.

Tall slender beech-trees, whispering, touched with fire.
Swaying at even beneath a desolate sky;
Smouldering embers aflame where the clouds hurry by
To the wind's desire.

Dark sombre woodlands, rain-drenched by the scattering shower,
Spindle that quivers and drops its dim berries to earth —
Mourning, perhaps, as I mourn here alone for the dearth
Of a happier hour.

Can you still see them, who always delighted to roam
Over the Hill where so often together we trod
When winds of wild autumn strewed summer's dead leaves on the sod,
Ere your steps turned home?

Sunday Poetry - Vera Brittain

I'm rereading Testament of Youth again after seeing the new movie version last weekend. I enjoyed the movie, Alicia Vikander was wonderful, & the changes to the story didn't irritate me as much as I thought they might. But, it didn't affect me emotionally as reading the book always does. It's been a few years since I last read it & I find something different in every reading. This time, I'm noticing how much foreshadowing Vera does in her telling of her story. The shadow of Roland & Edward's deaths are there from the very beginning & I wondered how much the first readers knew of her story before they read the book. She certainly doesn't lead up to the tragedy gently by painting a picture of pre-war paradise. Maybe that's what makes reading Testament of Youth such a personal experience.

I'm up to December 1915. Vera is nursing in London & about to go on leave to meet Roland in Brighton but she won't be meeting him because he dies of wounds just before he was due to go on leave. I don't know when Vera wrote this poem, but I think it would have been very soon after Roland's death, the feelings are so raw.

Perhaps -
(To R.A.L. died of wounds in France,
December 23rd, 1915)

Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel once more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of You.

Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet
Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,
And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,
Though You have passed away.

Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,
And crimson roses once again be fair,
And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,
Although You are not there.

Perhaps some day I shall not shrink in pain
To see the passing of the dying year,
And listen to Christmas songs again,
Although You cannot hear.

But though kind Time may many joys renew,
There is one greatest joy I shall not know
Again, because my heart for loss of You
Was broken, long ago.

Sunday Poetry - Roland Leighton

I've spent the last week absorbed in reading about Vera Brittain & yesterday, on Anzac Day, I saw the new film of Testament of Youth. As scenes of parting at railway stations seem to be central to so many stories of WWI, here is a poem Vera wrote after saying goodbye to Roland.

St Pancras Station, August 1915

One long, sweet kiss pressed close upon my lips,
One moment's rest on your swift-beating heart,
And all was over, for the hour had come
For us to part.

A sudden forward motion of the train,
The world grown dark although the sun still shone,
One last blurred look through aching tear-dimmed eyes - 
And you were gone.

I can't resist adding one of Roland's poems as well. I've always loved this one, with its wistful poignancy. He was killed just a month later, just before Christmas 1915.

Hedauville, November 1915

The sunshine on the long white road
That ribboned down the hill,
The velvet clematis that clung
Around your window-sill,
Are waiting for you still.

Again the shadowed pool shall break
In dimples round your feet,
And when the thrush sings in your wood,
Unknowing you may meet
Another stranger, Sweet.

And if he is not quite so old
As the boy you used to know,
And less proud, too, and worthier,
You may not let him go –
(And daisies are truer than passion-flowers)
It will be better so.

Vera Brittain and the First World War - Mark Bostridge

The new movie based on Vera Brittain's autobiography Testament of Youth is just about to be released in Australia. Testament of Youth is one of my favourite books & I've already posted about it here so there's not much chance that I won't go along to see the movie (you can see the trailer here). Mark Bostridge co-wrote a biography of Vera with Paul Berry, her literary executor & he was a consultant on the new film. This book, which combines biography with the story of how Testament of Youth was written & the afterlife of the book as television series, ballet & now film, is a useful introduction to Vera Brittain's life.

I have to say that this book is probably most useful to someone who sees the movie & wants to know a little more about Vera's life. Having read everything I can get my hands on by & about Vera since reading Testament of Youth in the late 70s, there wasn't anything very new here. The first chapters tell the story of Vera's life as a provincial young lady in Buxton, her struggle to be allowed to study at Oxford, her close relationship with her brother, Edward & her meeting with Roland Leighton, the young man she fell in love with & who was killed just before Christmas 1915. Vera had decided to postpone her studies to become a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse & worked in hospitals in London, Malta & France. After the war, when she had lost everyone who was closest to her, Vera returned to Oxford, meeting Winifred Holtby, who became her closest friend, & becoming a writer & lecturer, living in London. Vera married George Catlin in 1925 & had two children, but her wartime experiences never ceased to occupy her thoughts & she tried many different ways of telling her story.

War memoirs weren't wanted in the immediate aftermath of the war & it wasn't until the late 1920s that people wanted to read about the war. Vera had tried to reimagine her experiences as fiction; she tried to have her wartime diary published but finally she decided to write a memoir of her life which would take in more than just the war years. Testament of Youth covers 1900-1925, Vera's childhood in Buxton, her desire to study & the years after 1918 when Vera tried to make a new life for herself after the shattering experiences & losses of the war. At the core of the book, however, are those four years of the war & the very personal story she tells of her love for Roland, her friendships with two other men, Victor Richardson & Geoffrey Thurlow, her love for her brother, Edward, & her own war service as a nurse. As well as telling her own story, Vera wrote the book as a tribute to the men she lost & also to emphasize the fact that women & women's work played a vital part in the war effort. Testament of Youth was one of the first books to explore women's experiences of the war. It may not have been the first book to do so but it was certainly the most successful.

The success of Testament of Youth changed Vera's life. I enjoyed reading about the way Vera went about writing the book, because I love reading about how writers work, the changes she made to her feelings & responses to events as shown in her diaries & letters of the time & the way she shaped the narrative. The most interesting section of this book was the description of how Testament of Youth was rediscovered in the 1970s (unfortunately after Vera's death) by Virago which led to the wonderful TV series with Cheryl Campbell. The feminist movement was instrumental in rediscovering books like Testament of Youth that described the experiences of women in a conflict dominated by the war memoirs & poetry of men - Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon & Robert Graves. I didn't know that a ballet, Gloria, by Kenneth MacMillan, had been based on the book.

The production of the new movie is described with Bostridge's personal experiences of being on the set. There's also a chapter taken from Lives For Sale, a book about the experiences of biographers edited by Bostridge that explores in more depth the death of Edward Brittain & how Bostridge wrote his biography in collaboration with Paul Berry. Lives For Sale, by the way, is an excellent book about the writing of biography with chapters by Antonia Fraser, Hermione Lee, Lyndall Gordon, Margaret Forster & Claire Tomalin among many others. Bostridge also includes a Gazetteer of the places associated with Vera's life & there are many photos included throughout the text as well as colour plates from the new film. So, I would have to say that this book is really only for the Vera Brittain completist (like me) or for someone who sees the film & wants to explore Vera's life a little more. I'd be more inclined to say, read Testament of Youth, I'm sure I'll be rereading it after seeing the new movie but if 600+pp is a little daunting, this book does concentrate on the period of the film.

On a bit of a tangent, I came across this wonderful blog, A Bluestocking Knits, where I read this fascinating post on the accuracy or otherwise of the knitwear in the new film. There's also a link to this article in Harper's Bazaar on the costumes, including some gorgeous hats. (Have a look at the Bluestocking's post on the TV series Outlander as well - haven't seen the series but loved the first four books before I lost interest). I'm sure I'll be nitpicking about any changes to the book in the screenplay but the clothes look fabulous.

Sunday Poetry - Vera Brittain

Next Saturday is Anzac Day & I've been reading about Vera Brittain this week so I thought I would post one of the poems she wrote during the Great War. They were published as Verses of a V.A.D. in 1918 & the subjects range from her war service in London, Malta & France to laments for the young men she lost. This poem was written in response to the death of Geoffrey Thurlow, one of the four men Vera knew well who were killed. It's taken from Because You Died : Poetry and prose of the First World War and after. edited by Mark Bostridge.

In Memoriam G.R.Y.T
(Killed in action, April 23rd, 1917)

I spoke with you but seldom, yet there lay
Some nameless glamour in your written word,
and thoughts of you rose often - longings stirred
By dear remembrance of the sad blue-grey
That dwelt within your eyes, the even sway
Of your young god-like gait, the rarely heard
But frank bright laughter, hallowed by a Day
That made of Youth right's offering to the sword.

So now I ponder, since your day is done,
Ere dawn was past, on all you meant to me,
And all the more you might have come to be,
And wonder if some state, beyond the sun
And shadows here, may yet completion see
Of intimacy sweet though scarce begun.

Beyond the Battlefield : women artists of the two World Wars - Catherine Speck

This beautiful book describes the lives & careers of some of the many women war artists who produced work during World War One & Two. Catherine Speck is Professor of Art History at the University of Adelaide & she has brought together the work of 62 artists from Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Canada & the US. All were professionally trained but rarely officially employed or sanctioned.  Official schemes employing war artists were dominated by men working in the field & on the front line. The paintings, drawings & photographs produced by women artists concentrate on the Home Front but also include scenes in factories, the women's services & hospitals. There are some famous names here - Margaret Preston, Laura Knight, Lee Miller, Stella Bowen. More often, I'd never heard of the artist but the work reproduced in this book is always interesting & often very moving.

I haven't had a chance to read the whole book & I've had to return it to the library because it was reserved so here are just a few pictures showing the wide range of work & subject matter in Beyond the Battlefield.

This is Sybil Craig's picture of women working in a cordite factory in Maribyrnong, Melbourne in 1945.

Olive Mudie-Cooke was a British artist who was in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) during WWI & served in France & Italy. I love this watercolour on brown paper of an ambulance. After the war, she was commissioned to produce this work of her time as a nurse.

Ethel Gabain was commissioned during WWII to document the aftermath of bombing raids in London. This is called Bombed Out Bermondsey, 1941.

This is a famous picture by Dame Laura Knight, Corporal J D M Pearson, GC, WAAF, 1940. Daphne Pearson was the first woman to receive the George Cross for gallantry. She rescued a pilot from his burning aircraft when it crashed on landing at an airfield in Kent. when the plane's bombs exploded, she sheltered the pilot with her body & used her steel helmet to protect his head.

I've put myself back in the reservation queue for this book as I've only had a chance to skim the surface of the fascinating stories of the women artists that Catherine Speck has researched & recovered from obscurity.

Elsie and Mairi Go To War - Diane Atkinson

Listening to Isobel Graham's determination to go out to France as an ambulance driver on  the BBC's Home Front reminded me of this book about two other young women who decided to use their practical skills for the war effort during the Great War.

Elsie Knocker was 30 years old in 1914. Born Elsie Shapter, she was orphaned very young & her siblings were separated, going to live with relatives. Elsie was adopted by Lewis & Emily Upcott. They were educated & artistic people & Elsie was well provided for by a legacy from her father. Elsie made a disastrous marriage, to Leslie Knocker, an accountant ten years her senior, who may have been influenced by Elsie's inheritance. Leslie got a job with an insurance company & they travelled to Java where he took up a position. He turned out to be violent & cruel, subject to mood swings which may have been influenced by alcohol. Eventually, Elsie returned to England & they divorced after six years of marriage. This was a bold step for Elsie to take as divorced women were not considered respectable. Elsie was determined to be free of Leslie & she had a son, Kenneth, to think about as well. Her adoptive parents cared for Kenneth while Elsie looked for work. Eventually she decided to train as a midwife.

Mairi Lambert Gooden-Chisholm was the daughter of a well-to-do Scottish family. Born in 1896, she had a traditional upper-class upbringing. She & her brother were to be seen & not heard. Her education was scrappy & not very thorough. Mairi wasn't particularly close to her parents. They had an estate in Trinidad & often traveled there to attend to business. Mairi rarely accompanied them & when they settled there permanently, she didn't visit them in over 30 years. Mairi's passion was for motorcycling & this is where she met Mrs Knocker, who was a dashing figure in this new circle of friends she met through her membership of the Gypsy Motor Cycle Club. Both women could not only ride but were also excellent mechanics, skills they would find useful during the war.

Elsie & Mairi joined Hector Munro's Flying Ambulance Corps almost as soon as war was declared. They had gone to London to join the Women's Emergency Corps & were hired as dispatch riders. Hector Munro recruited them for the ambulance corps he was setting up to go to Belgium along with a varied group of women including the novelist May Sinclair, drivers, cooks & orderlies. Their role would be to get as close to the front line as possible & transport the wounded back to the Casualty Clearing Stations & hospitals further back. Elsie & Mairi were excited to be given the opportunity to do such worthwhile work & their experiences in those first weeks gave them the idea that would make them famous, the most photographed women of the war.

Elsie was horrified at the number of men who died from shock & exposure as they were being driven to hospital. She felt that if they could be given immediate first aid & somewhere to rest before making the dangerous, uncomfortable journey to hospital, more lives could be saved. This was the genesis of her idea to set up an outpost virtually on the front line at Pervyse. Pervyse was on the Yser Front, the northern section of the Western Front, midway between Nieuport-Bains on the coast to Ypres in the south. Although the English authorities did not approve, the Belgians welcomed Elsie & Mairi & they set up a soup kitchen & first aid post within sight of the trenches. For nearly the next four years, the two women went into No Man's Land to retrieve the wounded (the Germans said that if they wore woolly hats they wouldn't be fired on but if they wore tin hats, they could be mistaken for troops), received official visits from dignitaries including King Albert of Belgium, made a lot of friends on both sides of the conflict & saved many lives.

When the women wanted to retrieve bodies from no-man's-land they sent Shot, their little black-and-white dog, over to the Germans with a note telling them what they wanted to do. Mairi had fond memories of how well the Germans behaved when they were in no-man's-land: 'they looked upon us, I suppose, as being thoroughly daft ... but they were always nice to us'.

There were also personality conflicts with Hector Munro & the other Ambulance Corps members, clashes with officialdom, petty squabbles, the occasional jaunt to a nearby town & romance when Elsie met a dashing airman, Baron Harold de T'Serclaes, whom she later married.

One of the amazing things about the women's work at Pervyse was just how precarious their position was. Not only did they have to keep the work going but they had no official funding. They often had to dash off to England & raise funds by going on speaking tours & courting any publicity they could get. There were so many worthy causes & charities that they had to use every contact they had to raise the money to buy food & supplies. Elsie was an inspiring speaker & she would give lectures illustrated with photographs of the outpost & showing the dreadful conditions they lived in. On one visit Mairi went to Bournemouth to meet her mother & sister, Lucy.

The sight of her in grubby breeches, dusty boots and coat, carrying that lance (a German souvenir) , brought the place to a standstill: 'all the porters flocked round and I had difficulty moving about with it as a crowd followed everywhere'. The sight of a young girl, dusty from the battlefield, like Joan of Arc, brought the war to the heart of London in the same way as the sight of hundreds of soldiers. Her fellow passengers on the train to Bournemouth were fascinated by her stories of the war. When she told them that blankets and pillows were urgently needed at Furnes Hospital they gave her fifteen shillings and wished her well.

The end of the first aid post came when they were gassed in March 1918 & barely escaped with their lives. They returned to England to recuperate & that was the end of their war service. After four years of constant companionship, Elsie & Mairi went their separate ways & never saw each other again. Like many men & women who served during the war, they found it difficult to adjust to civilian life. Elsie's marriage to the Baron didn't survive. She had told him that she was a widow & when his very Catholic aristocratic Belgian family discovered that she was a divorcée, the marriage was doomed. Elsie eventually found her niche as a housekeeper & ran hotels, work that used her gifts as an organiser. She was also active in many volunteer organisations. Mairi became a poultry farmer & was secretary of the Clan Chisholm Society. Elsie gave an interview in 1964 about her war work which is played in this BBC Radio 4 clip from Woman's Hour. I love the photo of the two women in their ambulance - Elsie driving & Mairi beside her. There's also an interview with Diane Atkinson about the book here. This is a terrific book about two brave & determined women who made a great difference to so many wounded men under the most difficult circumstances.

A copy of this book is available from Anglophile Books.

Sunday Poetry - Remembrance Day

With Remembrance Day on Tuesday, I've had to replace Emily Dickinson with a poem by another of my favourite poets, Wilfred Owen. Anthem for Doomed Youth is so poignant & I especially love the second stanza with the image of the sadness of the women at home, living on with that sadness through all the years afterwards.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
      — Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
      Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
      Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
      And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
      Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
      The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Another poem that evokes a similar feeling of looking back to another time was written fifty years later. MCMXIV by Philip Larkin. Looking back at an England that didn't survive the Great War, the innocence that was lost along with the open pubs & the cheery photos of young men joining up for a great adventure.

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;

And the countryside not caring:
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat’s restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word – the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again

Campaigning for the Vote : Kate Parry Frye's Suffrage Diary - ed Elizabeth Crawford

Kate Parry Frye worked as an organiser for the New Constitutional Society for Women's Suffrage (NCS). In 1911, when the diary begins, Kate was 33 years old. She came from a family whose fortunes had declined. Her father, Frederick, was the owner of a chain of grocery stores & a Liberal MP in the 1890s. Kate's mother, Jane, was connected by marriage to the famous Gilbey family of wine & spirits fame. This connection was useful for Mr Frye's grocery business but, unfortunately, by 1911, the business had all but failed. The family gradually retreated to their home at Bourne End, called The Plat. Eventually they had to rent The Plat out & lived in rented houses until, by 1913, they were forced to sell.

Kate had grown up in a secure middle-class family. She had little formal education, but loved the theatre & took lessons in singing, dancing & recitation. She became an actress & had some limited success, touring in a production of J M Barrie's Quality Street. It was on this tour in 1903 that she met John Collins, & they became engaged. Kate often seems rather lukewarm about John, who was very much in love with Kate although she doesn't seem to care for him nearly as much. Certainly in the diary, she mentions her infatuation with at least one other man. John was a fairly unsuccessful actor & they had a long engagement as they couldn't afford to marry. Kate's family supported her theatrical ambitions &, later, her interest in suffragism. She began as a volunteer for the NCS but was glad to accept a paid position as an organiser in 1913 as the family fortunes declined.

The NCS was one of several organisations dedicated to extending the franchise to women. The most famous was the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU) founded by the Pankhursts & notorious for their militancy. As the name suggests, the NCS wanted a constitutional solution to the problem & worked on spreading the word & trying to influence politicians to introduce a Parliamentary Bill for women's suffrage. They also canvassed against anti-suffrage politicians. Kate first became interested in suffrage through attending meetings of the Actresses' Franchise League in 1909, the year before the NCS was founded. Kate's job was to travel around England, mostly Kent, Norfolk & Essex, organising meetings, gathering speakers & canvassing for women's suffrage.

Most of Kate's work involved setting up meetings & canvassing & her diary certainly depicts a relentless struggle to gather support. The work involved was considerable as Kate would arrive in a new town, have to find lodgings for herself & maybe speakers, make contact with supporters, find a venue for the meeting, deal with printers producing posters & handbills, find someone to chair the meeting & drum up an audience. She often describes hours spent canvassing but finding few people at home or meeting an unsympathetic response. Sometimes her lodgings are uncomfortable & her colleagues uncongenial. The meetings could be an outstanding success with interesting speakers & a good turnout or dismal failures with insufficient support from the locals or a rowdy crowd of hecklers. Kate is usually optimistic but this outburst, after a meeting at a rich woman's house where the guests only came for the food, is heartfelt,

I am clean off this campaign. Then home to my pic-nic existence with a mood on me one could have cut off in chunks. I suppose it's a mixture of fatigue and homesickness and disappointment. If the work would only go well I would not mind and it would help me put up with my lot. Why must I live in horrid rooms amongst other people's hideous possessions. What am I paying for, shall I ever have done paying - if only something would come out of it, if only I could justify my existence somehow!!!!
Friday October 25th 1912 - Folkestone 33 Coolinge Road

As well as the day to day work of an organiser, Kate took part in some of the great set pieces of the suffrage movement. She marched in the Women's Coronation Procession organised by the WSPU as a demonstration of women's solidarity. It was the biggest such demonstration ever held & was timed for a few days before the coronation of George V. Kate marched with the Actresses' Franchise League & had a wonderful day, culminating in a meeting at the Royal Albert Hall addressed by Mrs Pankhurst. She was a Group Captain & very proud of the honour.

I was the 3rd section behind the third Floral Arch - very pretty it all looked but some of the walkers of the AFL looked very dowdy. But it was all simply magnificent - 70,000 of us, five abreast, and some of the Sections were just wonderful - a real pageant and I enjoyed myself tremendously. ... The end had not left the Embankment before we started the meeting at 8.30 - 7 miles, 1,000 banners 70 bands. We were just behind one and it was quite lovely marching to it. We kept time to it and at least walked well. Several of the onlookers I heard say that ours was the Smartest Section.
Saturday June 17th 1911

Kate also witnessed the funeral procession for Emily Wilding Davison, who was killed when she ran in front of the King's horse at Epsom on Derby Day 1913.

We saw it splendidly at the start until we were driven away from our position and then could not see for the crowds and then we walked right down Buckingham Palace Rd and joined in the procession at the end. It was really most wonderful - the really organised part - groups of women in black with white lilies - in white and in purple - and lots of clergymen and special sort of pall bearers each side of the coffin. She gave her life publicly to make known to the public the demand of Votes for Women - it was only fitting she should be honoured publicly by the comrades.
Saturday June 14th 1913

John Collins had joined the Territorial Army & was in the Essex and Suffolk Royal Garrison Artillery & so was mobilised with his unit on the outbreak of WWI. He & Kate were married on her 37th birthday in January 1915. She resigned from the NCS in 1916 & the remaining diary entries in the book are on suffrage matters - the granting of the franchise in 1918, the first time she voted in 1924 & attending Mrs Pankhurst's funeral in 1928.

Elizabeth Crawford made the decision to edit the diary severely to only include information about Kate's suffrage activities. While I can understand that the book needed a focus, I would have liked a bit more about Kate's personal life outside the movement. Crawford writes linking passages between entries when Kate is on holidays or visiting family but restricts the entries to Kate's activities as an organiser.

Elizabeth Crawford's blog, Woman and her Sphere, is a great resource for information about the suffrage movement. There are links to all the entries she has written about Kate & other suffrage stories as well. Kate (played by Romola Garai) is going to be featured in the ITV series, The Great War, the People's Story.

Elizabeth Crawford has also written a biography of Kate to be published as an ebook in early August (today, in fact), Kate Parry Frye – The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette, which I'm looking forward to reading to find out what happened to Kate after the struggle for women's suffrage was over.
Edited to add : and here it is, just downloaded this very minute!

Wilfred and Eileen - Jonathan Smith

In 1913, Wilfred Willett is about to graduate from Cambridge & pursue his medical studies at the London Hospital. At a ball just before leaving Cambridge, he meets Eileen Stenhouse, & immediately feels an attraction for her. Eileen is beautiful, well-off but bored with her undemanding life & soon, Wilfred & Eileen are meeting to go for walks & attend galleries & exhibitions. Wilfred's medical studies are absorbing but sometimes bewildering as he learns about hospital hierarchies & is shocked to realise that the patients' welfare isn't always the top priority.

Wilfred's relationship with Eileen is frowned on by both families. Wilfred's parents have never had much sympathy for their son. The descriptions of Wilfred's meals with his parents are excruciating. They feel that Wilfred should concentrate on his studies &, as he relies on an allowance from his father, Wilfred is reluctant to jeopardise his career. Eileen's family are snobbish about Wilfred's prospects. The couple eventually marry in secret in December 1913 & meet for blissful afternoons in a hotel when they can. When war is declared in September 1914, Wilfred is determined to enlist & they're forced to tell their families that they are married.

Forced into a rushed church wedding, Wilfred enlists in the London Rifles Brigade &, after training at Crowborough, is posted to the Front. His regiment is in Belgium, at Ploegsteert, & Wilfred throws himself into his duties as an officer just as he threw himself into his studies at the Hospital. In December 1914, as he helps to bring a wounded man back into the trenches, Wilfred is shot in the head by a sniper. Through a communication mixup, Eileen isn't notified for some time &, when she is told of his condition, she decides to go out to France to bring him home.

Wilfred and Eileen is remarkable because it's based on a true story. In an Afterword, the author tells how he first learnt of the story from a pupil of his at Tonbridge School in the 1970s. The pupil was Wilfred & Eileen's grandson & this conversation led to Smith being entrusted by the family with Wilfred's diaries & papers. He was encouraged to turn the story into a novel, which was published in 1976 & later adapted as a TV series with Christopher Guard & Judi Bowker.

The story is simply told, with a great economy of style. It's a short novel, less than 200pp, & spans only a couple of years but there's so much experience contained within this short time frame. I was especially drawn to Eileen as she seems to draw on reserves of strength that she doesn't even realise she possesses. Defying her family in marrying Wilfred is one thing but when she has to go to the War Office to find out what has happened to Wilfred & then get a passport to go out to bring him home, she is transformed,

Something curious was happening to Eileen. She noticed it that night in her face. She was not by nature self-analytical and no one's habits and instincts could have been further from narcissism; sometimes she dressed if anything rather too casually, people thought, without sufficient attention to detail and straightness of hemline - even safety pins had been seen in her dress. But as she looked into the mirror she was caught and held by something dignified, tenacious, almost wilful in the eyes. Her mouth was set. This most adaptable and sensitive girl was revealing the firmness which perhaps had attracted Wilfred that night in Cambridge.

It's a measure of Smith's skill that Eileen is such a fully-formed character when the book is based on Wilfred's writings, especially as the early sections are more concerned with Wilfred's medical training. There are some horrible scenes in the Hospital of the self-absorption of the godlike surgeons & the contempt of the students for the poor patients who go to them for help. Wilfred's idealism about his work foreshadows the way he will react to the outbreak of war. He feels he must enlist, it's a reversion to his training & class, even though Eileen doesn't want him to. It does provide the catalyst for telling their families about their marriage which would have had to happen anyway but it still leaves them in limbo because they can't really begin their lives together while Wilfred is in the Army. I don't want to spoil the story by writing any more about the ending but it's very satisfying. It was definitely a good idea to print Jonathan Smith's essay as an Afterword rather than an Introduction (even though I never read the Introduction first). I knew from reviews that the novel was based on a true story but I only skimmed the reviews I did read because I didn't want to know too much.

In this year of the centenary of the beginning of WWI, there will be many books published & reprinted. Wilfred and Eileen is a lovely novel with the added interest of being based on truth.

Rilla of Ingleside - L M Montgomery

I've only read the first book in the Green Gables series, Anne of Green Gables, & that was many years ago. I loved Lucy Maud Montgomery's Journals, which I borrowed on Inter Library Loan as they were published over many years. Montgomery's life was a far cry from the happy family life of Anne Shirley, the Cuthberts & Gilbert Blythe, who she eventually marries. I think her writing must have helped her to survive her difficult circumstances with a husband afflicted with mental illness & her sons so very unsatisfactory. Virago are reprinting some of Montgomery's books & I was pleased to be offered Rilla of Ingleside & Jane of Lantern Hill for review. I was especially interested in Rilla of Ingleside because it deals with WWI & it was a very enjoyable as well as heartrending read.

Rilla is the youngest daughter of Anne & Gilbert Blythe. She's 15 & living a peaceful life in Glen St Mary, a small town on Prince Edward Island. Rilla is a typical teenage girl, wanting to grow up as fast as possible & willing to push against her mother's authority just a bit. Rilla is about to attend her first grown-up dance, at a lighthouse on Four Winds Point. Rilla hopes that Kenneth Ford will be there. He is & they dance together & spend an enchanted hour together on the beach. On the night of the party, war is declared between England & Germany, which means that Canada, as part of the Empire, is also at war.

Rilla's brothers Jem & Walter, join up. Jem, with much enthusiasm, as soon as war is declared; Walter reluctantly, as he dreads fighting & is afraid that his courage will fail him at a crucial moment. Other young men in the district enlist &, gradually, Glen St Mary becomes a place for women, children & older men. The strain of being left behind, waiting for news, relying on the newspapers for information of the progress of the war, becomes greater as news of the death & wounding of the local boys drifts back from Europe.

Rilla is determined to help the war effort. She starts a chapter of the Junior Red Cross. She adopts a baby when she calls at a house for a donation & finds a young mother dead & a slovenly, drunk old woman left in charge of a baby boy. His father has gone to England to enlist & Rilla is determined not to leave the baby with the old woman or put him in an orphanage so she takes him home with her in a soup tureen, the only possible receptacle. Rilla begins to grow up as she takes responsibility for the little boy who she calls Jims. The same stubborn nature that led her to announce that she would wear the expensive green velvet hat that she bought, despite her mother's advice, until peace came, also helps her to persevere in raising Jims with the help of a baby care manual & advice from Susan Baker, the family's cook & housekeeper.

There are many amusing episodes in the story. Rilla has to eat humble pie & apologise to Irene Howard, a disagreeable, spiteful girl, when she desperately needs her to sing at a Red Cross concert. Unfortunately, Rilla was so worked up about her apology that she didn't realise until she arrived at Irene's house that she had odd shoes on. Irene spends the whole interview staring at Rilla's feet & makes her grovel & almost lose her temper & walk out, before she agrees to help. Rilla organises a secret war wedding for Miranda Pryor when her pacifist father refuses permission for her to marry Joe Milgrave before he sails to Europe. Rilla, as bridesmaid, ends up having to hold Jims all through the ceremony when he has a tantrum & won't stop crying & then Miranda's overfed dog has a fit & Rilla has to try very hard to keep a straight face. It's something her mother, Anne, would have done in the old Green Gables days.

There's also a lot of poignancy in the story as is natural in a story set during the war. Not all the boys who enlist will come home & of those that do return, they will all be touched either physically or mentally by their experiences. Jem's dog, called Dog Monday, refuses to leave the railway station until he returns & becomes a sad, mournful presence as he refuses all comforts. I admit that I was tearful more than once. Rilla regrets that her youth is passing in such worry & anxiety, not just about her brothers ( another brother, Shirley, becomes a pilot) but also about Kenneth, who left her with a kiss but no firm commitment. Only when the war is over will Rilla & her family be able to look to the future with confidence.

I enjoyed Rilla of Ingleside very much. The style is quite sentimental & I grew very tired of Susan calling Gilbert Dr dear & Anne Mrs Dr dear. It's written in a very romantic style with noble speeches about patriotism & helping the mother country in fighting the Hun. However, it was published in 1921 & I suppose we've grown a little more cynical about such words as patriotism in the century since then. Montgomery writes beautifully of the landscape & the countryside of Prince Edward Island. I also enjoyed Gertrude Oliver, a schoolteacher who boards with the Blythes. She's older & has had a hard life & is reluctant to believe in her present good fortune. She is engaged to a soldier & is prone to prophetic dreams & grand statements. Rilla, Anne & Gilbert, however, are at the heart of the story & their emotions always rang true.

There's a copy of Rilla of Ingleside, as well as many other books by L M Montgomery, available at Anglophile Books.

Asquith Diaries

I'm very tempted by this book at the moment, Margot Asquith's Great War Diaries. I haven't succumbed just yet as I've bought a few books lately & really don't need any more. Margot was the second wife of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith who was PM from 1908-1916. Margot, therefore, was right there at the centre of politics at this crucial time.

This morning, as I was dusting the study, I was thinking about Margot & remembered that I had an Asquith diary on the tbr shelves. Lady Cynthia was the stepdaughter-in-law of Margot, being married to the PM's son, Herbert. I bought this second hand copy years ago &, on opening it up at random, was very encouraged to see this entry from March 11th 1915,

A lot more snow fell. The weather is most depressing. I frowsted all morning. I have been re-reading Jane Eyre with tremendous enjoyment. I still find Rochester irresistible ... I suppose I ought to have outgrown his charm.

I like Cynthia already! This edition was published in 1968, with an Introduction by the novelist L P Hartley. I was intrigued by this comment from the blurb,

She wrote with the bewildering fullness of a still-leisured age - and very, very frankly, so that even now many excisions have been made for reasons other than length, before it was possible to publish this selection.

What has been left out? Has a fuller "selection" ever been published in the 46 years since first publication?? I must investigate! Wouldn't it be interesting to read these two diaries side by side as they cover practically the same period? Can you tell I'm talking myself into making a little purchase? Don't worry, if I succumb, I'll confess all.

One of Ours - Willa Cather

Claude knew, and everybody else knew, seemingly, that there was something wrong with him. He had been unable to conceal his discontent. Mr Wheeler was afraid he was one of those visionary fellows who make unnecessary difficulties for themselves and other people. Mrs Wheeler thought the trouble with her son was that he had not yet found his Saviour. Bayliss was convinced that his brother was a moral rebel, that behind his reticence and his guarded manner he concealed the most dangerous opinions. The neighbours liked Claude, but they laughed at him, and said it was a good thing his father was well fixed. Claude was aware that his energy, instead of accomplishing something, was spent in resisting unalterable conditions, and in unavailing efforts to subdue his own nature. ... the old belief flashed up in him with an intense kind of hope, and intense kind of pain, - the conviction that there was something splendid about life, if he could but find it!

Claude Wheeler has grown up on a farm in Nebraska. His father is prosperous but unsympathetic, prone to laughing at his sensitive son's desire to do more with his life. His mother is quiet & pious, supportive but powerless to influence her overbearing husband. Claude's older brother Bayliss has already left home & runs a store in the town. Younger brother Ralph is indulged & full of his own importance. Mahailey, the cook & housekeeper, does her best to help Claude & his mother.

Claude's best friend is Ernest, who has immigrated from Germany & can't understand Claude's desire for something different. "You Americans are always looking for something outside yourselves to warm you up , and it is no way to do. In old countries, where not very much can happen to us, we know that, - and we learn to make the most of little things". Claude finally convinces his father to allow him to go away to college & there he meets the Erlich family, who are everything Claude wants to be. European, cultured, welcoming. They're not a rich family but they don't worry about their poverty as Claude worries about having the right clothes or knowing the right things.

Claude's time at college comes to an abrupt end when his father sends Ralph off to manage a farm he's bought & Claude must come home. He thinks he's found his ideal in Enid Royce. He builds a beautiful home for them & has great plans but the marriage is a failure. Enid is more interested in her work for the Temperance Society & her sister's missionary work in China, than in her husband. Another dream shatters as Enid leaves to look after her ailing sister & Claude abandons his new home & goes back to the farm.

The outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 reignites his interest & his idealism. Although the United States doesn't enter the war for several years, Claude & his mother follow the war news in the newspapers with great interest. Here, at last, Claude believes, is an ideal worth pursuing. The sinking of the Lusitania & the stories of the suffering of refugees fire him with the desire to help the Europe he learnt about in college & on his visits to the Erlichs. He's ashamed that his country is just standing by, but as soon as the US enters the war, Claude enlists & is sent to France. He survives a horrendous voyage on a troop ship & undertakes more training when he reaches France. Eventually he is sent to the Front.

I loved this book, it will definitely be in my Top 10 of the year. Claude is a wonderful character, always dissatisfied & looking for more but never sulky or sullen. Maybe he's over-sensitive about his shortcomings but he is always searching for a life more fulfilling than the one mapped out for him by his father. Claude is a compassionate man. He never reproaches Enid for the failure of their marriage although he should have listened to her father, who warned him from his own bitter experience how a marriage to a woman like Enid could be. After every disappointment, Claude retreats & then starts searching again.

Willa Cather writes so beautifully of the Nebraska she knew as a girl, all the descriptive writing is so vivid whether in Nebraska or France. Here, Claude has an introduction from a friend to Mlle de Courcy, a woman living in one of the newly liberated areas of France. His visit lasts only an afternoon but their talk ranges over the past & the present as he tells her about Nebraska & the farm & she describes how she has survived the years of occupation.

There was nothing to do but to take his helmet and go. At the edge of the hill, just before he plunged down the path, he stopped and glanced back at the garden lying flattened in the sun, the three stone arches, the dahlias and marigolds, the glistening boxwood wall. He had left something on the hilltop which he would never find again.

Elegiac moments like this are contrasted with the horrors of war as the young Americans are thrown into the chase after the retreating German Army.

Willa Cather wrote, in a letter to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, about her cousin, Grosvenor, & the influence that his life had on the creation of Claude,

We were very much alike, and very different. He could never escape from the misery of being himself, except in action, and whatever he put his hand to turned out either ugly or ridiculous.... I was staying on his father's farm when the war broke out. We spent the first week hauling wheat to town. On those long rides on the wheat, we talked for the first time in years, and I saw some of the things that were really in the back of his mind.... I had no more thought of writing a story about him than of writing about my own nose. It was all too painfully familiar. It was just to escape from him and his kind that I wrote at all.

Cather's own struggle to leave the prairie behind is also part of Claude. She didn't want the book to be labelled a "war novel", but inevitably, it was. Published in 1922, the critics were mostly unkind, praising the first half set in Nebraska because that's what they considered she knew best, but disliking the sections dealing with the war as they thought she romanticized this conflict that sent so many young men to their deaths. However, it became a bestseller & won the Pulitzer Prize the following year.

I read quite a few of Willa Cather's novels when I was a teenager but I haven't read any in recent years apart from The Song of the Lark. I've been reading Heavenali's reviews of Cather, including One of Ours, & I've ordered Sapphira and the Slave Girl & Death Comes for the Archbishop. More for the tbr shelves!

Sunday Poetry - ANZAC Day

It was ANZAC Day on Friday so this anonymous poem is appropriate to remember all those buried, not just at Gallipoli, but anywhere far from home. It's called The Graves at Gallipoli. I wonder when it was written. There's an echo of Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est but that Latin tag would have been well-known so it may not necessarily be a reference to Owen. This poet, too, seems to use the reference seriously rather than ironically as Owen does.

The herdman wandering by the lonely rills
Marks where they lie on the scarred mountain's flanks,
Remembering that wild morning when the hills
Shook to the roar of guns and those wild ranks
Surged upward from the sea.

None tends them. Flowers will come again in spring,
And the torn hills and those poor mounds be green.
Some bird that sings in English woods may sing
To English lads beneath - the wind will keep
Its ancient lullaby.

Some flower that blooms beside the Southern foam
May blossom where our dead Australians lie,
And comfort them with whispers of their home;
and they will dream, beneath the alien sky,
Of the Pacific sea.

'Thrice happy they who fell beneath the walls,
Under their father's eyes', the Trojan said,
'Not we who die in exile where who falls
Must lie in foreign earth.' Alas! our dead
Lie buried far away.

Yet where the brave man lies who fell in fight
For his dear country, there his country is.
And we will mourn them proudly as of right -
For meaner deaths be weeping and loud cries:
They died pro patria!

Oh, sweet and seemly so to die, indeed,
In the high flush of youth and strength and pride.
These are our martyrs, and their blood the seed
Of nobler futures. 'Twas for us they died.
Keep we their memory green.

This be their epitaph. 'Traveller, south or west,
Go, say at home we heard the trumpet call,
And answered. Now beside the sea we rest.
Our end was happy if out country thrives:
Much was demanded. Lo! our store was small - 
That which we had we gave - it was our lives.'

Four Sisters - Helen Rappaport

There have been many books written about the tragedy of the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, & his family. I know, I've read an awful lot of them. Helen Rappaport's new book, Four Sisters, has found a new way to tell the story, through the lives of the four Grand Duchesses, Olga, Tatiana, Maria & Anastasia.

The story of the Romanovs has traditionally concentrated on the relationship between Nicholas & his German-born wife, Alexandra. They were fortunate in marrying for love & that love never failed them. They were also blessed with a happy family life. However, that is about the only good fortune they enjoyed. Alexandra was very shy & often appeared haughty. She had no time to acclimatise herself to Russia & Russian society. Nicholas became Tsar unexpectedly when his father, Alexander III, died at the age of only 49. Alix arrived to find her future father-in-law on his deathbed & her wedding was clouded by grief. The superstitious Russians said that the Tsar's bride had come to them behind a coffin. Alix converted to Russian Orthodoxy & embraced her religion with a fervour that was unusual among the aristocracy. She didn't enjoy society, unlike her popular mother-in-law, the Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna, & she was often in bad health, so grand occasions were torture for her on several levels.

Above all else, Alix was expected to provide an heir to the throne. She was soon pregnant & Olga was born the year after her marriage. However, as three more daughters followed, Alix's desperation to have a son led her to explore mysticism & quack doctors such as the notorious Maître Philippe. When she gave birth to the long-awaited Tsarevich, Alexey, in 1904, the joy of the family was clouded by the realisation that the baby suffered from haemophilia. Alix knew what this meant. Her mother, Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria, had been a carrier of the disease & one of Alix's brothers had died in childhood after his bleeding couldn't be stopped after a fall. Alexey's illness dominated the rest of Alix's life. It led her to isolate herself & her family more & more at Tsarskoe Selo, the Tsar's estate outside St Petersburg. It also led her to rely on healers such as Rasputin, who claimed to be able to help Alexey's suffering. There were many reasons for the fall of the Romanovs but the secrecy about Alexey's illness & the invisibility of the royal family surely contributed to the rumours that circulated among the aristocracy, especially after the outbreak of war in 1914.

Helen Rappaport has told this familiar story but concentrates on the lives of the four Grand Duchesses who have often been dismissed as pretty girls in white dresses & big hats. Olga, Tatiana, Maria & Anastasia were never second best in their parents' eyes. However it was inevitable that their lives would be dominated by the need to protect & watch over Alexey & support Alix whose health was never robust. Alix's wish for privacy & distaste for society also led to her daughters leading very restricted lives. Their only social outings were tea parties at their Aunt Olga's house. They met very few people outside the household. Their tutors, servants, ladies-in-waiting & the sailors on the royal yacht, the Shtandart, were their companions. Above all, they had each other.

Their self-contained way of life continued even as the girls became young women. Alix infantilised her daughters, referring to them as the Big Pair & the Little Pair & calling them her girlies in letters to Nicholas when Olga & Tatiana were in their 20s. They may have occasionally signed letters collectively as OTMA but they were individuals. Olga sometimes suffered from being the eldest & expected to set a good example to her siblings. Tatiana was the most beautiful of the girls but also the most enigmatic. Tall & elegant like her mother, she also shared Alix's reserve & could appear haughty. Maria suffered from being the middle child but was open hearted & the most Russian in temperament. Anastasia was the boisterous, unruly child, always ready to make a joke but a trial to her tutors. All of them were desperate to find out about the life outside, as they called it. Whenever they met strangers, especially young women, they would avidly question them about the parties they went to, the dresses they wore, what life was like outside the confines of the palace.

Olga was 19 & Tatiana was 17 when WWI broke out. Along with Alix, they trained with the Red Cross & became nurses in a hospital set up at Tsarskoe Selo. In a way, they were liberated by the war. Finally they had worthwhile work to do & their dedication impressed their colleagues, the soldiers they nursed & the wider society. Photographs of the Grand Duchesses in their Red Cross uniforms were widely circulated. Tatiana was born to be a nurse although Olga eventually found that her health, both physical & mental, was undermined by the work. Maria & Anastasia had their own responsibilities as hospital visitors, helping the wounded men write letters home & hearing their stories. Unfortunately the war was not going well for Russia. Nicholas took over command of the troops & took Alexey with him to Headquarters which, again, allowed people to see the Tsarevich & get to know the royal family. It was too late & when revolution erupted in 1917, Nicholas abdicated.

Initially there was some hope that the Romanovs would be allowed to go into exile, in England or to the Crimea, where they had always been so happy. Gradually these hopes faded & they were imprisoned, first at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, then in Siberia at Tobolsk & finally, Ekaterinburg where they were murdered in July 1918.

Helen Rappaport has written an intensely moving book about the lives of four young women who never really had a chance to fulfill their great potential. Her research has uncovered much that was new to me, including some photographs that have never before been reproduced. She also discovered a collection of letters written by Anastasia from their Siberian imprisonment to her friend, Katya Zborovskya, that add to the picture of their lives at this time. Boredom & apprehension for the future, along with a sense of the love the family had for each other & their religious faith which never wavered. The story of the final weeks of the family's lives has been told by Rappaport in her earlier book, Ekaterinburg : the Last Days of the Romanovs (2008), as well as the horrific aftermath of the murders & she doesn't repeat those scenes here.

I also felt more sympathy for Alexandra. Her life must have been dominated by her ill-health. She had five pregnancies in ten years as well as a phantom pregnancy & her health never recovered. She also had the never-ending fear for Alexey's health as well as the times of anguish when he was ill. There must also have been an element of guilt at being the transmitter of the disease that was torturing her son. It's understandable that she clutched at straws when she allowed herself to be convinced by faith healers but none the less tragic that she couldn't see what damage she was doing to her family.

I loved Four Sisters. It's a story told with great sympathy & insight & makes the tragedy of the unlived lives & unfulfilled potential of the Romanov Grand Duchesses even more poignant.