The Past is Myself - Christabel Bielenberg

Christabel & Peter Bielenberg were married in 1934. She was English but she gave up her British citizenship to live in Hamburg with Peter, a would-be lawyer from a liberal family. The Bielenbergs & their friends thought that Hitler was a joke; they couldn't believe that his crude appeal to xenophobia & nationalism could really succeed. However, as time went on, they became more & more distressed by the direction Germany was taking. Peter qualified as a lawyer & joined his father's firm but, when a client who had been acquitted was immediately picked up by the Gestapo & rearrested, he could no longer see any point in practising law.

By the time war broke out in 1939, Peter was working for the Ministry of Economics, eventually spending most of the war managing an aircraft factory in Graudenz. Christabel & their three sons were living in Berlin until the bombing became too intense. They spent most of the war in a village in the Black Forest. Peter's friends including Adam von Trott, one of the group who planned the July 20, 1944 assassination of Hitler. When the plot failed, Peter was caught up in the aftermath, arrested & eventually imprisoned in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Chris was able to get an interview with the Gestapo officer in charge of Peter's case & convinced him of Peter's innocence. He was released & went into hiding for the rest of the war to avoid being called back to his Army unit. The book ends with the arrival of Allied troops at the end of the war.

This is a fascinating memoir that shows a different side to the war. I've read many books about the Home Front in England but very few from the German side, let alone by an Englishwoman in Germany. The threat of the Nazis becomes more evident as the years pass. Soon, the Bielenbergs are wary with new people, sounding them out before they can speak freely. Even a joke about Hitler or an unguarded comment can lead to prison. Living under such constant strain must have been wearing. Peter was involved on some level with the German Resistance who opposed Hitler & must have been under surveillance. I found it astonishing that Chris didn't suffer from discrimination because she was English, even as the Allied bombing raids intensified. I can't imagine that a German woman would have avoided internment in England during the war. It may have been due to class. The Bielenbergs were a comfortable middle-class family & when they move to Rohrbach, the villagers do all they can to make Chris & the children feel at home.

Life in Rohrbach goes on much as it always has, apart from the problems of rationing. There's only one Nazi in the village but no-one pays any attention to him. When an American airman is shot down & finds his way to the village, the Mayor rings the nearest town for instructions. When told to lock him up, the only police cell is cleaned, the bed made with fresh linen & an enormous meal offered to the exhausted American. I couldn't help but think of the scene in the movie Mrs Miniver when a German pilot is shot down & spouts Nazi propaganda to the last.

Once Peter is arrested, the pace of the narrative quickens & it reads almost like a thriller. Chris gets permission to see Peter in Ravensbrück & her journey by train (in a compartment with the wife & daughters of the Camp Commandant) & then the long walk around the perimeter of the camp is incredibly tense. Her journey to Berlin to see Lange, the Gestapo officer, & her interrogation, is also full of tension but the anger she feels drives away her nerves. She describes the ruins of the city, meets an old friend who now lives among those ruins, & realises how safe she has been in the country. She is saved from almost certain death when a stranger advises that she leave her train & take the Underground. Later she hears that the train was bombed & many people killed.

On her journey back to Rohrbach, she finds herself alone in a carriage with an SS officer. He tells her of his life in Riga in Latvia &, as his family was persecuted by the Russians, they thought the Germans had come to liberate them. He had Aryan looks so was recruited for the SS & participated in the massacre of Jews in Poland. Once he knows that Chris is not German (she tells him she's Irish) he pours out his story. When Peter is released from prison, he tells Chris what happened to him through one long night. He never speaks of it again. He was extraordinarily lucky to be prevented by his work from being with the conspirators on July 20 & so was able, with Chris's help, to be released. Until the war ends, Peter hides near Rohrbach & the whole village must be aware of what is happening.

Chris wrote The Past is Myself in the 1960s & she was criticized for what some critics felt she left out. She does mention the persecution of the Jews & she shelters a Jewish couple for a couple of nights. However, there's no mention of the Holocaust at all. She acknowledges that she & her family were fortunate. Their life in Rohrbach was comparatively safe, away from the devastating raids of the major cities. The villagers seemed to be sensible, pragmatic people who turned a cynical eye on their government even though they weren't free to express their feelings too openly. Even Peter's involvement with the assassination plot was peripheral & he was lucky to be released. Luck seemed to be with the Bielenbergs at every turn. When faced with these criticisms, Chris said that she wrote the book with the knowledge she had at the time. Like many Germans she found it difficult to believe in the enormity of the camps. The newspapers were censored & she just didn't know, even though she should have been in a position to know as Peter was part of the opposition to the regime. She wrote the book to show another side of Germany to counteract the stereotype of all Germans being Nazis. I think it's valuable to hear stories from all sides & Chris's perspective as an Englishwoman is very revealing. The book is a gripping read & I found it fascinating.

Christabel Bielenberg was on Desert Island Discs in November 1992 & I found it very interesting to listen to this after reading the book. I also have the sequel to The Past is Myself, The Road Ahead, on the tbr shelves which describes life after the war when the Bielenbergs lived in Ireland.

Listening to History

I've been listening to some great historical biographies over the last month. Simon Sebag Montefiore's latest book is a history of The Romanovs from 1613-1918. This is a huge subject, telling the story of all the Romanov tsars from Michael, who reluctantly took the throne in the 17th century during the Time of Troubles, to Nicholas II, whose downfall & abdication in 1917 led to the murder of his family at Ekaterinburg the following year. I've read a lot of Russian history & there are some periods I know well - Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, the Decembrist period, Nicholas II - but I knew very little about the 17th century tsars & the Empresses Elizaveta & Catherine I. Montefiore tells his story with gusto & includes as much violence & sex as possible.

The story of the Romanovs is one of excess & violence. Most royal families, at least until the modern period, found themselves at war with each other. There have been many examples of rulers & their heirs not getting along. Power is a precious thing to those who have it & an irresistible attraction to the next in line. The Romanovs were no different. Peter the Great imprisoned his son, Alexis, had him tortured & may have taken part in the torture himself. Catherine the Great wasn't exactly distraught when her husband, Peter III, was murdered, leaving her to rule. Catherine's son, Paul, was murdered as well, although his son, Alexander I, never fully emerged from the guilt he felt about his father's death.

Excess in the form of wealth & extravagant consumption is another theme. From Peter the Great's determination to build his city on the Neva, St Petersburg, to Catherine the Great's refurbishment of palaces in the city & at the village of Tsarskoe Selo, where the Imperial family could live more privately, no expense was spared. Catherine was a great collector, amassing the collection at the Hermitage Palace. The incredible wealth of the Romanovs lasted until the end, with the Fabergé Easter eggs of the last Tsars exemplifying the conspicuous consumption of the aristocracy. This excess was paid for by the labour of millions of serfs & citizens. The divide between the autocratic regime & the vast majority of Russians could only lead to disaster. The assassination of a reforming tsar like Alexander II led to the reactionary reign of his son so that even when moves were made towards modernising Russia, they were often stymied by the inherent problems of ruling such an enormous country & the logistical problems caused by the tyranny of distance.

I enjoyed Simon Sebag Montefiore's telling of the story very much & Simon Russell Beale's narration was excellent. I did wonder if we needed so many quotations from the racy love letters Alexander II wrote to his young mistress (& later, his morganatic wife), Katya Dolgorukaya, or so many descriptions of knoutings & tortures, but the book has been amazingly successful for a serious history (over 50 reservations on our copies at work) so the author knows what sells. It kept me listening for nearly 29 hours & I listened to the last 5 hours over a weekend as the compelling description of the last years of Nicholas & Alexandra was so enthralling.

My interest in the ancient world led to my other history audio, Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra : a life. The last of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, Cleopatra is almost a mythic figure. I knew the basic outline of her story but this biography filled in a lot of gaps. Cleopatra was an amazingly determined woman. She was co-ruler with her father & then after his death, with her younger brother as co-ruler & husband, according to tradition because a woman wasn't thought to be capable of ruling alone. She was able to consolidate her position & survive the attempted treachery of her brother & his advisers. Several plots by this brother, Ptolemy XII, &, after his death, by another brother  & co-ruler, Ptolemy XIV, led to Cleopatra appealing to Rome's most famous general, Julius Caesar, for assistance. Egypt's enormous resources made it an irresistible prospect for Rome who were keen to have as many client kingdoms ruled by compliant rulers as possible. Cleopatra's personal relationship with Caesar, which led to the birth of their son, Caesarion, caused scandal but neither cared. I hadn't realised that Cleopatra was in Rome, living in one of Caesar's villas, when he was assassinated. She very quickly left Rome for Alexandria, where she proclaimed Caesarion her co-ruler, thereby satisfying tradition & removing the need for her to marry.

Cleopatra's relationship with the Roman general Marc Antony has become legendary. Stacy Schiff does an excellent job of picking her way through the myths & the hostile propaganda to try to explain the attraction between them. As most of the contemporary or near-contemporary accounts of the period were written by Roman historians, Cleopatra has been attacked & blamed for everything that went wrong. The relationship between Cleopatra & Antony lasted ten years & they had three children together. Cleopatra needed Antony's military assistance & he needed the wealth & resources she could bring in his battles with his rival & co-Tribune, Octavius. The personal dynamic between the two men was complicated by Antony's marriage to Octavius' sister, Octavia, & Octavius' reputation as a sickly man, not a warrior like Antony. Octavius had been adopted by Julius Caesar as his heir but Cleopatra had Caesar's son, a situation that was always a threat to Octavius' power base. The breakdown of the relationship between Octavius & Antony, complicated by Antony's affair with Cleopatra & his divorce from Octavia, led to the battle of Actium, where Octavius was triumphant. In the aftermath, both Antony & Cleopatra committed suicide.

I loved all the detail in this book about Cleopatra's Court & the city of Alexandria. Cleopatra was an incredibly shrewd politician. She used her advantages well. Although she was not thought to be particularly beautiful, she was intelligent & witty, able to enthrall Caesar & Antony. She was also pragmatic in a very cut-throat world. She had her siblings exiled or murdered when they threatened her power; she made her son co-ruler so she didn't need to marry again; she constantly identified with the goddess Isis to enhance her prestige with her own people & put on extravagant public ceremonies - she knew the value of spectacle in politics. She seems to have been the dominant partner in her relationship with Antony, she certainly had the financial clout & she seems to have been the stronger personality. Antony almost fell apart after Actium, he apparently believed that he would be allowed to disappear into exile. Even his suicide was a mess. Cleopatra was determined that she would not become a trophy for Octavius, paraded through Rome as a captive in his Triumph. She meticulously planned her death (it may have been poison rather than the famous asp) & denied Octavius his prize. Her enduring reputation rests on a few images - smuggling herself in to see Caesar wrapped up in a carpet; floating down the Cydnus River to Tarsus to meet Antony, dressed as Aphrodite; dying from the bite of an asp in her own mausoleum. Stacy Schiff has used the available sources brilliantly to create a portrait of a remarkable woman & queen whose career was unique in antiquity & still fascinates today.

I also want to mention a history podcast that I've recently discovered. Dan Snow is a historian & broadcaster & he has a podcast called History Hit. He talks to historians, mostly British, about their latest book or a topic in the news & I'm really enjoying browsing the back catalogue. I've recently listened to Anna Keay on the Duke of Monmouth, Adrian Goldsworthy on his new book, Pax Romana, Marc Morris on 1216, Anna Whitelock on the Tudors & Janina Ramirez on the Anglo-Saxons. Of course, it's all adding to my tbr shelves but everything I see, read or hear seems to do that! You can listen to the podcast at the website or subscribe from wherever you get your podcasts.

Leon Roch - Benito Pérez Galdós

Last year, I read a novel by 19th century Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós. Fortunata and Jacinta was one of my favourite books of 2015 so I was pleased when another of his novels was proposed for my 19th century bookgroup. Leon Roch was written much earlier in the author's career & it's very different from Fortunata. One of the members of the bookgroup memorably described it as more like an opera than a novel & I would have to agree. It's dramatic, overwrought & passionate & not always easy to read but I did enjoy it. It features two strong female characters, as the later novel does, & their stories were fascinating.

Our hero, Leon, is a wealthy young man, interested in science & literature. He's also an atheist. He has been in love with a childhood friend, Pepa de Fúcar, daughter of the immensely rich Don Pedro, Marquis de Casa-Fúcar, a self-made man. Leon has fallen suddenly in love with Mária de Tellería, the beautiful daughter of another Marquis, but an impoverished one. His reasons for marriage set out all the problems that will plague him in the future,

Mária's goodness, her sense, her modesty, the submissiveness of her intelligence, her exquisite of life added to the seriousness of her tastes and instincts - all made me feel that she was the wife for me - I will be perfectly frank with you: her family are not at all to my liking. But what does that matter? I can separate from my relations. I only marry my wife and she is delightful ... Her education has been neglected and she is as ignorant as can be; but on the other hand, she is free from all false ideas and frivolous accomplishments, and from those mischievous habits of mind which corrupt the judgement and nature of the girls of our day.

Rumours of Leon's engagement enrage Pepa &, in a fit of pique, she marries Federico Cimarra, a worthless man with nothing to recommend him.

Leon & Mária are very happy at first, although his atheism upsets her as she's a conventionally religious young woman. Her rapacious family - parents & two brothers - are constantly in debt & Leon constantly & good-humouredly bails them out. Mária's other brother, her twin, Luis Gonzaga, is a monk &, when he is dying of consumption, he comes to stay with the Rochs. Luis' influence on his sister is immense as he's considered a saintly young man. He reproaches her for marrying an atheist & then for doing nothing to convert him. Mária becomes more overtly religious, dressing simply & attending Mass several times a day. She becomes estranged from Leon as he resists her emotional blackmail in her attempts to convert him & she resists his egotistical plans to educate her. Both realise painfully that they cannot change the other.

"Nay," cried Mária with the air of a martyr, "abuse and insult me as much as you will, but do not attack my faith; that is blasphemy."
"It is not blasphemy; I only tell you that you, and you alone, have made our marriage tie a chain of bondage. ... When we married you had your beliefs and I had mine, and my respect for every man's conscience is so great that I never thought of trying to eradicate your faith; I gave you complete liberty; I never interfered with your devotions, even when they were so excessive as to mar the happiness of our home. Then there cam a day when you went mad - I can find no other word to describe the terrific exaggeration of your bigotry since, six months ago, here in my garden, your hapless brother died in your arms. Since then you have not been a woman but a monster of bitterness and vexatiousness ..."

Pepa's marriage has been as unhappy as could have been predicted from its beginning. Her only joy is her daughter, Ramona, known as Monina. Leon & Pepa meet again for the first time in some years. Leon realises that he has always loved Pepa & her love for him has never wavered. She admits that she married Cimarra in her despair at Leon's engagement to Mária.

"... And bitter pique rankled in my heart and made me resolve that I would give to the least worthy suitor what I had intended for the most worthy. If I could not have the best I would take the worst. Do you remember my throwing out my jewels on the dust-heap? I wanted to do the same with myself. Of what use was I if no one loved me?"

Then, Federico is reported lost at sea on a journey to America. Leon has separated from Mária & moved to a house near Pepa's home at Suertebella, where she lives with her daughter & her father. Pepa & Leon grow closer through their love for her daughter & ugly rumours, mostly spread by Mária's ungrateful family, accuse them of adultery. Mária, encouraged by her false friend, bored, gossipy Pilar de San Salomó, decides to confront Leon with his crimes & collapses. She is taken to Suertebella where her family & her spiritual advisor, Padre Paoletti, alternately accuse Leon & try to comfort Mária, while Leon & Pepa must confront the realities of their relationship & any future they might have.

The operatic part of this novel is in the telling. I can't remember when I last read a novel where characters have conversations that go on for pages & pages at such a pitch of emotion & especially when they're at death's door. Luis Gonzaga takes chapters & chapters to die & all the time he's haranguing Leon or Mária at great length. Mária herself, when she's gravely ill, never stops talking, working herself up to hysteria, encouraged by the priest & her family.

There are some fantastic descriptions & set-pieces. This is Luis Gonzaga, the monk whose zeal cannot be dimmed, even when he's dying,

The lean, angular figure, wrapped in a black gown, with a cord round the slender waist, - bare-headed, feeble and drooping, with eyes always fixed on the ground, with a dull, clammy skin and weak swaying neck that could hardly support the head above it, with broad, yellow, transparent hands like little faggots of thin sticks, too weak for anything but to be folded in prayer - wandered like an ominous shadow through the drawing rooms hung with gaudy papers or tawdry tapestry.

Galdós is funny & satirical about society & about the Church. At a bullfight, the rich find a sudden rainstorm a delightful occurrence while the poor in their open seats have to run for shelter. "After all, the rain is not a serious evil to people who keep a carriage." His opinions of rich women with no real religious feeling, making a great show of their attendance at church & their charity work is scathing & he doesn't hold back in his satire. Mária's family are consummate hypocrites, expecting Leon to rescue them from their creditors while they despise his atheism & believe every scandalous story about his relationship with Pepa. Leon may be our hero but he's shown as just as deluded as Mária; smug in his certainties & dismissive of Mária's feelings. Emotions are always at the highest pitch & drawn out to a much greater length than necessary most of the time. I wondered if Galdos had to fill a certain number of pages for serialization as some scenes are stretched so far that I lost patience. I kept reading for the sharp satire & for the characters of Mária & Pepa, two more of Galdós' strong, feisty women who dominate the story from the beginning.

Joan of Arc - a history - Helen Castor

Everyone knows the story of Joan of Arc. The peasant girl from Domrémy who heard voices as she tended her father's fields. Voices that she believed came from Heaven. These voices told her to go to the Dauphin Charles, fighting a crippling civil war against the English & Burgundians, lead his army, push the enemy out of France & crown him King. We know that Joan did all this but, when the victories stopped, she was captured by the Burgundians, put on trial by the Church as a heretic, handed over to the English & burned at the stake. Fifty years later, in a different political climate, Joan was rehabilitated by the Church & in 1920, she was made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. I read this story, with illustrations I still remember, in my Children's Encyclopedia over 40 years ago.

Helen Castor has taken this story & retold it in a fascinating way. Most accounts of Joan's story begin in Domrémy, in Joan's childhood, then take us on that journey to the Dauphin so that we're already convinced of her mission before she arrives at Chinon. In this book, Joan doesn't even appear until a third of the way through. Castor describes the political situation in France in the early 15th century. She begins with the battle of Azincourt (the English Agincourt) in 1415, describes the split between the victorious English & Burgundian faction, who had the support of the mentally afflicted King Charles VI & the Armagnac faction, supporting the heir to the throne, Dauphin Charles. The reader becomes aware of Joan as the Dauphin does, without knowing any of the traditional backstory. Her deeds seem even more amazing in this context. The desperation of the Armagnacs to believe her story, the decision to give her troops & let her try her luck as they were in such desperate straits, the raising of the siege of Orléans & the triumphant journey to Reims Cathedral to see the Dauphin crowned King. This was the high point in Joan's story.

Once the Dauphin was crowned, however, no one seemed to know what to do with Joan. She was single-minded in her desire to drive the English out of France & frustrated that Charles wouldn't give her the troops she wanted to carry out her plan, that plan that she said had been communicated to her by her voices. Eventually, she was captured by the Burgundians as she tried to relieve Compiègne, just outside Paris. Handed over to the Church as a heretic, she was interrogated, put on trial & declared a heretic. Her voices came from the Devil & her determination to wear male clothing was against the teaching of the Church. Joan briefly recanted when she was confronted with the scaffold & sentenced to life imprisonment. However, she soon restated her belief in her voices & returned to her male clothing. The Church then handed her over to the secular authorities for sentencing & she was burnt at the stake on May 30, 1431 at the age of nineteen.

Joan is one of the few medieval women whose life was so completely documented. The transcripts of her trial & then of the rehabilitation are full of eyewitness accounts of her childhood & her career, the kind of detail that is vital to any biographer. Helen Castor does a wonderful job of explaining just how unusual Joan's journey was. For a teenage girl to get as far as she did with such self-belief & determination was extraordinary. Castor doesn't try to explain Joan's voices. There have been theories that she had epilepsy or was mentally ill. There have been theories that she was an illegitimate member of the royal family. It's like the theories about Shakespeare's plays. Some people can't believe that William Shakespeare from Stratford wrote the plays. Some people can't believe that a peasant girl from Domrémy could have accomplished what she did. Joan's story has all the elements of fairytale or myth but, by going back to the sources & writing without the benefit of hindsight, we can see why the Dauphin wanted to believe in Joan. Her initial success had more to do with politics than piety but, no matter the machinations at Court, Joan's own belief never wavered.

The detailed account of her trial shows Joan, a young woman, ill, in prison & alone, interrogated & questioned by large groups of men - Churchmen, lawyers, doctors - & confidently giving her answers as they circled around her story, moving backwards & forwards in time, trying to trip her up on detail, trying to get the admission they needed about the heretical nature of her experiences & beliefs. The outcome of the trial was never in doubt but the lengths that these men went to, either to save her soul for God by her recantation or make her an outcast from the Church if she stuck to her story, was remarkable. This is a fascinating story, so well told. Even if you think you know the story of Joan of Arc, Helen Castor's book is comprehensive, sympathetic & full of telling detail. This is not a book about a saint; it's the story of a young woman who took the medieval world by surprise & achieved more than anyone could have imagined.

Literary Ramblings

I'm happy to say that I've recovered my mystery reading mojo lately. I reviewed Cynthia Harrod-Eagles' One Under the other day & I've been reading the latest issue of CADS (Crime and Detective Stories), the magazine devoted to crime & mystery fiction, mostly of the Golden Age. Highlights of the new issue of CADS include an article on Josephine Tey's Miss Pym Disposes by Kate Jackson, an article on J Jefferson Farjeon by Philip L Scowcroft & Liz Gilbey introduces readers to Vera Caspary's novel Laura, the basis for the 1944 movie starring Gene Tierney. I first heard about CADS through Martin Edwards' enthusiastic reports here & here but it was only last year that I got around to contacting Geoff Bradley & ordering a copy. As well as ordering the latest copy, I've been ordering a few back issues each time to make the best possible use of the cost of postage to Australia (if you're ordering one, why not four?) so I've been happily dipping into these back issues over the last week or two.

CADS 60 (May 2011) led me down several reading trails which I'm still following up. The feature article by Curt Evans (aka The Passing Tramp) featured several authors since reprinted by the British Library, including Freeman Wills Crofts. Then, there was an article by Christine R Simpson about Lord Peter Wimsey's sleuthing methods, Paul R Moy writes about Margaret Rutherford v Joan Hickson as Jane Marple & Philip L Scowcroft on Christie's The ABC Murders. I've read The ABC Murders before but downloaded it from my library for a reread. Then, Lyn McConchie reviewed First Hit of the Season by Jane Dentinger. In 2011, this series of mysteries featuring out of work actress Joscelyn O'Roarke, was out of print. However, Open Book Media brought them back as eBooks a couple of years ago & I reviewed the first in the series, Murder on Cue. In my review, I wrote that I would like to read more of the series but, of course, I haven't. However, I bought the first couple of books in the series for the eLibrary at work so I now have First Hit of the Season on my iPad. I've also downloaded a sample of another book, Murder in Volume by D R Meredith, long out of print but now available as an eBook. This one features Megan Clark, an out of work paleontologist working as a librarian. I couldn't resist! I was so interested in the fact that many of the writers mentioned in CADS are now available again through reprints both paper & digital - & this issue is only five years old. More details about ordering CADS can be found here.

More reprints. Arnold Bennett is one of those middlebrow writers who fell out of favour in the later 20th century. Virginia Woolf's essay, Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown, probably didn't help. I've only read one of Bennett's novels, The Old Wives' Tale, but I enjoyed it & I've been wanting to read more. I mentioned a few months ago that Penguin will be reprinting Bennett over the next few months & my copy of The Card has just arrived. Vintage are also reprinting Bennett next year, including Clayhanger & The Grand Babylon Hotel. He's obviously due for a revival.

I don't read a lot of historical fiction but I do love reading novels that were written during the period when they're set eg during the World Wars. Casemate's new list of Classic War Fiction looks very interesting. I read a review somewhere of Mr Britling Sees It Through by H G Wells (I thought it was Simon at Stuck in a Book but I've just searched & it wasn't). Anyway, this is a Home Front novel set during the Great War & I'm keen to read it. The covers look beautiful & I'm just shallow enough to be impressed by that!

This is a fascinating article from the Guardian about the archive of material that Germaine Greer has deposited with the University of Melbourne. What begins as a description of Greer's archive becomes a discussion of the problems of retrieving & conserving material kept in obsolete formats. From floppy disks to old versions of Word, the costs involved in keeping this material will be considerable.

Now, a literary confession. After loving The Tale of Genji, I became obsessed with reading another translation. Edward Seidensticker seemed to be a favourite of several readers so, even though I've just finished reading the book, I've bought a copy of the Seidensticker translation. I plan to just reread the Uji chapters (about the last 300pp) as this section forms a complete narrative of its own. I've been dipping in already & the narrative does seem to flow very smoothly & Seidensticker uses proper names rather than titles for the characters which I think will be helpful. Apart from the contents, the Everyman's Library edition is just gorgeous.

Finally, being a bookworm leads to a longer life. It's in the New York Times, so it must be true!

One Under - Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

I seem to be regaining my interest in detective fiction. I used to read a lot of series but I seem to have cut back to only a few favourites. It would be easier to keep up if I could stop myself becoming interested in new subjects. Ancient history is my latest interest. I read Mary Beard's wonderful account of Roman history, SPQR, earlier this year & I've become fascinated by a period I know very little about. However, I've just finished watching Series 9 of Lewis & that reminded me that I hadn't read the latest book in Cynthia Harrod-Eagles' Bill Slider series.

Two deaths, seemingly unconnected. Jim Atherton is called to a death at an Underground station, known as a "one under". It seems to be an uncomplicated suicide. CCTV shows the man jumping in front of the train. There's no one near him, he wasn't pushed, he didn't trip. George Peloponnos was in his late forties, living with his elderly mother, & working for the North Kensington Regeneration Trust. There seemed to be no reason for him to kill himself. On the same day, DI Bill Slider & the rest of his team are at the funeral of another suicide, their colleague, Colin Hollis. The atmosphere of misery at the funeral suits Slider's mood, the guilt he feels at not being able to help Hollis & also the unresolved feelings he has about the loss of the baby his wife, Joanna, was carrying. The baby would have been due around this time.

Slider goes to the scene of another death, on the patch of another station, because the dead girl, Kaylee Adams, lived on a housing estate in Shepherds Bush. Kaylee was found in a ditch by the side of a country road, apparently the victim of a hit & run driver. However, forensic pathologist Freddie Cameron isn't happy with her injuries & doesn't think she was hit by a car. Then there's the absence of Kaylee's bag & phone & why were her knickers on inside out & her shoes found some distance away? Kaylee lived with her younger sister & her mother, who was more concerned with her boyfriends & her next drink than caring for her daughters. When Slider discovers that Kaylee had known another girl, Tyler Vance, who was found drowned, he is determined to find out what happened to her & prevent her death becoming just another statistic.

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles' Bill Slider series are terrific police procedurals. I love the way the reader follows the investigation step by step & makes the discoveries along with the investigating team. This is a long running series (no 19, Old Bones, is published early next year) & Slider's team have become old friends. The painstaking investigation, with flashes of intuition & the odd hunch, draws me in & never lets go. The first death, the suicide of George Peloponnos, seems to be straightforward, but, as a seasoned reader of police procedurals, I knew there had to be a connection. When it was revealed, it was shocking but also incredibly sad. Slider is a decent man, caught between the dictates of his conscience & the struggle to justify a seemingly hopeless investigation when the powers that be control the funding. Even when he is explicitly warned off the investigation, he keeps plugging away, finding other ways to pursue the threads of the story, determined not to give up.

The other aspect of the series that I love is the humour & wit. The chapter headings are often puns & Slider's boss, Porson, can't open his mouth without uttering a malapropism. Slider's personal life is as important as his work. His musician wife, Joanna, still recovering emotionally from the miscarriage but back at work & enjoying it. His father, living next door with his second wife & a willing babysitter for young George, his namesake. There was less emphasis on the personal in this book but I think Harrod-Eagles strikes the right balance. There's even a further instalment of Atherton's fraught love life as he tries to keep up the playboy facade after the departure of Emily, his most serious girlfriend. I read One Under in a weekend & I'm looking forward to the next book in the series. Now that I'm back on the mystery bandwagon, I wonder what will be next?

The Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu

It's so difficult to write about a book like Genji. I've been reading it over the last six weeks & it's been a wonderful experience. Written around 1000 at the Heian Court of Japan by an author whose name we don't know (Murasaki is the name of one of the main characters & may have become a nickname of the author), this is the earliest novel to be widely read today in competing translations that all have their admirers.

The story is in two parts. Two thirds of the book tell the story of Genji, the son of the Emperor by one of his Intimates. Genji's mother came from a nondescript family & her position at Court relied solely on the Emperor's love for her. He favoured Genji above his legitimately born son but politics would not allow him to make Genji his heir. Instead, after the early death of Genji's mother, the Emperor gave Genji the surname Minamoto which enables him, as a commoner, to have more freedom than a member of the Imperial family could have. Genji will be fabulously wealthy & also play an important role at Court, rising up the hierarchy to eventually be giving the honorary title of Retired Emperor. Genji is also devastatingly handsome, exuding a wonderful perfume, charming & skilled at the courtly arts of painting & poetry. As he grows up, his relationships with women will dominate the narrative.

Whoever chanced to lay eyes on Genji was smitten by him. After one glimpse of the radiance that attended him, men of every degree (for the crudest woodcutter may yet aspire to pause in his labors beneath a blossoming tree) wished to offer him a beloved daughter, while the least menial with a sister he thought worthy entertained the ambition to place her in Genji's service. It was therefore all but impossible for a cultivated woman like Chūjō , one who had had occasion to receive poems from him and to bask in the warmth of his beauty, not to be drawn to him.She, too, must have regretted that he did not come more often.

Genji's actions are not always noble or chivalrous but they reflect the dominant role of men in Japanese society. He marries a well-connected young woman, Aoi, a few years older than himself. The marriage is not particularly successful, Aoi resents the match to a younger, illegitimate son of the Emperor, but they have a son, Yūgiri, before Aoi dies. Genji, meanwhile, has fallen in love with his father's young wife, Fujitsubo, & their affair results in the birth of a son who will eventually succeed to the throne, his origins kept secret. When Genji is just a young man, he spends an evening with his friends as they discuss the different kinds of women & the different kinds of love. In some ways, he spends the rest of the novel investigating these kinds of love. Eventually he will build a palace, his Rokujō estate, where he will install a lover in each of the four wings.

Genji's most important & lasting relationship will be with Murasaki, Fujitsubo's niece, who he meets when she is a child of twelve. He takes her into his house & brings her up, eventually seducing her. She becomes the mistress of the east wing at Rokujō and, although they have no children together, Murasaki brings up several other children, & their relationship is close & loving. After his father's death, Genji is sent into exile as a result of the machinations of the new Emperor's mother.
During this period of exile, he meets another of his loves, known as the lady from Akashi. She has a daughter & Genji brings them both to live at Rokujō when he returns in triumph.

Genji agrees to marry the favourite daughter of his half-brother the Emperor who wishes to retire from the world. This is a mistake as the girl is a very ordinary young woman with no talents to attract Genji. He feels obliged to go through with the marriage & is horrified when she is seduced by another man. The boy, Kaoru, is assumed to be Genji's child & his mother is installed in yet another wing of Rokujō. At the same time, Murasaki's health is failing & Genji spends all his time with her. Her death devastates him & although he often declares that he wishes to leave the world & become a monk, he doesn't do this but dies soon after.

The last third of the novel takes place some years later & introduces a younger generation. Kaoru & his friend, Genji's grandson, Niou. These chapters are much more of a piece, telling one tragic story. The two young men become rivals for the attentions of the daughters of a Prince who has retired from the world to live at Uji. The elder daughter, Ōigimi, is courted by Kaoru but he is also attracted to her sister, Naka no Kimi, who is eventually seduced by Niou. Niou installs Naka no Kimi in his palace where she is made unhappy by his philandering. Meanwhile, Kaoru, a serious young man, hesitates to pursue his suit & Ōigimi, distressed by her father's death & her sister's fate, starves herself to death. Kaoru is grief stricken but is intrigued when a young woman appears who is the unrecognised illegitimate daughter of the Uji Prince. This young woman, Ukifune's, story is the most tragic of all as she is pursued by both Kaoru & Niou.

This is a very basic description of the plot which ranges far & wide over the 1100 pages of the book. The style of the narrative is allusive, with most characters referred to by their titles which keep changing. I found it confusing but decided to just keep reading & hope that I would remember who was who. I found that if I didn't read it for a few days (usually because I was at work & couldn't carry the book around with me), it took me a while to get back into the story again. There are hundreds of characters &, as well as the tragedy, many very funny scenes. The narrator also looks at Genji's behaviour, especially his ready recourse to tears, with a satirical eye & by no means approves of his seductions & the pain he causes Murasaki.

Many ladies lived this way under his protection.He looked in on them all, fondly assuring each that despite his long silence he was always thinking of her. "My only care is the parting that no one evades. 'I know not what life remains...'" he would say, and so on. He loved them all, each according to her station. At his rank he might deservedly have swelled with pride, and yet he seldom advertised himself, treating all instead with tact and kindness as place or degree required, so that just this much from him sustained many through the years.

The setting of the story, in Imperial Japan, is so different from anything I've ever read before, that I felt I was learning about the culture as well as reading an involving story. Everything about the period & the country was strange to me. The houses, the rituals, the pastimes. The courtly emphasis on poetry was fascinating. There are over 700 short poems in the text which illuminate behaviour & feelings. They also illuminate character as the ability to compose a suitable poem at any moment is a prized accomplishment. The detailed descriptions of clothes, furnishings, entertainments create this world that is involving yet so removed from the world outside the Court & the privileged classes. There's little mention of politics or war; the pursuit of happiness & the entanglements of his relationships are all that matter to Genji & his circle.

I was also interested in the social rituals. Women's lives were so circumscribed. Men could not approach a woman directly. He would not even see her but speak through intermediaries. If he was in the same room, she would be seated behind a curtain. There are many scenes where men peer through cracks in walls or take advantage of the wind blowing aside a curtain to catch a glimpse of a lady. Men had all the power as is seen in many of the stories in Genji. If a man forced his way into a woman's presence, she was compromised. The men & women in the novel are never alone - solitude seems to be a foreign concept - yet determined young men are able to seduce or rape women almost at will as the servants count for less than nothing in this world of privilege. Even Kaoru, who is more sensitive than his wilful friend, Niou, is capable of causing pain through selfishness when Ōigimi is ill,

He sat near her as usual, and the wind blew the curtains about so much that her sister retired farther back into the room. When the disreputable-looking creatures went to hide from him in embarrassment, he moved closer still. "How do you feel?" he asked through his tears. "I have prayed for you in every way I know, but none of it has done any good, and you will not even let me hear your voice. It is so painful! I shall never forgive you for leaving me this way."

I loved this final section of the book. At around 300pp it's the length of a novel on its own & the narrative is more coherent with just one storyline. It's full of interest & tragedy from the fate of the Uji sisters to the contrast between Kaoru & Niou.

Religion is also an important factor. Characters often long to leave the world & enter the religious life & many do so. The supernatural in the form of evil spirits & possession is ever-present & there are several exorcisms where the evil spirits speak to the monks who are trying to remove them. I also loved the descriptions of the countryside & the weather. The details of dress, the correct colours to wear for mourning or at different times of the year, were all fascinating. The book creates a complete world that it was a real delight to disappear into for hours at a time. I read the Penguin Deluxe edition translated by Royall Tyler & the notes & line drawings were a real help in visualising Genji's world & understanding the allusions in the text. I can definitely imagine rereading Genji & next time I'll try a different translation.

My only problem now is what to read next! I often feel this way after reading a long book that was as absorbing as this one. I'm still listening to The Romanovs & reading Leon Roch with the 19th century group but I need something else. I've been picking books up & putting them down for a few days now but nothing has really grabbed me. Maybe some short stories? Something completely different is called for although that won't be difficult as there's nothing else quite like The Tale of Genji.

Salem Chapel - Margaret Oliphant

Salem Chapel (photo from here) is a very odd book that begins in Barsetshire & ends up reading like a sensation novel by Wilkie Collins. It's one of the Chronicles of Carlingford, the most popular series of novels written by Margaret Oliphant, a productive & popular 19th century novelist.

Arthur Vincent is a young Dissenting minister, appointed to his first post to Salem Chapel in Carlingford. The Dissenters of Carlingford are mostly tradesmen, very proud of their ability to build a new red brick chapel for their congregation & determined to get their money's worth from the young preacher they've appointed. They are also proud to be distinguished from the Church-going folk on the other side of Grange Lane, in thrall, as they see it, to the Establishment.

As he walked about Carlingford making acquaintance with the place, it occurred to the young man, with a thrill of not ungenerous ambition, that the time might shortly come when Salem Chapel would be all too insignificant for the Nonconformists of this hitherto torpid place. He pictured to himself how, by-and-by, those jealous doors in Grange Lane would fly open at his touch, and how the dormant minds within would awake under his influence. It was a blissful dream to the young pastor.

Arthur Vincent soon discovers that the ideals he held for his future as a minister to his flock collide with his distaste for the position he finds himself in - beholden to men such as Mr Tozer the grocer & Mr Pigeon the poulterer for his livelihood & expected to graciously take their advice. Vincent is also dismayed at being expected to visit his flock to drink tea & make small talk. He also soon realises that he is expected to marry according to the wishes of the congregation (there are dire hints about the unsuitability of a previous minister's wife) & sees that blushing Phoebe Tozer is aiming for the post. Mr Tozer is not shy in setting out the flock's expectations,

"Mr Vincent, sir," said Tozer solemnly, pushing away his empty teacup, and leaning forward over the table on his folded arms, "them ain't the sentiments for a pastor in our connection. That's a style of thing that may do among fine folks, or in the church where there's no freedom; but them as chooses their own pastor, and pays their own pastor, and don't spare no pains to make him comfortable, has a right to expect different.Them ain't the sentiments, sir, for Salem folks. ... and this I know, that a minister as has to please his flock, has got to please his flock whatever happens, and neither me nor no other man can make it different; and that Mrs Vincent, as has seen life, can tell you as well as I can."

All this is very much what I expected from a Carlingford novel. The tone changes when Vincent meets Mrs Hilyard, a mysterious woman living in poverty & sewing for a living. Mrs Hilyard attends the Chapel although she's obviously of a higher social class than most Dissenters. She also receives visits from the beautiful young Dowager, Lady Western, & seems to be on terms of affectionate friendship with her. Vincent is puzzled by Mrs Hilyard & curious to know her story. He's also dazzled by Lady Western & dismays the Chapel goers by accepting an invitation to dinner & appearing to court her notice. Vincent receives letters from his mother in the country telling him about his sister, Susan's, suitor, a man called Fordham.

This is the beginning of the sensation plot which involves impersonation, abduction, attempted bigamy & accusations of murder. Vincent overhears Mrs Hilyard arguing with a man, Colonel Mildmay, about a child that she is desperate to keep from him. When Vincent lets her know that he has heard her conversation, Mrs Hilyard asks that the child, her daughter, be sent to Vincent's mother for safekeeping, little realising that this action will put the girl in danger. The disappearance of Susan Vincent, in company with Mrs Hilyard's daughter, Alice, & Susan's suitor, sparks a chase from one end of England to the other & Vincent's position at Salem Chapel is put at risk by his unconventional behaviour.

I have to say that, much as I enjoyed the book, the two halves really don't mix very well. I wondered whether Mrs Oliphant felt obliged to add the sensational elements because of the success of novels like The Woman in White (Salem Chapel was published in 1863). It was certainly so successful that she was able to ask for a substantial price for her next book. Even for a sensation novel, there are just a few too many coincidences in the plot for me. Arthur Vincent is also a very unsympathetic character. Superior, impatient, ungracious, he ignores the proprieties & the obligations of his position. He becomes obsessed with his pursuit of Lady Western & jealous of those he perceives as his rivals. Even when he becomes a successful preacher, he finds it distasteful that the deacons rate his success based on the number of people who hear him preach & continually remind him that as they have appointed him, they can remove him at any time if he doesn't give satisfaction. He's the son of a minister & must have known that his flock was going to consist of tradespeople so why is he so snobbish about their houses & their daughters & their aspirations?

Salem itself, and the new pulpit, which had a short time ago represented to poor Vincent that tribune from which he was to influence the world, that point of vantage which was all a true man needed for the making of his career, dwindled into a miserable scene of trade before his disenchanted eyes - a preaching shop, where his success was to be measured by the seat-letting, and his soul decanted out into periodical issue under the seal of Tozer & Co. Such, alas! were the indignant thoughts with which, the old Adam rising bitter and strong within him, the young Nonconformist hastened home.

Arthur's mother is another character I could have seen much less of. From the moment when she arrives in Carlingford after Arthur has alarmed her with her doubts about Susan's suitor, she never stops talking & wailing & worrying about the proprieties. I know that a young girl's reputation was a fragile thing but she does lament too much over Susan's "fall" even before she knows what has happened. Almost driven to distraction by the shocking thought that her daughter has deliberately run away with a man, her fears for Arthur's reputation with his flock almost outweigh her fears for Susan's welfare. My favourite character was Mr Tozer, who champions Arthur's cause even when he ignores his very good advice & causes offence wherever he goes. Tozer is proud of the success of Arthur's preaching & not averse to scoring over his fellow deacon, Mr Pigeon, but he does stick by Arthur even when he goes off on wild goose chases on a Sunday & neglects the social side of his job. There's also plenty of humour & satire in the portrayal of the families of the Chapel which was just wonderful. I can't help thinking that it would have been a more successful novel if the sensation subplots had been left out.

The sensation plot winds up very quietly after the amount of lamentation about Susan's reputation, whereabouts & lingering fate that has gone on. Arthur realises that he has to make some fundamental changes to his own life before he can be truly happy &, even then, he manages to go against the advice of everyone who cares for him, contrary to the last.

There is a copy of the Virago edition of Salem Chapel available at Anglophile Books.

The Painted Veil - W Somerset Maugham

Kitty Garstin marries Walter Fane for all the wrong reasons. She's a beautiful young girl, badly brought up by a snobbish mother & when her first few London seasons result in much admiration but few proposals, her mother's obvious desire to get rid of her daughter lead Kitty to accept a proposal she would have rejected with scorn during her first season. The final straw is the news that her younger, less attractive sister, Doris, is engaged to the only son of a baronet. It's true that Doris's future father-in-law received his baronetcy for his work as a surgeon rather than inheriting a title but the news propels twenty-five year old Kitty into marriage. Walter Fane is a bacteriologist, home on leave from his Government post in Hong Kong. He's a staid, quiet man, not socially adept but very much in love with Kitty. It soon becomes obvious that their temperaments are very different.

She had discovered very soon that he had an unhappy disability to lose himself. He was self-conscious. When there was a party and every one started singing Walter could never bring himself to join in. He sat there smiling to show that he was pleased and amused, but his smile was forced: it was more like a sarcastic smirk, and you could not help feeling that he thought all those people a pack of fools. He could not bring himself to play the round games which Kitty with her high spirits found such a lark. On their journey out to China he had absolutely refused to put on fancy dress when everyone else was wearing it. It disturbed her pleasure that he should so obviously think the whole thing a bore.

When the Fanes reach Hong Kong, Kitty soon becomes bored & dissatisfied with her lowly social status in the expatriate community as the wife of a scientist. She falls in love with the Assistant Secretary of the colony, Charlie Townsend. They meet in the afternoons in a rented flat above a curio shop & occasionally, very daringly, at Kitty's house. When Walter discovers the affair, he gives Kitty an ultimatum. She is sure that Charlie wants to divorce his boring wife & marry her. Walter agrees to allow her to divorce him as long as she accompanies him to Mei-tan-fu, a town in inland China in the middle of a cholera epidemic. Walter has volunteered to go there to help in the hospital after the medical missionary died. A group of French nuns are attempting to keep the hospital running but they need help. Kitty is horrified by the idea & sees the trip as a means of her certain death.If Kitty refuses to accompany him, Walter will divorce her with all the scandal that would accompany such a course. On the other hand, if Charlie will agree to brave the scandal of the two divorces & marry Kitty, Walter will allow Kitty to divorce him. Kitty's confidence in Charley's love is shaken by his conventional horror at the prospect of scandal & she realises that he had never really loved her. In despair she agrees to accompany Walter to Mei-tan-fu.

On their arrival, Walter becomes immersed in the work at the hospital. Kitty's boredom & fear are allayed by her friendship with Waddington, the local Deputy Commissioner of Customs. Waddington drives Kitty around the local area & takes her to the convent to meet the Mother Superior. The convent has lost several nuns to the contagion & the Mother Superior refuses to let more nuns come to Mei-tan-fu while the risk is so great. Kitty becomes involved in the life of the convent & offers to help. She is not allowed near the hospital but is put to work in the orphanage, looking after the girls who are brought tot he nuns as an alternative to being left on the mountainside by their families to die of exposure.

Kitty's attitudes are changed by her work at the convent & she begins to grow up. Walter is as distant as ever but Kitty finds a purpose & companionship with the nuns & the orphans. She sees different kinds of love, from the detached care of the Mother Superior for the orphans to the passionate attachment of a Manchu Chinese woman who left her family to follow Waddington. She tells Waddington,

"I don't understand anything. Life is so strange. I feel like someone who's lived all his life by a duck-pond and suddenly is shown the sea. It makes me a little breathless, and yet it fills me with elation. I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm beginning to feel a new courage. I feel like one of those old sailors who set sail for undiscovered seas and I think my soul hankers for the unknown."

The Painted Veil was published in 1925. Maugham writes in the Preface that it's the only one of his novels that started with a story rather than a character. He was a young medical student on holiday in Italy, living very frugally, wandering around Florence & reading Dante with the help of his landlady's daughter, where he came across the story that became the novel. From those beginnings, Maugham has created a very moving story of the emotional & spiritual growth of a human being. The story is told from Kitty's viewpoint &, even from the beginning, when she's an empty-headed butterfly, Maugham shows us how her upbringing has made her the way she is. She's essentially innocent, even when she committing adultery, because she can't see, as the reader can, how worthless Townsend is. She's bored & used to flattery & flirtation so she's an easy target for a man like Townsend. The depiction of the marriage of Kitty's parents could have been seen as just a subplot but their relationship - the dominance of Kitty's mother & the self-effacement of her father, seen as a cash cow & pushed into promotions for which he's unfit just to satisfy his wife's ambition - emphasizes the lack of role models in Kitty's life. She sees men as a means to an end, the end being a comfortable life of trivial social engagements & pretty clothes.

Walter isn't a completely sympathetic character either. He tells Kitty quite bluntly that he knew she only married him from convenience & that she never loved him. He believed that his love would be enough. His self-abasement is unattractive & his blindness to the consequences of the mismatch of two people with nothing in common, is one of the causes of all that follows. We're never really sure if he deliberately forced Kitty to accompany him to Mei-tan-fu hoping she would die of cholera or if it was a bluff. His behaviour when they arrive is cold & he seems to care nothing for Kitty or her fate at all. His dedication to his job becomes almost inhuman in contrast to his neglect & unconcern for his wife & he fades into the background of the story just as he's always been in the background of Kitty's life.

Maugham isn't afraid to show Kitty's unattractive side. She bluntly tells Walter that she's always found him physically repulsive & she is disgusted by the little Chinese orphans at the convent until she gets to know them. It's a measure of her growing up that she eventually becomes attached to the orphans & grows to respect the choice of the nuns to live everything in the pursuit of duty & a different kind of love than any Kitty has ever contemplated. The Mother Superior's last words to Kitty would have meant nothing to her just weeks earlier on her arrival at Mei-tan-fu but they encapsulate what she's learnt.

"Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding."

Literary Ramblings

I've collected a few more literary links & interesting articles to share.

The most exciting news I've heard for ages is that Scott from the blog Furrowed Middlebrow is partnering with Dean Street Press to launch his very own imprint, Furrowed Middlebrow Books. Here's the revelation of the colophon for the new imprint & here's the announcement of the first of three authors to be reprinted - Rachel Ferguson. Scott will be reprinting three of Ferguson's novels - A Footman for the Peacock, Evenfield & A Harp in Lowndes Square - & you'll find more information on all three books plus Scott's enthusiastic reviews on his blog. Dean Street Press have done such a great job of resurrecting unfairly neglected Golden Age crime writers that I'm sure they will be the perfect partners for Scott's new venture. I can't wait to find out who the other two launch authors will be. I have my fingers crossed for more Winifred Peck.

Edited to add : I was right! I can't wait, especially for the mystery novels.

I love articles written by experts (or obsessives) who look at a book & can only see their special subject in it. This article from the Cricket Country website reviews the British Library Crime Classic reprint of Thirteen Guests by J Jefferson Farjeon entirely in terms of the cricket references.


A couple of weeks ago, ABC Classic FM revealed the Top 100 Voice over the Queen's Birthday long weekend. Every year they compile a different Top 100, voted on by listeners & this year it was the voice - opera, choral, folk song. I didn't enjoy it as much as previous years because I don't enjoy opera so a lot of it didn't interest me as much as previous years when they've featured Baroque & Before, the Concerto or Mozart. However, we're also coming to the end of a mammoth eight week election campaign & this little bit of promotion for the countdown made me smile. I don't think you need to know who the politicians are to recognize the species.

I've become aware of the very definite ideas that readers have about translation lately. I'm reading The Tale of Genji in Royall Tyler's translation but I know that there are devoted partisans of other translations. Mirabile Dictu discusses it here. Janet Malcolm has also recently written an article about translations of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. The fans of the Constance Garnett or Maude translations are passionate about their choice & I was interested to read more about the dislike of some critics (including Janet Malcolm) for the Pevear & Volokhonsky translations of the Russian classics. All the discussion & discord has made me want to read Anna again.

I read it first in my teens, influenced by the BBC TV series with Nicola Pagett, Eric Porter & Stuart Wilson. I'm still very fond of this adaptation (even though a friend to whom I loaned the DVDs laughed at the fake beards). It was the TV tie-in edition & I think it was the Constance Garnett translation. I also heard Tchaikovsky's Manfred symphony on the radio the other day & that reminded me of the series as well because it was used as the theme music.

The next time I read it was this OUP edition translated by Louise & Aylmer Maude. Now I'm tempted by the new OUP edition translated by Rosamund Bartlett. Here is Bartlett discussing whether a new translation is even needed & here's a review of several of the newer translations.

Finally, I really like Elaine Showalter's idea of celebrating Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway with Dallowday to compete with James Joyce & Bloomsday. Clarissa Dalloway's party took place on June 13th 1923 so why shouldn't it be as celebrated as much as Leopold Bloom's walk around Dublin? Frankly the food would have to be more appealing than kidneys on toast, Gorgonzola sandwiches & Guinness. We might even be offered cucumber sandwiches & a cup of tea - much more to my taste.

Margaret Kennedy Day - The Wild Swan

Roy Collins is a scriptwriter with B.B.B, a major English film studio. He has ambitions to write & direct his own scripts but his current assignment is to work on the shooting script for a historical picture selected for one of the studio's leading stars, Kitty Fletcher. Dorothea Harding was a Victorian lady writer of children's stories & twee poetry. After her death, however, a diary & passionate poetry was discovered & literary critics, including Alec Mundy, interpreted the poems as an expression of illicit love between Dorothea & her brother-in-law, Grant Forrester. Grant's early death was seen as suicidal despair over the impossibility of his love for Dorothea. Mundy's biography was the basis of a play by Adelaide Lassiter, a writer of sentimental platitudes who calls Dorothea Doda & is now writing the screenplay for the movie.

Adelaide wants to absorb the atmosphere of Bramstock, Dorothea's home which is still owned by members of the Harding family so she goes down to see the house, accompanied by Roy, Mundy & hanger-on Basil Cope. Now very hard up, the Hardings have reluctantly agreed to allow their house to be used for the filming, knowing that the money will pay for daughter Cecilia's college education. Cecilia is proud & resentful of the whole idea, dismissing Dorothea's work as Victorian tosh but she becomes interested in Roy despite looking down on his origins (his aunt lives in the village where the Hardings are the local squires) & what she perceives as his lack of ambition. Roy begins to feel an affinity with Dorothea as he walks around the grounds of Bramstock & begins to realise that the sentimental story of her life is wrong. He becomes determined to stop the movie from going ahead because he feels somehow akin to Dorothea & protective of her story.

But it's not Cecilia's fault that she doesn't understand, thought Roy. None of them do. They all think it's their job to tell us what to put. And we have to laugh it off.
They, to him, were the entire human race. We were Dorothea Harding, himself, and a myriad nameless others, swimming, sinking, fighting for life, in the same inclement ocean.
He lifted his head, smiled, and went back to the hotel in better spirits than he had known for many a day, sensible that he had, after all, got company.

Another descendant of the Harding family, Shattock, is in possession of potentially explosive documents that could change the image of Dorothea as the Victorian poetess & potentially scupper the making of the movie. The central section of the book takes us back to the time of Dorothea herself & we learn just how mistaken the ideas of biographers can be as the truth of her life & the reason she wrote her inane but successful novels becomes clear.

The Wild Swan is a novel that reminded me of other books about writers & their literary afterlives. Like A S Byatt's Possession & Carol Shields' Mary Swann, the central conceit of a writer from the past whose life has been misinterpreted & taken over by modern academics is one that has always fascinated me. The idea that we can ever really know a person from another age, no matter how much material they leave behind is fraught with danger. Material is always turning up & there are plenty of real life examples as well as fictional ones. Charlotte Brontë's letters to Monsieur Heger are probably the most famous example but there are plenty of gaps in our knowledge of historical figures that novelists & playwrights have tried to fill in & sometimes their version becomes the truth.

I enjoyed seeing the real Dorothea, who was a much tougher, more resilient woman than her admirers imagined. Her life was circumscribed by the duties of a Victorian daughter. She was able to get on with her writing & go her own way while her older sister, Mary, was at home. Mary's marriage to Grant will be the catalyst that reluctantly forces Dorothea into the role of housekeeper to her demanding father. Her invalid brother & his wife & children also live at Bramstock & Dorothea's relationship with her sister-in-law, Selina, is difficult. Dorothea's cousin, Effie Creighton, is sympathetic, & as one of the few people who know about Clone, the imaginary world Dorothea & her sister invented as children, she understands how important Dorothea's work is to her. However, her mother does not approve of Dorothea & eventually marriage takes Effie away. The rector, Mr Winthorpe, is seen as a benign presence & an influence on Dorothea's writing by Mundy but his desire to control Dorothea is typical of a conventionally Victorian moral world. He's disconcerted by Dorothea's unusual self-possession & tries to persuade her into a more conventional role while he fears that she is secretly laughing at him.

The contemporary story was also fascinating. Written in 1957, it's set in that awkward post-war period when upper & middle class families were having to adjust their expectations. The Hardings are still the local squires but they're poor. Cecilia may still boss around the women of the local W.I but Bramstock is rundown & she knows her father can't afford to send her to college. The offer from the film company is embraced by Cecilia's practical mother although her father is horrified by the implication of stooping to the depths of taking money from something as vulgar as a movie company & about a family member at that. Cecilia's contempt for Roy (her father initially mistakes him for "the plumber's mate" & Cecilia calls him that in her mind for quite a while) changes to interest as she discovers more about him. When she learns that he's written an avant garde short film that she's seen & enjoyed, she has to reassess her prejudices & finds herself liking him quite a lot. Roy's feelings for her are more ambiguous. I also enjoyed the pompous Mundy & his superior attitude to Adelaide's play while she was much more like the accepted image of Dorothea than the real woman could ever have been. Everyone has an image of Dorothea in their minds that suits their own plans but the truth will surprise them all.

Thank you to Jane at Beyond Eden Rock for hosting Margaret Kennedy Day. It was a great incentive to read another of her novels.

Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert

For certain men the stronger their desire, the less likely they are to act. Lack of self-confidence holds them back, they are terrified of giving offence. Moreover, deep affections are like respectable women; they are afraid of being found out and go through life with their eyes cast down.

Frédéric Moreau is a romantic young ditherer. Sent by his mother to stay with a rich uncle, with a view to being mentioned in his will, he is returning home with no definite plans & no promise of an inheritance. On the journey home, Frédéric falls in love at first sight with Madame Arnoux, wife of an art dealer. All he can think about is getting to Paris to pursue her. He goes to Paris to study law, visiting Arnoux in his shop but unable to either declare himself to Madame or to stop visiting. His schoolfriend, Deslauriers, comes to Paris & they share rooms, mostly at Frédéric's expense. Through Deslauriers, Frédéric meets a group of radical writers & artists. His studies suffer & he still hasn't made an impression on Madame Arnoux.

Frédéric returns home discouraged & already half-forgetting Madame but then receives a letter informing him that his uncle has died intestate & he has inherited a substantial fortune. Immediately, all his plans for a sober provincial future are overturned. He's desperate to return to Paris. His mother thinks that a political or diplomatic career will now be open to him & urges him to make the acquaintance of the local landowner, Monsieur Dambreuse. Frédéric's return to Paris leads to a whirl of partying & he meets a courtesan, Rosanette, known as the Maréchale, who is Jacques Arnoux's mistress. Maréchale is attracted to Rosanette but still yearning for Madame Arnoux.

The company of these two women made a sort of twofold music in his life: one was playful, violent, entertaining; the other serious and almost religious. And the two melodies playing at the same time steadily swelled and became gradually intertwined. For if Madame Arnoux brushed him with her finger, the image of the other woman appeared before him as an object of desire, because he had more of a chance with her. And when in Rosanette's company his emotions happened to be stirred, he immediately remembered his one true love.

His friendship with the Arnouxs leads him into financial commitments & Deslauriers is also pressuring him to invest in a radical newspaper. Frédéric becomes almost a companion to the Maréchale, taking her to the races, paying for her portrait to be painted but he is not her lover, he's too timid to demand more than a few kisses. The Maréchale is offended by his apparent lack of interest but she's juggling several lovers so just accepts his companionship & his presents.

Frédéric is invited to the Dambreuse's home & he is impressed by the splendour of their lifestyle but he fails to take up any of Dambreuse's suggestions or invitations to invest with him & so again, he drifts along. When he does make money on an investment, he waits too long to sell his shares & loses again. His income diminishes & he continues to sell property while he loans money to Arnoux, who has sold his art dealership & is now running a porcelain factory. Frédéric's options are to find work, to spend less, or to make a rich marriage.

Frédéric's mother wants him to marry Louise Roque, the daughter of Monsieur Dambreuse's agent. Louise has been infatuated with Frédéric since she was a child & she is now a woman & an heiress. Again, he dissembles & can't commit himself to Louise while he's still in love with Madame Arnoux & lusting after the Maréchale, whom he finally makes his mistress. Marie Arnoux has discovered her husband's infidelities & she realises that she has fallen in love with Frédéric & then Madame Dambreuse, a haughty but attractive woman, begins to take an interest in him as well. Frédéric sees her as a challenge & the fact that she's wealthy is an added incentive.

He read her pages of poetry, putting all his soul into it, to move her and to win her admiration. She would stop him with a critical remark or a practical observation; and their conversation reverted constantly to the eternal question of Love. They wondered what occasioned it, whether women felt it more than men, what were the differences between them on that subject. Frédéric tried to express his opinion, avoiding both vulgarity and banality. It became a kind of battle, pleasant at times and tedious at others.

Frédéric's sentimental education begins conventionally enough - a young man falling in love with the first attractive older woman he meets - but it takes many twists & turns & although he's meant to be receiving an education in love & life, Frédéric seems to learn very little through the course of the novel. Will he be able to take the happiness that he's wanted for so long? Or will his constant indecision be his downfall? Maybe Frédéric's experiences are more realistic than those of many characters in fiction who seem to have a plan for their lives. All Frédéric's plans go awry which may be more true to life where plans often fall apart & leave a mess that has to be lived with.

Sentimental Education is a funny, cynical portrait of French society in the years leading up to the 1848 Revolution. Frédéric's inability to make a decision about anything & his misunderstandings with everyone he meets are amusing but also frustrating. His idealism leads him into one mess after another as his motives are misrepresented time & again. Madame Arnoux sees him as a kind young man; Arnoux as his friend who is helping to keep the knowledge of his affairs from his wife; the Maréchale sees him as a ready source of fun; Louise sees him as a chivalrous hero of romance; his mother sees him as a future Cabinet Minister. He lurches from one disaster to another either financial or romantic. He fights a ridiculous duel over an insult to Madame Arnoux but the Maréchale thinks he's saving her reputation while Arnoux thinks it's in his defence.

There are some great set scenes - the day at the races, the dinner party at the Dambreuses, the duel, the party where Frédéric first meets the Maréchale - that contrast with the poverty of students like Deslauriers & the journalists & artists in his circle. Then there's the radical element, men like the engineer Sénécal who is arrested for conspiring to assassinate King Louis-Phillippe. As the 1848 Revolution unfolds, Frédéric becomes even more of a bystander to events as he & the Maréchale escape Paris for a country idyll that can't last. His desire for approval from his friends paralyses him & whatever moral strength he may once have had just slips away as he juggles mistresses, potential wives & possible careers. In one farcical scene, he only just prevents Madame Arnoux & the Maréchale from meeting in his rooms & his selfishness is exposed in his relations with both Louise Roque & Madame Dambreuse as well as his remoteness from the political concerns of his friends. It's a fascinating novel & it's good to be able to read more Flaubert who is mostly remembered now for just one book, Madame Bovary.

Oxford University Press kindly sent me a review copy of Sentimental Education in a new translation by Helen Constantine.

A Country Doctor - Sarah Orne Jewett

I was reminded of Sarah Orne Jewett last year when I read Willa Cather's Letters. I'd read her most famous novel, The Country of the Pointed Firs, years ago but I'm interested in New England writers so I bought a copy of her first novel, A Country Doctor.

Adeline Thacher is a wild young woman who leaves her mother's farm in rural Maine to go to the city. She meets a well-to-do young man, marries him &, after his death, rejects his family who have always disapproved of her. Desperately ill, she makes her way back to her home & collapses on the doorstep of her mother's farm with her baby in her arms. Adeline dies the next day & the little girl, Anna (called Nan), is brought up by her grandmother. Before Adeline dies, she asks the local doctor to be Nan's guardian.

Nan grows up bright & wilful, the delight & the despair of her grandmother. Dr Leslie takes a vague interest in the little girl, especially when it seems she has some interest in medicine. Her father had been an assistant doctor in the Navy & it seems as though Nan has inherited his talent. Old Mrs Thacher asks the doctor to look after Nan when she dies & he fulfills his promise, taking her to live with him & his gruff but kind housekeeper, Marilla. Nan's rich Boston aunt, Miss Prince, tried to get custody when Adeline died but had to be content with sending a yearly allowance which Dr Leslie has banked for Nan's education. Nan knows nothing about the Princes apart from local gossip. Dr Leslie, with the help of his friend & neighbour, Mrs Graham, give Nan a good upbringing with Mrs Graham supplying the social niceties & polish while the doctor encourages Nan's medical interests. Nan's schoolfriends recognize her abilities while being sceptical about her future career,

Long ago, when Nan had confided to her dearest cronies that she meant to be a doctor, they were hardly surprised that she would determined upon a career which they would have rejected for themselves. She was not of their mind, and they believed her capable of doing anything she undertook. Yet to most of them the possible and even probable marriage which was waiting somewhere in the future seemed to hover like a cloudy barrier over the realization of any such unnatural plans.

When Nan finishes school, she decides to study medicine, encouraged by the doctor. She writes to her aunt in Dunport asking for a meeting & Miss Prince agrees with some apprehension about this unknown niece, raised in the rural backwater of Oldfields. Miss Prince lives alone in her family home. She had one unhappy love affair in her youth but has stayed in touch with the son of her old lover, George Gerry. Young George has become like a favourite nephew & is working in a law office in town. Miss Prince is soon very fond of Nan but horrified at her plans to become a doctor. Nan enjoys her time in Dunport & becomes involved with a group of young people enjoying sailing & picnics. George falls in love with Nan & proposes marriage. Although Nan loves George, she has long accepted that her choice of a career will preclude marriage. Miss Prince's disapproval of her plans represents the accepted view of a young lady's life choices & she believes she has the financial clout to make Nan change her mind. She's not above a little emotional blackmail either. Nan's own wishes are more in tune with her upbringing & Dr Leslie's encouragement but she has a difficult choice to make. The calibre of her opponents is exemplified in old Mrs Fraley, a domineering woman who doesn't expect to be contradicted,

A woman's place is at home. Of course I know there have been some women physicians who have attained eminence, and some artists, and all that. But I would rather see a daughter of mine take a more retired place. The best service to the public can be done by keeping one's own house in order and one's husband comfortable, and by attending to those social responsibilities which come in our way.The mothers of the nation have rights enough and duties enough already, and need not look farther than their own firesides, or wish for the plaudits of an ignorant public.

A Country Doctor is such an interesting novel, especially given the autobiographical elements of the story & the time in which it was written. It was published in 1884 & was based, in part, on the author's early life. Jewett's father was a doctor & she spent a lot of time accompanying him on his rounds as Nan does with Dr Leslie. She was an outdoors child although not as willful as Nan. Dr Jewett seems to have been the model for Dr Leslie, a brilliant doctor who could have made his name in a big city practice but chose to spend hi life in rural Maine. Sarah may have thought about a career in medicine but her health was often poor & she may have felt that she wasn't up to the demands of such a life. Medicine was only barely possible as a career for women in the 1880s. Elizabeth Blackwell had qualified as a doctor in 1849, the year Jewett was born, but it was a long, hard road to acceptance for her & the other women who followed. Maybe Nan's plans were in the nature of wish fulfillment for Jewett. It was surely unusual to have a novel of the 1880s about a young woman determined to follow a career. Nan has truly combined the best qualities of both her families & some of the contemporary reviews point to Nan as a role model for young girls.

The picture of the rural community of Oldfields & the surrounding farms is beautifully drawn & the descriptions of the natural world are lovely & full of minute observation. The book begins a little uncertainly & takes a while to decide on its tone. The first chapter describes Adeline's desperate journey to her mother when she even considers throwing herself & Nan into the stream in her struggle. Then, we meet Mrs Thacher & her neighbours, Mrs Martin & Mrs Jake Dyer, talking about old times & frightening themselves with ghost stories when they hear a noise at the front door. The next chapter takes us to the Dyer farm where twins Martin & Jake Dyer enjoy an evening without their wives. It seems that rural comedy will be part of the story. However, once Mrs Dyer rushes in with the news of Adeline's return & sends her husband for the doctor, the Dyers fade into the background & just have walk-on parts in the rest of the novel.

The contrast between Nan's two worlds shows just how much of a struggle she has to decide on her future. As she becomes involved in her father's world, becomes fond of her aunt & falls in love with George, Nan can see the possibility of a different life. The scenes where Miss Prince tries to influence Nan while she tries to pull back are very effective. George is a bit of a cipher, a bit of a ditherer who is nonplussed by Nan's proud determination. On a trip on the river, Nan & George come across a labourer with a dislocated shoulder. Nan competently pushes the joint back into place without fuss while George looks on feeling a bit squeamish. He's just not in her league although she does love him & finds her decision difficult. I really enjoyed all the characters from kind Dr Leslie & prickly Marilla to lonely Miss Prince & chatty, nosy Captain Parish. Sarah Orne Jewett knew & loved Maine & I'm looking forward to reading more of her stories as A Country Doctor was such a delight.