The Natural History of Selborne - Gilbert White

Gilbert White was an 18th century clergyman with an inquiring mind & an obsessive interest in natural history. He lived almost all his life in the parish of Selborne, Hampshire, near the borders of Sussex & Surrey, in his family home, The Wakes. After studying at Oxford, he had hoped for an academic career but, when they didn't happen, he moved back to Selborne after inheriting the family home & spent the rest of his life there, ministering to the parish & observing nature. The Natural History consists of two series of letters, written to the naturalists Thomas Pennant & the Hon Daines Barrington. These gentlemen valued the minute observation & experience of White as he had been observing his local area for years, recording his observations in a series of notebooks called The Naturalist's Journal. Thomas Pennant, who White knew through his brother, the London bookseller Benjamin White, gave Gilbert White his first Journal, which was designed by his other correspondent, Daines Barrington.

The Journal was a means of encouraging amateur naturalists to record their observations so that the cyclical & seasonal differences could be observed in the life cycles of all species of animals. White believed that the observation of a small area over a long period of time was crucial in the accumulation of knowledge that allowed theories of natural history to be developed. Although he was interested in the wider world, referring in his letters to books of traveller's tales of everywhere from India to China, he recognised that his own observations of his parish were just as important. His decision to publish his observations in the form of his letters to Pennant & Barrington is in an eighteenth century tradition of histories of the antiquities of English counties. White took this to a new level with his concentration on the parish of Selborne. His intimate descriptions of the natural phenomena of the local area struck the original readers & reviewers of the book as something new & attractive & the book has never been out of print.

I would also suggest that the personality of White himself is no small part of the attraction. He is an endearing character, endlessly curious, obsessed with nature & expecting everyone to provide him with observations as well. He had family living in Spain & Gibraltar as well as other parts of England. His letters to them must have been full of inquiries about the habits of the birds & animals they observed as he often includes this evidence in the published letters. I imagine him on his daily travels, making notes & being acutely aware of everything around him, then filling in the day's observations in the Journal each night. He was a true enthusiast, who finds it strange that others are not as alert to the habits of their fellow creatures as he is himself.

As a clergyman with a recognized place in local society, he was able to prevail upon his parishioners for information & their own experiences. The locals obviously knew that he would be grateful for any specimens they could procure for him as he's often dissecting a decomposing mouse or bird brought to him as an object of interest. He was able to spend long periods observing the habits of birds especially; the minuteness of his reports on the different habits of flight, the way nests are built or the way birds feed their young reflect the time he spent on this. His love of the classics is also evident as he often quotes classical authors & it's evident that he sees everything through the lens of the natural world.

I've marked so many passages that I want to quote as I think hearing White's own voice will inspire readers much more than any description of the book that I can give. Here he is on cats (of course, I had to quote this),

There is a propensity belonging to common house-cats that is very remarkable; I mean their violent fondness for fish, which appears to be their most favourite food: and yet nature in this instance seems to have planted in them an appetite that, unassisted, they know not how to gratify: for of all quadrupeds cats are the least disposed towards water; and will not, when they can avoid it, deign to wet a foot, much less to plunge into that element.

Even on visits (the Duke of Richmond's moose was more of an attraction on a visit to Goodwood than the house or the Duke), it seems it was the animals he was interested in as much as his friends & family,

Happening to make a visit to my neighbour's peacocks, I could not help observing that the trains of these magnificent birds appear by no means to be  their tails; those long feathers growing not from their uropygium (rump), but all up their backs.

This same letter ends with,

I should tell you that I have got an uncommon calculus aegogropila (hairball), taken out of the stomach of a fat ox; it is perfectly round, and about the size of a large Seville orange; such are, I think, usually flat.

Obviously everyone should be willing to observe the habits of nature at any time of day or night,

Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks (open drains) and gutters in hard weather, where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings: and in mild weather they procure worms, which are stirring every month in the year, as any one may see that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot on any mild winter's night.

The detail of White's (& his friends') observations is truly amazing,

A neighbour of mine, who is said to have a nice ear, remarks that the owls about this village hoot in three different keys, in G flat, or F sharp, in B flat and A flat. He heard two hooting to each other, the one in A flat, and the other in B flat. Query: Do these different notes proceed from different species, or only from various individuals?

The most famous character in the letters is Timothy, the tortoise belonging to White's Aunt Rebecca. After her death in March 1780, White brought Timothy back to Selborne, "The rattle and hurry of the journey (eighty miles in a post-chaise) so perfectly roused it that, when I turned it out on a border, it walked twice down to the bottom of my garden" before burying itself in the earth to resume its hibernation. White ponders the longevity of the tortoise,

When one reflects on the state of this strange being, it is a matter of wonder to find that Providence should bestow such a profusion of days, such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile that appears to relish it so little as to squander more than two thirds of its existence in a joyless stupor, and to be lost to all sensation for months together in the profoundest of slumbers.

and admires his instinct to make himself comfortable,

But as he avoids heat in the summer, so, in the decline of the year, he improves the faint autumnal beams, by getting within the reflection of a fruit-wall: and, though he never has read that planes inclining to the horizon receive a greater share of warmth,he inclines his shell, by tilting it against the wall, to collect and admit every feeble ray.

One more quote about Timothy, I can't resist,

No part of its behaviour ever struck me more than the extreme timidity it always expresses with regard to rain; for though it has a shell that would secure it against the wheel of a loaded cart, yet does it discover as much solicitude about rain as a lady dressed in all her best attire, shuffling away on the first sprinklings, and running its head up in a corner.

This new edition from Oxford University Press, is edited by Anne Secord. I don't usually read the Introduction before the book when I read fiction but, in this case, I would definitely recommend it as Secord's Introduction puts White & The Natural History into context. I knew very little about White & I would have been confused if I'd just plunged straight in. The notes are also very necessary to translate the Latin & Greek as well as the more obscure words that weren't obvious from the context. I now know the meaning of autopsia, faunists, nidification & cantoned.

Oxford University Press kindly sent me a review copy of The Natural History of Selborne.

The Selected Letters of Willa Cather - ed by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout

Before Willa Cather died, she did what she could to prevent this book from ever existing. She made a will that clearly forbade all publication of her letters, in full or in part. And now we flagrantly defy Cather's will in the belief that her decision, made in the last, dark years of her life and honored for more than half a century, is outweighed by the value of making these letters available to readers all over the world.

This is how Andrew Jewell & Janis Stout begin their Introduction to this volume of the letters of Willa Cather. My first reaction was to think, Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? Then again, if I was going to take the high moral ground, I would have closed the book immediately & returned it to the library the next day. Instead, I read every word & loved it. Jewell & Stout go on to write that Cather may have wanted to prevent the reputation of her work being overshadowed by her private life. She was always careful to protect the two most important emotional relationships of her life, with Isabelle McClung & Edith Lewis, from prying eyes. As it is, very little of Cather's correspondence with either woman survives. In this book of over 600pp, there are only a couple of short notes or postcards to each of them. She also left the ultimate decision about publication in the future to her Executors & Trustee. Jewell & Stout believe that "These lively, illuminating letters will do nothing to damage her reputation." which is certainly true.

Willa Cather was born in Virginia in 1875 & moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska as a child. After attending university in Lincoln, Nebraska, she worked as editor of McClure's magazine in New York, travelled several times to Europe &, more productively for her fiction, to Arizona, New Mexico & Quebec. While working at McClure's, she began publishing her own work & working on the magazine, often filling the pages herself, was a wonderful apprenticeship. She remained close to her parents & her elder brothers, Roscoe & Douglass; girlhood friends such as the Miner sisters; fellow writers, especially Dorothy Canfield Fisher, & her publisher, Alfred Knopf. All these relationships are well-represented in the letters.

Cather's growing reputation led to correspondence with readers & critics which often leads to fascinating stories about the origins of her novels. The friendship with singer Olive Fremstad that was the inspiration for The Song of the Lark; her memories of her immigrant neighbours in Red Cloud that inspired stories like The Bohemian Girl & the novels O Pioneers! & My Àntonia. The trip to New Mexico & her reading about the French Catholic missionaries that became Death Comes for the Archbishop; the childhood memory of a day at her grandmother's house in Virginia that was the beginning of Sapphira and the Slave Girl. She was also interested & knowledgeable about every aspect of the production, presentation & promotion of her work from the font type & size, the bindings & illustrations to the copy written by the publicity department of her first publisher, Houghton Mifflin.

Cather lived in New York for many years but always tried to leave the city during the heat of summer. She had several favourite places, from Jaffrey, New Hampshire to Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, where she & Edith Lewis owned a cottage. She also spent considerable time in France & New Mexico.

The editors have left Cather's wayward spelling as a young girl alone & it gives a picture of  impetuous enthusiasm about books, music & the theatre as well as an intense interest in everything that was happening to friends & family. Although her spelling improves, her love of literature & music is with her all her life. Cather was a loyal & generous friend, never forgetting S S McClure, who had given her the opportunity of editing his magazine. She also went home to Nebraska frequently & always remembered friends & neighbours at Christmas & especially during the hard times of the Depression years. Her own success meant that she had the ability to help in practical ways as well as with kind thoughts & sympathy.

I always enjoy reading about the elements that go into fiction & the way that writers can take the seed of a story from life, a scene briefly glimpsed, a person known in childhood & transform it into something new. Cather explained to her friend Carrie Miner Sherwood about the characters in her story, Two Friends,

You never can get it through peoples heads that a story is made out of an emotion or an excitement and is not made out of the legs and arms and faces of one's friends or acquaintances. Two Friends, for instance, was not really made out of your father and Mr Richardson; it was made out of an effect they produced on a little girl who used to hang about them. The story, as I told you, is a picture; but it is not the picture of two men, but of a memory. Many things about both men are left out of this sketch because they made no impression on me as a child; other things are exaggerated because they seemed just like that to me then. January 27, 1934

I also enjoyed her responses to critics' opinions of her work. Margaret Laurence wrote a chapter on Cather's work &, in a letter to Carrie Sherwood, Cather praises Laurence for her understanding of her craft,

She seems to understand that I can write successfully only when I write about people or places which I very greatly admire; which, indeed, I actually love. The characters may be cranky or queer, or foolhardy and rash, but they must have something in them which gives me a thrill and warms my heart. June 28, 1939

She also had trenchant views about the value of trying to teach creative writing (in a letter to Egbert Samuel Oliver, who had written to her asking for her views),

I think it is sheer nonsense to attempt to teach "Creative Writing" in colleges. If the college students were taught to write good, sound English sentences (sentences with unmistakable articulation) and to avoid hackneyed woman's-club expressions, such as "colorful", "the desire to create", "worth while books", "a writer universally acclaimed" - all those smug expressions which really mean nothing at all - then creative writing would take care of itself. December 13, 1934

Cather's last years were made difficult by ill health. She damaged her right wrist & this restricted her ability to work. She writes that she learned to dictate her letters but could never dictate her work. She also had several operations. The deaths of those close to her, especially her parents, her brothers & Isabelle McClung, hit her very hard. She writes movingly of the loss of her father (& Dorothy's mother) & the ill-health of her mother to Dorothy Canfield Fisher,

But these vanishings, that come one after another, have such an impoverishing effect on those of us who are left - our world suddenly becomes so diminished - the landmarks disappear and all the splendid distances behind us close up. These losses, one after another, make one feel as if one were going on in a play after most of the principal characters are dead. September 30, 1930

This feeling intensified as those closest to her died, especially those who were far away. Isabelle McClung was living in France with her husband, Jan Hambourg, when she died of kidney disease in 1938. Cather wrote to her niece, Margaret,

Isabelle knew very little about books, but everything about gracious and graceful living. We brought each other up. We kept on doing that all our lives. For most of my life in Pittsburgh (five years) Isabelle and, I think, your father (Cather's brother, Roscoe), were the only two people who thought there was any good reason for my trying to write ... Isabelle has always been my best and soundest critic ... I have sent Isabelle every manuscript before I published (part missing?) were always invaluable. Her husband is returning to me three hundred of my letters which she carried about with her from place to place all the time. She had lived abroad for fourteen years, but I often went to her, and in mind we were never separated. Now we have no means of communication; that is all. One can never form such a friendship twice. One does not want to. As long as she lived, her youth and mine were realities to both of us. November 8, 1938

Reading an author's letters always takes me back to the work & I've been rereading some of Cather's short stories. I bought this Virago edition of the stories, edited by Hermione Lee, in the late 1980s. I've read The Bohemian Girl, Two Friends, A Wagner Matinée & Coming, Aphrodite! & will probably go on to read the rest of the book, as well as the novels I haven't yet read.

The Letters of Lord Byron - selected by R G Howarth

Lord Byron is one of the most famous literary figures the world has ever known. Whether his fame is due to his romantically early death in the cause of Greek independence or because of his scandalous private life, Byron was famous amongst his contemporaries & remains famous today. His fame should rest on his wonderful poetry & his letters, which I've been reading over the last month, rather than speculation about whether he had an affair with his half-sister or what he could possibly have done to make his wife leave him only a year after their marriage. The letters are full of fun & wit. I laughed out loud often but Byron also writes of his misery over the death of friends; his despair at his famously unhappy marriage & the aftermath of his separation from Annabella. He tells a fantastically good story & often skewers an opponent (often his much-loathed mother-in-law, Lady Noel) with a witty phrase.

His correspondents include his half-sister, Augusta, his friends, Thomas Moore & John Cam Hobhouse, & his publisher, John Murray. The letters to Murray are my favourites. In between instructions for the publication of his latest work, he implores Murray to send him supplies of magnesia, corn plasters & tooth powder. Quotations from Shakespeare (particularly Macbeth), Scott & other favourite authors are just dropped in everywhere, in the middle of sentences, as if his thoughts were a mixture of  his reading & his own experience.

Most of the letters were written in his self-imposed exile in Italy, where he went to escape the gossip surrounding the end of his marriage. Byron was already famous for his poetry by this time, especially Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, which drew on his experiences travelling in Greece & the Middle East. His style is so readable, racy & colloquial, like a novel in verse, giving the impression that it was just dashed off, written as quickly as it can be read. The public confused the man with his creations & the image of the Byronic hero was an amalgam of Byron himself & his characters. His relationships, most notoriously with Lady Caroline Lamb, who called him "mad, bad and dangerous to know" & wrote a novel, Glenarvon, about their affair, added to the mystique surrounding him.

As you can see, I kept putting sticky notes in my copy as I read & I'd much rather share some of my favourite passages so you can hear the man himself rather than me trying to describe him.

To Anne Isabella Milbanke, after their engagement,

I did not believe such a woman existed - at least for me,- and I sometimes fear I ought to wish that she had not. I must turn from the subject.
My love, do forgive me if I have written in a spirit that renders you uncomfortable. I cannot embody my feelings in words. I have nothing to desire - nothing I would see altered in you - but so much in myself. I can conceive no misery equal to mine, if I failed in making you happy,- and yet how can I hope to do justice to those merits from whose praise there is not a dissentient voice?
14 October 1814

To his sister, Augusta,

I heard the other day that she (Annabella) was very unwell. I was shocked enough - and sorry enough, God knows, but never mind; H (Hobhouse) tells me however that she is not ill; that she had been indisposed, but is better and well to do - This is a relief. As for me I am in good health, and fair, though very unequal spirits; but for all that - she - or rather the Separation - has broken my heart. I feel as if an Elephant had trodden on it. I am convinced that I shall never get over it - but I try.
8 September 1816

To Thomas Moore,

I rejoice to hear of your forthcoming in February - though I tremble for the 'magnificence' which you attribute to the new Childe Harold. I am glad you like it; it is a fine indistinct piece of poetical desolation, and my favourite. I was half mad during the time of its composition, between metaphysics, mountains, lakes, love unextinguishable, thoughts unutterable, and the nightmare of my own delinquencies. I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law; and, even then, if I could have been certain to haunt her - but I won't dwell upon these trifling family matters.
28 January 1817

To John Murray,

The story of Shelley's agitation (on the famous night when Byron, the Shelleys & Dr Polidori told each other ghost stories & Mary Shelley had the nightmare that resulted in her writing Frankenstein) is true. I can't tell what seized him for he don't want courage. He was once with me in a gale of Wind, in a small boat, right under the rocks between Meillerie and St Gingo. ... The sail was mismanaged, and the boat was filling fast. He can't swim. I stripped off my coat - made him strip off his and take hold of an oar, telling him that I thought (being an expert swimmer) I could save him, if he would not struggle when I took hold of him ... He answered me with the greatest coolness, that 'he had no notion of being saved, and that I would have enough to do to save myself, and begged not to trouble me.' Luckily, the boat righted, and, baling, we got round a point into St Gingo ... 
And yet the same Shelley, who was as cool as it was possible to be in such circumstances ... certainly had the fit of phantasy which Polidori describes, though not exactly as he describes it.
15 May 1819

To John Murray,

Dear Murray,
I have been thinking over our late correspondence, and wish to propose to you the following articles for our future:-
1stly That you shall write to me of yourself, of the health, wealth, and welfare of all friends; but of me (quoad me) little or nothing.
2dly That you shall send me Soda powders, tooth-powder, tooth-brushes, or any such anti-odontalgic or chemical articles, as heretofore, ad libitum, upon being re-imbursed for the same.
3dly that you shall not send me any modern, or (as they are called) new, publications in English whatsoever, save and excepting any writing, prose or verse, of (or reasonably presumed to be of) Walter Scott, Crabbe, Moore ... or any especial single work of fancy, which is thought to be of considerable merit. ...
5thly That you send me no opinions whatsoever, whether good, bad, or indifferent, of yourself, or your friends, or others, concerning any work, or works, of mine, past, present, or to come.
24 September 1821

This edition is a reprint of the 1933 selection of the Letters by R G Howarth. Byron's Letters were originally collected & published by Thomas Moore, who deleted some material considered too shocking or embarrassing for publication, replacing the offending words with asterisks. It wasn't until Leslie Marchand's 12 volume Collected Letters was published in the 1970s, that an unexpurgated edition was available.

Thank you to Mike Walmer for sending me a review copy.

The Letters of Rachel Henning - edited by David Adams

 Rachel Henning was born in England in 1826. She was the eldest of five children & both her parents had died by the time she was 19. In 1854, Rachel left her sheltered middle-class life to go out to Australia to join her brother, Biddulph, & sisters Amy & Annie. This first trip was short-lived. Rachel missed England & hated the hot summer weather & so she returned home.

There's a difference in tone between Rachel's letters home on  her first trip & the second trip in 1856. When she left Australia, Rachel realised how much she missed Biddulph & her sisters & knew that if she returned, she would need to have a different frame of mind. Rachel's second trip to Australia was different. She knew what to expect & her letters reflect her excitement at seeing her siblings again & her willingness to do whatever was needed to make life as comfortable as possible.

The letters in this book are mostly written to Rachel's sister, Etta & her husband, Mr Boyce, back home in England. They are full of interest & humour & this edition is enhanced by the lovely line drawings by Norman Lindsay. Lindsay was quite a controversial figure in his day & is probably best known for his love of painting nudes & the childrens book he wrote, The Magic Pudding. A fictionalised version of Lindsay was played by Sam Neill in the movie Sirens with Hugh Grant & Elle Macpherson in the 1990s.

Rachel's brother, Biddulph, was considered to be quite sickly in England but he thrived in Australia. He learned station management & eventually bought his own sheep station in Queensland. Rachel is much more philosophical on her second visit to Australia in 1861. Waiting in Bathurst with her sister Amy's family to join Biddulph at his new station, Exmoor, on the Bowen River near Port Denison in Queensland, she seems resigned to waiting nearly nine months for Biddulph to come down to fetch her & her sister, Annie. I think she relished the independence of her life with Biddulph compared to the life she would have had, living with relatives in England.

I believe the only way is to live on in the present from day to day, and do what is to be done and enjoy what is to be enjoyed, and there really is plenty of both here.

Rachel enjoyed all the housekeeping & making do of living in the bush. She was a very competent housekeeper & shared the duties with Annie. Although Biddulph had a good property & was making a success of it, they still had to travel quite a way for anything they wanted. Clothes had to last & be patched or mended & of course, had to be fit for purpose.

Bonnets, of course, are no use in the bush. I got a new hat when I first came down here, rather a pretty black straw, and I have had my old one cleaned and trimmed and have a riding-hat besides, so I think I shall do. I have that old brown shawl, you remember, and a thin one I got last summer, so I think I shall do very well, though Annie and Emily bewail over my deficiencies.

Rachel had many adventures. On a journey to Shoalhaven for a visit, her party became lost in the bush

Bella and I kept shouting to know where the other was and invariable answered "all right", till at last Bella pulled up, and said it was all wrong, that her horse was at fault, and she did not the least we know where we were. This was cheerful, and we began to discuss the probabilities of spending the night in the bush, and the consequent rheumatism that we should catch, when my horse, rejoicing in the name of Skittles, after turning round and round several times, seemed to find the way.
Altogether it was a most pleasant visit, and I was very sorry to leave that beautiful country and return to the dusty streets of Sydney.

Camping in the rain on the way home to Exmoor,

Tom lit a great fire and made some beautiful "johnny cakes" - thin soda cakes which are baked in about ten minutes and are the best bread you ever ate, and with johnny cakes and jam and hot tea, which was brought us in the tent by shiny mackintoshed figures, we continued to do very well. A tin pannikin of hot wine and water was put under the curtain the last thing with the remark from Biddulph that ot was to keep off the rheumatism, and we slept as sound as if we had a dozen roofs over our heads instead of the rain pattering on the canvas.

Sunday afternoon on Exmoor station,

Sunday seems so quiet in the bush. I should like to hear some church bells, but there is no bell near ... It is a beautiful afternoon, the warm air blowing in through the open door and window, and whispering among the gum-trees, cloud shadows gliding over the opposite mountain range, great Lion, the bloodhound, lying asleep in the doorway, quite regardless of being walked on or fallen over. Biddulph, arrayed in white trousers, white coat and regatta shirt ... is lazily reading in an armchair in the pleasant recess where the books are. ... Presently, when we have done writing, and Biddulph wakes up - he is not to say asleep - we shall go for a walk, probably to the site of the new house, and then on to the plains beyond, and up the "Blackwall", a curious range of cliff that bounds the station on the west for two miles, then we shall come back to dinner.

Rachel was game for anything - helping with the shearing, nurturing her pet lambs who followed her everywhere, encounters with snakes - she embraced the bush life. She gives pen portraits of the workers on the station& their visitors.

When she was in her late thirties, Rachel became engaged to Deighton Taylor, who worked with Biddulph on the station. Rachel's family were disapproving, not only because she was several years older than Deighton but because of his lack of prospects. However, they married & were very happy. Deighton began working as a supervisor at a timber mill on the Myall River in NSW & Rachel wrote to Etta about her new life & her happiness,

For the rest, I doubt if there is anyone else in the world who would have made me so happy or whom I could have made thoroughly happy. You know I am not the most patient of tempers, and I might possibly have quarrelled  and skirmished with anyone of less unvarying kindness and good temper. As it is, we have never had a word or thought of difference.

Rachel enjoyed setting up her own home, hanging wallpaper on canvas & meeting new neighbours. Eventually the timber mill job came to an end & they thought about buying a sheep farm near Stroud, eventually settling on a farm at American Creek, near Wollongong. They built a house called Springfield in the 1870s & lived there until 1896 when Deighton's health began to fail. Rachel died in 1914 at the age of 88.

Rachel's letters give such a lively picture of life in 19th century Australia. She's a wonderful observer of people & places; her descriptive writing of the bush & the mountains is very evocative. Her love of the country is evident in every letter. She often says she is reluctant to go to Sydney, not just because of the traveling but because she loves the bush so much. She found a freedom & independence in Australia that she could never have experienced in England. Even before she married, she was the head of her brother's household & knew that she was contributing to his success with her talent for keeping the accounts & her unfailing resourcefulness & good humour when things went wrong. She loved horses & describes riding & walking through the bush nearly every day. She was an intrepid traveller, as she needed to be in those days, when it took weeks to get from outback Queensland to Sydney. Rachel Henning's letters give an invaluable picture of life in Australia in the mid 19th century. I borrowed my copy from Open Library (which is why there's a price sticker on the front cover!).

A Lifelong Passion : Nicholas & Alexandra : their own story - ed Andrei Maylunas and Sergei Mironenko

This book has been on my shelves for many years. I've dipped into it before but never read it all through. After reading Helen Rappaport's wonderful Four Sisters earlier this year, I wanted to read more about the Romanovs & this book was perfect. It's a selection of the letters, diaries & memoirs of Nicholas, Alexandra, other family members, servants & other observers to the events of Nicholas's reign.

The tragic story of the last Tsar & his family is well-known. As I was reading A Lifelong Passion, I was struck by just how early on in Nicholas's reign the portents of disaster began. The personalities of Nicholas & Alexandra & the way they reacted to circumstances determined the course of their lives. The book begins with an account of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Known as the Tsar-Liberator because he liberated the serfs, Alexander was succeeded by his son, Alexander III, who became one of the most reactionary & autocratic of Tsars in reaction to what he saw as the failure of his father's liberal ideals. Alexander III dominated his son, Nicholas, who led an idle life in the Army & society.

At a family wedding, Nicholas met Alix of Hesse, a princess of a minor German royal house & a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Alix's mother had died when she was young & Victoria had virtually brought up Alix & her sisters. Alix had been a happy child but the deaths of her mother & two of her siblings changed her personality & she grew up a serious, melancholy girl. She was also very religious & the great stumbling block to her love for Nicholas was religion. Alix was unwilling to convert to Russian Orthodoxy & it took years to overcome this resistance. Alix's sister Ella had married one of Nicholas's uncles, Serge, & her influence was crucial in the engagement eventually taking place. Alix became a passionate convert to Orthodoxy &, as tragedy consumed her personal life, she became more & more religious which led to an estrangement from Russian society & her dependence on mystics such as Rasputin.

Alexander III died suddenly in 1894 at the age of only 49. Nicholas had no training for his destined role & his personality was not suited to playing a dominant role. Nicholas also had several very domineering uncles who saw him as a weak personality who needed bolstering. He reacted with polite attention which gave the impression that he agreed with the last person he spoke to but which often left people feeling that he had deceived them. Alix, on the other hand, was stubborn & strong-willed, always pushing Nicky to impose his will on his Ministers & be a strong Tsar for the Russian people. This was a disastrous combination. The saving grace from a personal point of view was their great love for each other. This never wavered from their earliest days together until the end & is expressed in passionate terms in their letters & diaries in this book.

Their marriage began in the tragic circumstances of Alexander III's death. Alix was summoned to Livadia to be present at the Tsar's deathbed & she & Nicky were married just weeks later & the superstitious Russians said that their new Tsarina had come to them behind a coffin. From that moment, nothing seemed to go right. The coronation was marred by the tragedy of the stampede at Khodinka Meadow, when hundreds were killed as they tried to get hold of souvenirs. The new Tsar went to a reception that night which gave a bad impression. Alix was shy & uncertain in society, in contrast to her mother-in-law, Maria Feodorovna, & the mistakes she made in the early days were never forgotten or forgiven. Alix's religious fervor was also wondered & laughed at by sophisticated Russian society.

Four daughters were born over the next six years, each one loved by their parents but the rest of the family despaired over the lack of a male heir. Alix's desire for a son led her to consult quacks & religious mystics. When the longed for son, Alexei, was born in 1904, he suffered from haemophilia. Alexei's illness dominated Alix's life from that moment & led to her reliance on Rasputin, who seemed to be able to calm the boy when he was ill. The family also isolated themselves at Tsarskoe Selo, preserving their happy family life but distancing themselves from the rest of the family, society & the people.

Politically Russia was also in revolutionary mood. The Bloody Sunday massacre in 1905 & the Russo-Japanese War led to demands for democracy but Nicholas was reluctant to grant any power to the people. Bolstered by Alix, he stubbornly vowed to uphold the autocracy of his ancestors. Russia's lack of preparedness for WWI led to enormous losses on the battlefield & Nicholas's decision to take over as Commander in Chief of the Army was a fatal mistake. Revolution in 1917 led to Nicholas's abdication, imprisonment with his family at Tsarskoe Selo, then Siberia & death in Ekaterinburg in 1918. Whether Nicholas could have done anything to avert the disasters of his reign if he had been a different man or if he had married a different woman, is a question that is impossible to answer. There are so many What Ifs in the story of the last Romanovs which is why it's so interesting to read these firsthand accounts.

It's so interesting to read how concerned Nicky's family were about the isolation of the Royal Family. Right from the very beginning of his reign, there was concern that Alix was avoiding her duties to society, but as the family grew & especially after Alexei was born, the desire to be completely private & especially not to allow anyone outside the immediate family to know of Alexei's illness, became more obvious. Nicky's sisters, Olga & Xenia, write in their letters & memoirs of their concern at the Tsar's isolation. The wider Romanov family were bewildered & concerned. Many of them grew to resent Alix & blame her for the increasing discontent in Russia, including her own sister, Ella, from whom she was increasingly estranged.

The most interesting sections of the book are the Diaries of Konstantin Konstantinovich, known as KR. KR was a cousin of Nicky's, the grandson of Tsar Nicholas I. He was a writer, poet & translator; he translated Hamlet into Russian. He was a devoted husband & father of nine children but he was also bisexual which caused him great anguish. It also left him open to blackmail & he struggled with this although there was no open scandal. KR was one of the few Romanovs who were close to Nicky & Alix right up until his death in 1915. By then, it was too late to save the dynasty. Alix was virtually running the country when Nicky was at the Front & her letters to him are full of exhortations to be strong & save the throne for Alexei. Her letters become more & more unbalanced & it's hard to imagine how Nicky must have felt when receiving yet another letter full of advice about ministerial appointments from his wife with total reference to Rasputin. The eyewitness accounts of Rasputin's murder, & the murders of members of the Imperial family are also fascinating.The most poignant diary entries are from Alexei in captivity in Tobolsk as he writes day after day, "Everything the same." "The same as yesterday".

A Lifelong Passion is a fascinating book. There's virtually no commentary from the editors, apart from chapter headings & footnotes, so the eyewitness accounts speak for themselves. With the mass of material available to them (the first draft was 2,500 pages long. The published book is 650 pages) the editors had to leave a lot out but they have done an excellent job of making a complex story coherent & allowing as many diverse voices as possible to be heard. The Memoirs may have the benefit of hindsight & self-justification (especially in the case of Felix Yusupov, one of Rasputin's murderers), but the letters & diaries are so immediate that the well-known story becomes new once more.

Letters to a Friend - Winifred Holtby

Winifred Holtby is mostly known these days for her final novel, South Riding, which was adapted for television a few years ago. Building on the success of the series, Virago have also reprinted several of her novels, including Anderby Wold. Another novel, The Crowded Street, is in print from Persephone. Thirty years ago, Holtby was probably best known as the friend of Vera Brittain. She featured in Brittain's memoir, Testament of Youth (also adapted for television) & Vera wrote a biography of Winifred, Testament of Friendship, after her early death in 1935 at the age of only 37. Letters to a Friend was first published in 1937 & comprises the letters Winifred wrote to her friend, Jean McWilliam, headmistress of a school in Pretoria.

Winifred Holtby joined the WAAC, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in 1918. She was posted to Huchenneville in France as hostel forewoman of a Signals unit. There she met Jean McWilliam, who was the Administrator of the unit & the two became friends. They referred to each other as Rosalind (Jean) & Celia (Winifred) after the cousins in Shakespeare's As You Like It & the correspondence begins in 1920 when Winifred is at Somerville College, Oxford & Jean is teaching in South Africa.

After leaving Oxford, Winifred & Vera Brittain decide to live in London & make a living as writers & teachers. They are also both members of the League of Nations Union (the precursor to the United Nations) & do a lot of unpaid lecturing for the cause. Gradually, Winifred becomes sought after as a teacher & as a journalist. Teaching is a way to pay the bills & she never commits herself to a full time post. Writing is her first love, even when she's discouraged by the difficulties of writing fiction compared to the realities. Her first novel, Anderby Wold, is published but she suffers from the feeling that the book isn't nearly as good as her imaginings while she was writing it. This is a theme of her work as a novelist. Her journalism is published in leading newspapers, including the Manchester Guardian & periodicals such as the feminist weekly, Time and Tide.

Winifred's letters are full of her busy professional life but the overwhelming theme to me was her generosity. She never seems to say no to sitting on a committee, tutoring young women wanting to go to Oxford, doing endless unpaid work for the League of Nations Union & helping anyone in need, from a young returned soldier needing money for his apprenticeship, to a young woman who came to visit her asking for advice because she identified so strongly with Muriel, the protagonist of The Crowded Street . Her family were in Yorkshire & several times she goes home to help in a crisis. Her formidable mother, Alice, was elected as the first woman alderman in Yorkshire & was the model for Mrs Beddows in South Riding.

Above all, the letters are funny. I have post-it notes sticking out all over my copy with passages I want to quote but I don't want this review to be almost as long as the book so I'll just mention a few. This scene is straight out of Barbara Pym's novel, Excellent Women. Doesn't it remind you of the scene when Mildred goes to hear Everard & Helena lecture to the Learned Society?

The Royal Asiatic Society has At Homes in a big library, where you stand round a table in company with scholars and missionaries, and nice, brainless-looking peers who have been to India, and their wives and daughters and sisters. And nobody knows anybody else very well, and everybody seems to cherish a secret suspicion that somebody else is going to eat all the tea first, which would make them inclined to be rude and snatch seed cake from their neighbours, if they weren't at the same time aware that their neighbour might be a celebrity. As an audience, it is sticky. As a tea-fight, it is greedy, unsociable, and a little more undecorative than usual.
January 21st, 1923

Planning a trip to South Africa to visit Jean, Winifred's constant contriving about clothes (one of the delights of the letters) threatens to derail the whole trip.

But I had a horrid shock the other day, reading in the Lady or something an article about South African fashions. ... ' We dress for eleven o'clock tea as for a garden party, and wear full evening dress for dinner every night.' For the Lord's sake, Rosalind, tell me it isn't true. I have exactly one evening dress.It has been dyed and twice renovated. It's already in pieces and I'm spending my autumn dress money on going to the Assembly (of the League of Nations Union) in Geneva again. I thought it might be more useful. This is horrible. Do write and reassure me or I shall paint myself with woad and wear nothing but your feather stole.
August 5th, 1925

Here she's working on her novel, The Land of Green Ginger.

It is queer how one goes on making the better acquaintance with one's characters, just as though they were people. I could no more make mine do what I want them to do, once I have created them, than I could make you do something. They seem to have a complete individual life, and I could follow every word and action and thought of theirs during a whole day if that were artistically possible. The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.
October 6th, 1926

The letters were mostly written from 1920-1926. They continue sporadically for the last years of Winifred's life but the friendship seemed to peter out as Winifred grew busier & the sympathy between them lessened. In Marion Shaw's biography of Winifred, The Clear Stream, it's suggested that this volume, edited by Jean & Alice Holtby, was an attempt to regain some control of Winifred's memory from Vera Brittain. Vera had seen South Riding through the press after Winifred's death, against Mrs Holtby's wishes as she was unhappy with her portrayal as Mrs Beddows &, of course, Vera was writing her own account of Winifred's life. No matter how it came about, Letters to a Friend is an absorbing account of a young woman working in London in the 1920s. I loved all the domestic details of Winifred's life as well as the journeys she took & the funny stories she tells of her adventures in the schoolroom & on the lecture platform. I'm so pleased that it has been reprinted.

Mike Walmer kindly sent me Letters to a Friend for review. It's the first in his Belles-Lettres series & I'm looking forward to seeing what other gems he includes in the list.

A Vicarage in the Blitz : the wartime letters of Molly Rich 1940-1944

Molly Rich spent the war in London, keeping her home going & providing comfort & support to friends, family & neighbours. She was 41 years old & married to Edward, the vicar of St Nicholas, Chiswick. They had four children, aged from 12 to 6 - Helen, Lawrence, Patience & Anthea - all away at school out of London. The two youngest girls had been evacuated to Ware as their grandmother lived there & they went to the local school. The vicarage, which stood right on the river, was large & old-fashioned; the kitchen was a nightmare of inefficiency. Even so, Molly filled the rooms with refugees, bombed-out neighbours, relatives & anyone else who needed somewhere to stay.

One of these refugees was Otto, an Austrian Jew from Vienna, who arrived, aged 20 in 1939 & quickly became part of the family. Molly considered Otto to be her fifth child so she was horrified when he was interned as an enemy alien when war broke out & sent to an internment camp in Australia on the HMT Dunera, along with 2800 other men. The Dunera episode was a scandal as the ship was overcrowded & conditions on the voyage were so appalling that several of the ship's officers were court-martialled. Otto survived the trip & spent over a year in Australia before being allowed to return to England where he joined the Pioneer Corps & eventually the Army. He served in Europe until the end of the war.

This book consists of the letters Molly wrote to Otto during this time. Many of the early letters are quite despairing as she has no idea where he is & spends a lot of time visiting various Government offices trying to find out where he is. She knows her letters will be censored so she writes of the family, domestic trials, the impact of the war on Chiswick. Molly spent her nights fire watching & as the Blitz began, the upstairs rooms of the Vicarage became uninhabitable as it was too dangerous to sleep there in case of bombs.

Molly's letters are often funny as she is very good at seeing the lighter side of rationing, impossible train travel & the bureaucratic roundabout she goes on when she's trying to get news of Otto.

One of the mysterious things is why trains should be so crowded directly there is a war. There are the same trains and the same number of people in the country and no one travels unless they can help it, but the trains always get crowded all the same. I remember in the last war when we went up to London we always made for the milk van, because we knew it was the only place where there would be any room. We always had to stand all the way, but we rather enjoyed it as our friends went by the milk van too and it was more fun than being stuck stiffly in seats at each side of a carriage.
August 31, 1941

Even when Molly is tired & exasperated, her humour still comes through.

My fingers are frozen and covered with chilblains, which have burst and I think the typewriter is frozen too. Thank God the water is still running, but I expect it is merely a matter of hours before that goes as well. ... Uncle Edward is interviewing replacements for Fred (the curate). He is considered a married curate with a young wife. I cannot cope with new curates and their wives. She will be pretty with big eyes, fluffy hair and a good complexion. She will wear her clothes as though she had thrown them on in the dark and will not put powder on her nose. She will have a soft voice and a bit of a Yorkshire accent. He will be tall, with a long face and big feet and look as if he had no insides. Very soon they will have a baby and I shall have to be very enthusiastic and produce baby clothes. I feel fed up, very tired and don't want to be excited about a baby or anything else.
January 6, 1942

At times she reminds me of the Provincial Lady,

The children and I attacked the garden yesterday. We were weeding and discussing the afterlife. I wonder why it is that when two or three people garden together this subject always comes up. We all rather like talking about it, because we know nothing about it and we can let our imaginations run riot. In the end I made a hole in my hand and have blisters all over the palm and the garden looks much the same as it did before. I want to get the ground clear so as to be able to plant fruit bushes as soon as possible in the spring.
December 25, 1944

By this time, Edward has left Chiswick & is a residentiary canon at Peterborough Cathedral. Their house in the Cathedral Close is even more old-fashioned than the Vicarage & Molly faces starting all over again in a new place with her usual good humour.

As well as writing to Otto, Molly also kept up a correspondence with her mother in the country, the children at school, two sisters in Africa & Edward's family in America & Trinidad. She also dug up her front lawn to plant vegetables & did all the housework & cooking with very little help. Molly's daughter, Anthea, who has put this collection together & illustrated it with charming line drawings, remembers her mother sitting in the garden, typing away on any scrap of paper she could find. The Rich family stayed in touch with Otto after the war & he gave Anthea the letters - over 600 of them - in the 1970s, telling her that they had kept him alive at a time when he felt completely hopeless & alone.

I love reading letters & journals of this period & it's wonderful that more are still to be discovered. I was amazed at all that Molly managed to achieve in her busy life. Maybe her letters, keeping all her correspondents in touch & included in her life, assuring them they were not forgotten, were the most important war work she could have done.

Selected Letters - Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith was a 19th century clergyman who is probably best known today, if he's known at all, for his letters. He was born in 1771 & educated with his brother at Winchester College (two other brothers went to Eton). He became a clergyman & lived in Edinburgh for some years where he was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review, an influential periodical on literature, politics & social issues. even after leaving Edinburgh, Smith continued to contribute reviews & articles. He then moved to London, becoming well-known as a preacher & in society. He held the living at Foston-le-Clay in Yorkshire for many years, later moving to a living in Taunton near Bristol & later becoming a canon of St Paul's. He was happily married to Catherine & was a fond father to his daughter, Saba & son, Douglas.

If I was trying to describe Sydney Smith, the words good humoured & liberal come to mind. He had a genius for friendship. He wrote regularly to Francis Jeffreys & John Murray in Edinburgh. When he moved to London, he was introduced by his brother, Robert (known as Bobus), to Lord & Lady Holland, the great Whig political couple, where he become a frequent guest. He kept up a correspondence with both after he moved to Yorkshire. His letters are always respectful but never obsequious or servile. He is honest in his opinions & always interested in their family & friends.

Smith never received the preferments his friends believed him entitled to. He was a liberal Whig in an age of conservative Tory government. Church appointments were a matter of patronage & influence & Smith's friends never had the influence that would have helped him to high office. I don't see him as a particularly ambitious man, though. When he went to Foston, there had been no resident clergyman there for 150 years. He set about rebuilding the vicarage, built up the farm that came with the living & was a much-loved pastor to his parishioners. He was allowed to spend a few weeks away from his parish every year & went to London where he revelled in society & enjoyed the intellectual stimulation that he missed at home. His personality is particularly attractive to modern readers because he espoused many causes that weren't mainstream at the time but have become so. He was anti-slavery, he was in favour of Catholic emancipation & his inclinations were liberal in social matters while always being a devout Anglican.

In later life, he moved to a living near Taunton &, during a brief period of Tory government, he was appointed as a Canon of St Paul's which meant he could spend more time in London.

I think Lord Grey will give me some preferment if he stays in long enough; but the Upper Parsons live vindictively, and evince their aversion to a Whigg ministry by an improved health. The Bishop of Ely has the rancor to recover after three paralytic strokes, and the Dean of Lichfield to be vigorous at 82 -  and yet these are the men who are called Christians. Letter to J A Murray January 24th 1831

His father & brother died, leaving him enough money to live comfortably. Apart from the usual ills of old age, & the death of his son, Douglas, in 1829, he was a contented man by the end of his life.

The best way to demonstrate Sydney Smith's personality, though, is not to try to describe him but to quote his letters. This description of himself in 1805 held true throughout his life,

You ask me about my prospects. I think I shall long remain as I am. I have no powerful friends. I belong to no party, I do not cant, I abuse canting everywhere, I am not conciliating, and I have not talents enough to force my way without these laudable and illaudable auxiliaries. This is as true a picture of my situation as I can give you. In the mean time I lead not an unhappy life, much otherwise, and am thankful for my share of good. Letter to Francis Jeffrey July 4th 1805

Here he advises a friend how to improve her low spirits. I can only agree with all 20 of his precepts but here are just a few,

1st. Live as well as you dare. 3rd. Amusing books. 6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you. 8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely - they are always worse for dignified concealment.12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion not likely to end in active benevolence. 15th. make the room where you commonly sit, gay and pleasant. 17th. Don't be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice. Letter to Lady Georgiana Morpeth February 16th 1820

He was popular in literary as well as political circles.

Dear Moore,
I have a breakfast of philosophers tomorrow at ten punctually. Muffins and metaphysics; crumpets and contradiction. Will you come?
Letter to Thomas Moore November 12th 1841

My dear Dickens,
I accept your obliging invitation conditionally. If I am invited by any man of greater genius than yourself, or one by whose works I have been more completely interested, I will repudiate you and dine with the more splendid phenomenon of the two.
Ever yours sincerely,
Sydney Smith     Letter to Charles Dickens May 14th 1842

However, my favourite quote comes from his Memoirs,

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.

Books I'm looking forward to

As if I didn't have enough sources of new books & more than enough to read on the tbr shelves, I've recently discovered NetGalley. This is a website that supplies free pre-publication e-books for reviewers, bloggers & anyone who promotes books & reading. I've already enjoyed reading several books from NetGalley including Martin Edwards' The Frozen Shroud & The Creation of Anne Boleyn by Susan Bordo.

I've recently downloaded several books to be published over the next few months that I'm very excited about. John Guy is a well-known historian who has written biographies of Mary, Queen of Scots & Thomas Becket. His new book, published in July, is The Children of Henry VIII. As I'm always interested in another book about the Tudors & I've read & enjoyed Guy's other books, I'm looking forward to this very much.

A first novel to be published in July, Letters from Skye, by Jessica Brockmole, immediately caught my attention. It ticks so many boxes - Skye, set during WWI & WWII, a poet, letters & a mysterious disappearance. Already, without having read a word, it has echoes for me of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, The Glass Guardian by Linda Gillard & Pictures at an Exhibition by Camilla Macpherson. Here's the blurb from Amazon,

March 1912: Twenty-four-year-old Elspeth Dunn, a published poet and a fisherman's wife, has never seen the world beyond her home on Scotland's bucolic Isle of Skye. So she is astonished when a fan letter arrives from an American college student, David Graham.As the two strike up a correspondence - sharing their favorite books, wildest hopes, and deepest secrets - their exchanges blossom into friendship, and eventually into love. But as World War I moves across Europe and David volunteers as an ambulance driver on the Western front, Elspeth can only wait for him on Skye, hoping he comes back alive.
June 1940: More than twenty years later, at the start of World War II, Elspeth's daughter, Margaret, has fallen for her best friend, a pilot in the Royal Air Force. Her mother warns her against finding love in wartime, an admonition Margaret doesn't understand. And after a nearby bomb rocks Elspeth's house, and letters that were hidden in a wall come raining down, Elspeth disappears. Only a single letter, sent decades before by a stranger named David Graham, remains as a clue to Elspeth's whereabouts. As Margaret sets out to discover who David is and where her mother has gone, she must also face the truth of what happened to her family long ago . . .
 

I've always been fascinated by nuns & movies featuring nuns are among my absolute favourites. So, I was so pleased to be offered a copy of Veiled Desires by Maureen A Sabine which is published in August. This is an exploration of the way nuns have been portrayed in the movies from the 1940s to the present day. Among the movies discussed are Black Narcissus (that's Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodagh on the cover), The Nun's Story (Audrey Hepburn & the most distinguished cast of Sisters & Reverend Mothers ever seen in a movie, I think - Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Dame Edith Evans, Rosalie Crutchley & Mildred Dunnock), In This House of Brede (Diana Rigg, Pamela Brown & Gwen Watford) & Change of Habit (Mary Tyler Moore with Elvis Presley as a doctor!). And those are just my favourites. Other movies include Heaven Knows, Mr Allison, Sea Wife & The Bells of St Mary's.

My only problem is stopping myself from reading all three books straight away! I like to read & review books as close as I can to the publication date so I'm trying to forget that these gems are on my e-reader until it's closer to publication day. Wish me luck!

Letters of a Woman Homesteader - Elinore Pruitt Stewart

This book is another excellent choice made by the conveners of my 19th century bookgroup. Letters of a Woman Homesteader (photo from here) is the story of Elinore Pruitt told in letters to her former employer, Mrs Coney. Elinore was a widow with a two year old daughter, Jerrine, when she decided to leave Denver where she had worked as a laundress, & go out to Burnt Fork, Wyoming as housekeeper to homesteader Clyde Stewart. Elinore longed for the great outdoors & felt stifled in town. Another incentive for the move was the fact that she could file a claim on land to build herself a home when she could afford it.

The overwhelming flavour of these letters is good humour. One of the bookgroup commented that Elinore was the kind of person who never met a stranger. I can't put it any better than that. Elinore was a kind, helpful, practical woman who saw the good in everyone she met. She had replied to an ad placed by Mr Stewart &, when you think about it, that was taking a leap in the dark. To set out on a long journey into unknown territory with a stranger & a young child was quite a leap of faith. Elinore was very practical. She doesn't confess this to Mrs Coney for some time but she & Mr Stewart were married only six weeks after arriving in Wyoming & she had been prepared to take this step from the beginning. The marriage may have begun as a practical proposition but it seems to have been happy. Elinore was a hard worker & not above bamboozling her husband to get her own way but she is genuinely fond of him & Jerrine (who also writes a letter to Mrs Coney) calls him "Our Clyde".

Elinore's appreciation of nature & the landscape of her new home is one of the beauties of the letters. On a trip to Green River, "I had more fun to the square inch than Mark Twain or Samantha Allen ever provoked." They camped out on the week-long trip & only saw one house.

After driving all day over what seemed a level desert of sand, we came about sundown to a beautiful cañon, down which we had to drive for a couple of miles before we could cross. In the cañon the shadows had already fallen, but when we looked up we could see the last shafts of sunlight on the tops of the great bare buttes. ... The violet shadows were creeping up between the hills, while away back of us the snow-capped peaks were catching the sun's last rays. On every side of us stretched the poor, hopeless desert, the sage, grim and determined to live in spite of starvation, and the great, bare, desolate buttes... Then we stopped to camp, and such a scurrying around to gather brush for the fire and to get supper!... It was too beautiful a night to sleep, so I put my head out to look and to think. I saw the moon come up and hang for a while over the mountain as if it were discouraged with the prospect, and the big white stars flirted shamelessly with the hills.

On her journeys, Elinore makes friends. On a camping trip she took with her daughter Jerrine, they are at risk of being lost when she comes across the lonely homestead of Zebulon Pike, a southerner who had lived alone with his animals for many years. He takes them in & next day helps them find their way. Elinore is troubled to think that Zeb has had no contact with his family for years (he'd left home after an unhappy love affair), so she writes to his sisters & tells him about his life. The result is that he makes a trip home to see his family & Elinore & her husband even arrange for someone to stay at Zeb's farm & care for his animals. This is the pattern of Elinore's life. She soon meets all her neighbours & becomes involved in the life of the community.

Elinore's voice is comfortable & chatty. She begins one of her letters,

Dear Mrs Coney,
I feel just like visiting to-night, so I am going to "play like" you have come. It is so good to have you to chat with. Please be seated in this low rocker; it is a present to me from the Pattersons and I am very proud of it. I am just back from the Patterson ranch, and they have a dear little boy who came the 20th of November and they call him Robert Lane.

Elinore's life is not without its sadnesses & challenges. Her first baby with Mr Stewart dies & she writes movingly of Jamie's death & the fact that she read the service herself as there was no minister,

For a long time my heart was crushed. He was such a sweet, beautiful boy. I wanted him so much. He died of erysipelas. I held him in my arms until the last agony was over. Then I dressed the beautiful little body for the grave. Clyde is a carpenter; so I wanted him to make the little coffin. He did it every bit, and I lined and padded it, trimmed and covered it... it was a sad pleasure to do everything for our little first born ourselves. As there had been no physician to help, so there was no minister to comfort, and I could not bear to let our baby leave the world without leaving any message to a community that sadly needed it. His little message to us had been love, so I selected a chapter from John and we had a funeral service, at which all our neighbours for thirty miles around were present. So you see, our union is sealed by love and welded by a great sorrow.

Elinore had no formal education as she spent her childhood looking after younger siblings after the death of her parents when she was 14. She was a great reader & her letters are full of allusions to her favourite books. The letters span the years from 1909-1914. Elinore's homestead still exists & her family are raising money for its restoration. There are photos of it here. I loved reading about Elinore's hard but happy life. I downloaded my copy of Letters of a Woman Homesteader for free from ManyBooks. It's also available from Girlebooks.

Letters to Vicky - Queen Victoria & Victoria, Empress of Germany 1858-1901

I love reading other people's letters. A long correspondence between two people is even better. If one of the correspondents is Queen Victoria, it's irresistible. This sumptuous volume was the main reason that I renewed my Folio Society membership. I wish I could show you some of the plates, they are so lovely & include several photos of the Royal family I hadn't seen before. Unfortunately, I couldn't take decent photos of them as the paper is quite shiny. So, you'll just have to take my word for it. The treasure of this book isn't in the plates anyway, it's in the words.

These letters are a selection of the enormous correspondence between Queen Victoria & her eldest daughter, Vicky. Vicky married Frederick (Fritz) of Prussia in 1858 when she was only 17. The letters begin immediately after the ceremony & don't stop until just before Queen Victoria's death in 1901. Vicky was her parents' pride & joy. Their eldest child, her father, Prince Albert's, favourite, Vicky was intelligent, clever & beautiful. She was everything that the Prince of Wales, Bertie, was not. Bertie was always compared with Vicky & always to his disadvantage. Surprisingly, Vicky & Bertie had a loving relationship & remained friends, apart from a few political differences, for the rest of their lives.

Vicky & Fritz's relationship was a true love match which was becoming less of a rarity in royal circles as the 19th century wore on. Both liberals & patriotic Prussians, they were at odds with Fritz's father, the King of Prussia (later Emperor of a united Germany) & his chief minister, the militaristic, reactionary Otto von Bismarck. Prussian society was suspicious of Vicky as an Englishwoman & always suspected her of influencing her husband in the interests of England.

People spread at Berlin that I was unhappy at the success of our troops. They comment on everything I say, do, and put on, to my disadvantage. I cannot do the simplest thing without its being found to be in imitation of something English, and therefore anti-Prussian... I feel as though I could smash the idiots; it is so spiteful and untrue. I am sure I would almost quarrel with my real and best friends in dear England rather than forget that I belong to this country, the interest of which I have so deeply at heart -  more deeply, I venture to say, than a great many born and bred here. Vicky to Queen Victoria May 11, 1864

Vicky & Fritz had a long, frustrating wait for the throne as Fritz's father lived until he was 90. Tragically, Fritz's reign lasted only three months as he was suffering from throat cancer. All his liberal plans for his country ended in nothing. He was succeeded by his eldest son, William II, best known for his role in WWI. Wilhelm had become estranged from his parents & was completely under Bismarck's influence so Germany's road to militarism & an arms race with Great Britain was set.

The relationship between Vicky & her son is full of misunderstandings & thwarted love. William (Willy) had a damaged arm, the result of his difficult birth, & Vicky's attempts to find a cure for his disability fill her letters to her mother during his childhood. Her love for her son is obvious as she & the doctors try treatments from sea bathing to physical manipulation of the limb.

I have written to the King begging him to allow me to send Willie to Osborne (to stay with Queen Victoria for the sea bathing) and I hope to have the answer tomorrow, and in that case would send him next week. I am so grateful to you for receiving him; though he looks much better now - I am sure it will do wonders for him! Vicky to Queen Victoria July 2, 1864

Unfortunately as Willy grew older, he came under the influence of his grandfather & Bismarck & grew to despise his father's liberalism as soft & blame his mother for his disability.

Willie goes daily to his Grandpapa for all he wants and cuts his Papa, because it is a great deal more convenient for them but for us it is most painful and disagreeable. Please keep this to yourself, dearest Mama. I am not complaining of them but, our life and position which never was easy at Berlin has only become more difficult and more complicated in consequence, and I dread going back there very much. Vicky to Queen Victoria December 1, 1883

He grew more resentful as he grew older &, by the time of his marriage to Augusta (Dona) of Schleswig-Holstein, he was barely polite to his parents although his grandmother still had the ability to shame him into good manners. On the birth of Willie's first child, Queen Victoria wasn't above a little sly manipulation,

How absurd of Willie and Dona to call the child William. As they have not told me, when I write to Dona to thank her for her letter and some of the child's hair I shall say 'Of course you will call him Fritz after his two Grandpapas,' and shall see what they answer. Queen Victoria to Vicky June 22 1882

Queen Victoria's letters are a fascinating mixture of royal dignity, neediness & common sense. When Vicky first goes to Prussia, her mother bombards her with letters demanding to know everything she wears every day & wants to know the arrangement of her rooms, her health etc in a mixture of imploring & reproach.

Pray do answer my questions, my dearest child, else you will be as bad as Bertie used to be, and it keeps me in such a fidget.
I asked you several questions on a separate paper about your health, cold sponging - temperature of your rooms etc and you have not answered one!... My good dear child is a little unmethodical and unpunctual still. Fritz always answers all questions. Just write them down on a bit of paper - when you have time - and put them in your letter; never mind if they are old - only pray do answer them. Queen Victoria to Vicky February 22, 1858

Queen Victoria soon had Vicky on the lookout for a suitable wife for Bertie. Vicky had to inspect every Protestant princess in Germany & her comments on these poor girls are often very sharp but also shrewd. She knew that her brother would never be happy with a plain wife & she worked very hard to overcome her mother's objections to beautiful Alexandra of Denmark whose family Queen Victoria did not approve of.

We are anxious to know as much about Princess Elizabeth of Wied and Anna of Hesse as possible, I think future choice of Bertie must lie between them... You know, dearest, we must feel very anxious about this choice and the beauty of Denmark is much against our wishes. I do wish somebody would go and marry her off - at once. If Bertie could see and like one of the others first then I am sure we should be safe.
Queen Victoria to Vicky December 18, 1860

In answer to your question about Anna of Hesse. I do not think her pretty - she has not a fine figure but a passable one. She has a very flat, narrow and upright forehead...She has an incipient twitching in her eyes... and her teeth are nearly all spoilt... she was too awfully dressed. She has a very deep voice, and rather a gruff, abrupt way of speaking, frowning when she speaks, partly to conceal her shyness and partly to conceal her eyes which are perpetually twitching while she is talking. Vicky to Queen Victoria December 21, 1860

Bertie did marry Alexandra & Queen Victoria grew to love her dearly although she wasn't able to restrain Bertie's love of frivolous society.

I've barely scratched the surface of this fascinating book. I could quote passages endlessly about all sorts of subjects. I haven't even mentioned politics, although I must admit I find all the family relationships much more interesting. There are births, deaths, marriages, scandals & Victoria & Vicky have opinions on them all. Victoria was very supportive of Vicky through all the stresses of her life in Germany, the death of her beloved Fritz & her growing estrangement from Willy. Vicky is patient with her mother's eternal complaints about her poor health & sympathetic about the Queen's often strained relations with her Governments & her heir. Vicky is homesick for Osborne & Balmoral. They grieve together over the deaths of the Prince Consort & other close family & friends.

I must just quote one more letter from Queen Victoria. She had published a volume of reminiscences, Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands from 1848-1861, and was very proud of it.

I have such quantities of beautiful and touching letters from people whom I don't know, or have ever heard of - all about my little book, but I send you none, and indeed have been doubtful of sending you the Quarterly with a review by the Bishop of Oxford as you seem to take so little interest in it and only mentioned it once. Queen Victoria to Vicky January 29, 1868

I do not know why you should think I am indifferent about the appearance of your book and what is said about it in the press - whatever concerns you and our home is of vital importance and greatest interest not of indifference. Vicky to Queen Victoria February 1, 1868

That mixture of hurt pride & neediness from the Queen & soothing love from Vicky is very typical of the letters. To the end of their lives, they wrote regularly & always with great affection & love.

The ending of Victoria's last letter to her daughter, just three weeks before she died is moving in its simplicity, "I must, I fear, end for today to save the post. God bless you, darling child." Queen Victoria died on January 22, 1901 & Vicky, already suffering from cancer, died on August 5 of the same year.

The Letters of T S Eliot Volume 2 1923-1925 - ed by Valerie Eliot & Hugh Haughton

I’ve been waiting for the publication of Volume 2 of T S Eliot’s letters for 20 years. That’s how long ago Volume 1 was published. As this Volume only covers three years, 1923-1925, & is over 800pp long, I don’t know if I’ll be around to see the end of the project. I’d like to think I’ll see at least a couple more Volumes though. I love reading letters. It took me a few weeks to be in the right mood to pick this book up but, once I did, I couldn’t stop reading. Several times I read 100pp in a sitting. My neck & wrists would be sore & I’d think I would have to stop. Then, I’d see that the next letter was to Virginia Woolf & the next one to Ottoline Morrell & I’d read just a few more pages. I don’t want to deceive you that the book is full of the Bloomsbury Group. Eliot was only on the fringes of the group &, apart from the Woolfs & Lady Ottoline, the only other Bloomsbury correspondent is Mary Hutchinson, Clive Bell’s mistress.

Most of the letters are concerned with Eliot’s involvement with the Criterion literary quarterly. In the three years covered by this volume, Eliot was working full-time at Lloyd’s Bank & editing the Criterion in the evenings & weekends. The Criterion was bankrolled by Lady Rothermere, wife of a newspaper baron. It was a vanity project for her, really, but she didn’t interfere in the editorial decisions & Eliot shaped the quarterly to reflect his own ideas about art, literature & criticism. Unfortunately Eliot received no salary for his work so he was forced to stay at Lloyds, a decision that had a detrimental effect on his health & his own writing. He wrote virtually no poetry during this period, apart from the sequence that became The Hollow Men. He also began work on his play, Sweeney Agonistes. Apart from this, all his writing was criticism & editorials for the Criterion.

Literary connections are always uncertain. I am no longer very popular with the Nation people, because my political and social views are so reactionary and ultra-conservative. They have become gradually more so and I am losing the approval of the moderate and tepid whigs and Liberals who have most of the literary power. It is less offensive to be a Socialist nowadays than it is to be a Tory. I want to be able to say just what I think. But if I stay in the bank I shall never have time to say what I think. There is so much I want to do.  (To his Mother late February? 1924)

The hundreds of letters to the printer, publisher & contributors of the Criterion are fascinating. Eliot did all the work of chasing contributions, organising review copies, cajoling reluctant or slow writers to meet his deadlines, hurrying up the printers & making decisions about the font size of reviews as opposed to feature articles. His reach was enormous. He was soliciting articles from writers all over Europe & the US. He was always striving for that balance between serious articles & a famous name to put on the cover to attract readers. All this work was done with only occasional secretarial help in his own time.

The other major theme of the letters is his marriage & his wife, Vivien’s, ill-health. The Eliots were married in 1915 & Vivien’s health had been precarious from the start. She comes close to death several times during these three years, suffering from influenza, bronchitis, colitis, liver problems & rheumatism. The financial burden is just as great as the emotional strain as Eliot takes Vivien to see endless new doctors & tries to find a country cottage so she can live away from the fogs of London. He wrote to Virginia Woolf asking her to be on the lookout for something suitable,

I don’t know whether you are in London. I hope at Rodmell. Now what we want – again!- is a cottage, a barn, a stable, or a shed, or even a bit of land on which a sectional bungalow could be put up – it doesn’t matter what, so long as it is in the country, and is cheap. Ever since we have been without even that miserable place at Fishbourne we have pined more and more. It’s the only way to get out of London – however miserable, we want something of our own. So if you hear of anything, or can find anything...We only want to go and live in the country, and if Lady R. would only provide a possible salary – which is not to be hoped – we should go at once. (To Virginia Woolf February 4th 1925)

By mid 1925, Eliot’s own health had broken down & he was on the verge of a breakdown. He blamed himself for Vivien’s ill-health but also felt trapped by it,

In the last ten years – gradually, but deliberately – I have made myself into a machine. I have done it deliberately – in order to endure, in order not to feel – but it has killed V. In leaving the bank I hope to become less a machine – but yet I am frightened – because I don’t know what it will do to me – and to V – should I come alive again. I have deliberately killed my senses – I have deliberately died – in order to go on with the outward form of living – This I did in 1915. What will happen if I live again? ‘I am I’ but with what feelings, with what results to others – Have I the right to be I – But the dilemma – to kill another person by being dead, or to kill them by being alive? ... Does it happen that two persons’ lives are absolutely hostile? Is it true that sometimes one can only live by another’s dying? (To John Middleton Murry mid-April? 1925)

Fortunately, by the end of 1925, Eliot’s financial worries had eased. He was able to leave Lloyds when he was offered a position as editor of a new literary quarterly to be called the New Criterion. It was to be published by a new house, Faber & Gwyer (later Faber & Faber), with whom Eliot would be associated for the rest of his life. There’s a photo of Eliot in the book, taken at around this time. He’s standing outside the offices of Faber & Gwyer, still looking like a banker, in his bowler hat, leaning on his umbrella. He looks pale, thin & weary but happy. I’m looking forward to the next Volume of letters to find out what happens next. I hope I don't have to wait another twenty years!

Books of the Year - Letters, Diaries, Biography & History

My favourite Non Fiction books of the year fall into one of these four categories. I often find that history & biography are hard to seperate as I read very little contemporary biography so the biographies I do read tend to be of historical figures. Letters & diaries are either from a historical period I'm interested in or written by an author whose work I enjoy.

Decca, the letters of Jessica Mitford, was one of the many books by the Mitford sisters I read this year. Jessica is the most likeable & sympathetic of the sisters to me & I loved reading her letters.

Nella Last is now one of the best-known diarists of WWII. She wrote her diaries for Mass Observation & kept writing after the War almost until her death. I read her WWII diaries a few years ago & this year read two more volumes, Nella Last's Peace & Nella Last in the 1950s.

Alice Dudeney was one of my discoveries this year. A browse through an anthology of diarists led me to A Lewes Diary by Mrs Henry Dudeney. A famous novelist in her day, Alice is now completely forgotten. Her diary was rescued from the archives of a local Archaeological Society. I was completely absorbed in her life & tortured marriage.

I'll list my favourite history & biography chronologically. Eleanor Butler is one of those shadowy medieval women who often slip through the cracks except when their story impinges on great events like the accession of Richard III. John Ashdown-Hill's biography, Eleanor, the Secret Queen, rescues her from that obscurity.

The Days of Duchess Anne by Rosalind K Marshall was a book I'd had on the tbr shelves for years. I loved reading about the household of the Duchess of Hamilton & life in Scotland in the late 17th century.

Effie : A Victorian Scandal by Merryn Williams is the story of a marriage that went spectacularly wrong.

Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey is the story of the Fitzwilliam family of Wentworth House & the coal mines that created their fortune. A wonderful example of social history taking in the Fitzwilliams & their workers.

Well, there's my list of best books of the year. I can't wait to read your comments & visit my favourite blogs & read about everyone else's favourites. Here's to another great year of reading in 2011.