Cakes and Ale - W Somerset Maugham

I've always known that Somerset Maugham lampooned Hugh Walpole in this novel, Cakes and Ale, but I didn't realise that he also used many recognisable aspects of the life of Thomas Hardy as well. Hardy died in 1928, only two years before this book was published, & the critics were shocked at Maugham's irreverence. After reading Walpole's Rogue Herries last year & being reminded of the scandal, I wanted to read Cakes and Ale, which, of course, has been sitting on my tbr shelves since 2011. Hugh Walpole's reputation never really recovered from his portrayal as Alroy Kear. He even wrote a letter to Maugham, asking why he had betrayed their friendship, & signed it Alroy Maugham Walpole. In his satirical portrait of literary society, Maugham also pokes fun at critics, society painters & literary hostesses. The book is very funny but I can understand why Walpole (& Hardy's widow, Florence) was so upset. The portrait of Alroy Kear is absolutely wicked & made Walpole a laughing stock.

William Ashenden is a moderately well-known writer. His friendship with Alroy Kear is intermittent & Kear usually only contacts him when he wants a favour. So, an urgent phone call from Kear asking him to lunch raises all his suspicions. Kear has been asked by Amy Driffield, widow of the famous Grand Old Man of English letters, Edward Driffield, to write a biography of her husband. Amy is summed up in one beautiful phrase, "Mrs Driffield looked as though she had taken a dose of castor oil and had just been trying to get the taste of it out of her mouth by sucking a lemon." Kear is a popular middlebrow novelist, an expert at self-promotion & flattery. He remembers that Ashenden knew Driffield when he was a boy, when Ashenden lived in the country town of Blackstable with his uncle, the vicar. Driffield was also a local boy & was married to his first wife, Rosie, who had been a barmaid. Kear wants Ashenden to write down his reminiscences but it soon transpires that only the facts & anecdotes that portray the literary lion in the making will be required. Rosie will be quietly airbrushed out of the story, an embarrassing mistake. The Edward Driffield who ran away to sea, enjoyed singing vulgar music hall songs & married beneath him will have no place in the official Life.

The request makes Ashenden suspicious as he knows exactly the kind of hagiography that Kear will write. Edward Driffield married Amy, who had been his nurse when he had pneumonia, when he was already an old man. She was much younger, very respectable & determined to make Driffield respectable too. Ashenden remembers his friendship with the Driffields. As a teenager, home for the summer holidays, he first met them out cycling & they taught him to ride. His uncle disapproved of Driffield, who has only published a few disreputable novels. Nevertheless, young Ashenden continues to see them during his school holidays until he is shocked by the news that they've skipped out one night, leaving debts everywhere. The locals suspect that "Lord" George Kemp (the local coal merchant, called "Lord" because he gave himself airs), one of Rosie's admirers, has helped with the flit.

Several years later, Ashenden is a medical student in London, trying to write his first novel in the evenings. He bumps into Rosie, who is pleased to see him & unembarrassed by the thought of their midnight flit. Ashenden becomes part of the Driffield's Bohemian circle that includes writers & painters, all of whom seem to visit for the sake of Rosie rather than Edward. Rosie is a wonderful character. She is completely natural. She's attractive, kind, thoughtful & just wants everyone to be happy. Ashenden soon discovers that this means having affairs with her husband's friends if it makes them happy & soon he, too, is one of Rosie's lovers. When Ashenden becomes jealous, Rosie sums up her whole philosophy of life,

I looked at Rosie now, with angry, hurt, resentful eyes; she smiled at me, and I wish I knew how to describe the sweet kindliness of her beautiful smile; her voice was exquisitely gentle.
'Oh, my dear, why d'you bother your head about any others?What harm does it do to you? Don't I give you a good time! Aren't you happy when you're with me?'
'Awfully.'
'Well, then. It's so silly to be fussy and jealous. Why not be happy with what you can get? Enjoy yourself while you have the chance, I say; we shall all be dead in a hundred years, and what will anything matter then? Let's have a good time while we can.'
She put her arms around my neck and pressed her lips against mine. I forgot my wrath. I only thought of her beauty and her enveloping kindness.
'You must take me as I am, you know.' she whispered.
'All right,' I said.

I don't know if Hardy refused to take a bath for the last three years of his life or if he liked to sing vulgar music hall songs but this is how Ashenden describes Edward Driffield. There are lots of parallels with Hardy though. The lower-class, embarrassing first wife; the much younger second wife who produced an official biography (actually written by Hardy himself); the scandal over the death of a child in one of his novels; the long old age at Fern Court (Hardy's Max Gate), the house in his old home town that the author had always wanted to own; the parade of younger authors & critics clamouring to visit the Grand Old Man of Letters in his last years; the fuss over the funeral arrangements with the establishment wanting a grand ceremony at Westminster Abbey against the author's wishes. Driffield is an elusive character. We never really know what he thinks about Rosie's behaviour. He seems content to be in the background. Rosie dominates the scene as she must do because we see her through Ashenden's recollections.

I feel as though I need to know more about Somerset Maugham's life now. He used the character of Ashenden in a series of short stories based on his own experience as a Secret Service agent during WWI. I wonder why he used the same character here?  Was it because he was living in France when he wrote the book & felt he could poke fun at the literary world from a safe distance but still wanted them to know that it was really him, Maugham, expressing his own feelings? Although he denied that Kear was based on Walpole & Driffield based on Hardy, no one believed him. I have the Ashenden stories on the tbr shelves & I remember a TV series based on them in the 1990s (although I thought Robert Powell played Ashenden & I see it was Alex Jennings. Maybe Powell read the audio book?)

Speaking of audio books, I listened to Cakes and Ale read beautifully by James Saxon.

Mary Swann - Carol Shields

Mary Swann was a little-known Canadian poet. She lived on a farm in Nadeau, Ontario, wrote her poems on scraps of paper & had little contact with the outside world. On the same day that she took her poems to local publisher Frederic Cruzzi, she was murdered by her husband. The poems were published & then forgotten until academic Sarah Maloney discovered a copy of Swann's Songs on holiday & suddenly the resurrection of Mary Swann had begun. Now, twenty years after her death, she is to be the subject of a biography by the distinguished writer, Morton Jimroy, biographer of Ezra Pound & John Starman. One of the few people who actually knew Mrs Swann, Nadeau librarian & Town Clerk, Rose Hindmarch, keeps the flame alive with the Mary Swann Memorial Room in the Local History Museum. There are plans for a Symposium on the life and work of Mary Swann which will be an opportunity for the academic world to celebrate the achievements of this most mysterious woman.

Mary Swann tells the story of the poet's life through the lives & perspectives of these four people, all with their own slant on the woman & the work. Sarah Maloney is a young woman who writes beautiful, engaging letters, is in a relationship with Brownie, a rare book dealer, & sees Mary Swann as her own discovery. Sarah is in correspondence with Morton Jimroy & has visited Nadeau, spoken to Rose & visited the farm, eager to soak up the atmosphere & learn as much as possible about her poet. She possesses Mary Swann's notebook which unfortunately contains little more than shopping lists & comments on the weather, no matter how often she pores over it, hoping for a revelation into the mind of the woman & the poetry.

Rose Hindmarch structures her day between her work as Town Clerk & Librarian. She knew Mary Swann as well as anyone as Mrs Swann frequently visited the library to borrow the two books her husband allowed her. Unfortunately for the academics, Mrs Swann's tastes ran to Edna Ferber rather than T S Eliot. Rose also feels slightly guilty that she encouraged Mrs Swann to take her poetry to Frederic Cruzzi, one-time Editor of the Kingston Banner, famous for its Poet's Corner & owner of the Peregrine Press. Could Mary Swann's husband have become so enraged by her visit to Cruzzi, my her late return, by her reading & writing, that this is why he murdered her & then sat at the kitchen table & killed himself?

Frederic Cruzzi, now an elderly widower, remembers the day that Mary Swann knocked on his door with a paper bag full of scraps of paper. It was freezing weather, his wife Hildë was out ice fishing, & Mrs Swann arrived, inadequately dressed, timid & apologetic. Expecting nothing more than the usual odes to spring & nature that any small press specializing in poetry attracts, Cruzzi was overwhelmed by the quality of the work & eager to publish. Hildë returns to find Frederic overwhelmed by the poetry although they can have no idea that, by the time they sit down to read the work together, Mary Swann is probably already dead.

Morton Jimroy is on a year's sabbatical in California, working on his biography of Mary Swann, such a change from his previous work on male poets. He's ill at ease on campus, where he is a Distinguished Visitor, disconcerted by the weather, his clothes (bought in haste when the airline lost his luggage) & increasingly obsessed by his research into Mary Swann. He interviews her daughter, Frances, but she doesn't remember her mother reading or writing. Her mother read her The Bobbsey Twins & Five Little Peppers, but there was nothing remarkable about her childhood. How is he going to write the life of this very ordinary woman? His correspondence with Sarah Maloney relieves his loneliness, feeds his fantasies, both personal & professional, as he dreams of meeting Sarah in person & gaining access to Mary Swann's notebook.

The four protagonists meet at the Swann Symposium, a section of the book structured as a screenplay, where the academic world collides with reality. It becomes apparent that Mary Swann, or at least her work, is disappearing. Jimroy's notes for his book were lost with his luggage & his briefcase is stolen during a power cut at the Symposium; Sarah's only copy of Swann's Songs, was loaned to a friend & not returned & the precious notebook, as well as the copy in the archives, have been lost. One of only two photographs of the poet is missing from the Mary Swann Memorial Room & Frederic Cruzzi's house was burgled on Christmas Eve - all that is missing are the last four copies of Swann's Songs from his print run. Mary Swann the woman has been engulfed by the needs of other people; what will be left?

This is a poignant, very funny book. It's not just about academia, although there are some wickedly funny scenes about academics & their obsessions. Morton Jimroy interviews Rose about Mary Swann's religious beliefs,

"Why do you think she stayed away from church so religiously? - if you'll pardon my little joke."
"Clothes probably," Rose said this boldly. She was conscious of a noisy brimming of happiness. She had only once before in her life been taken to dinner by a man, and that had been Homer Hart, years ago, before he married Daisy.
"Clothes?" His pencil moved busily.
"Well, she probably didn't have the right clothes. For church, you know." ...
"You don't suppose," Jimroy said, "that Swann felt her spirituality was, well, less explicit than it was for regular churchgoers in the area. That it was outside the bounds, as it were, of church doctrine?" He regarded Rose closely. "If you see what I mean."
"I see what you mean, Mr Jimroy. Morton. But I really think, well, it was probably a question of not having the right kind of clothes."

As the academics get hold of Mary Swann's work, her poetry becomes loaded with meanings that only academics can see. They remake her in the image of their own current fashion or enthusiasm. Any little scrap of information is seized on as proof of their own pet theory. As Frederic tells Sarah at the Symposium,

He (Jimroy) wants Mrs Swann's life. Every minute of it if he could have it. Every cup of tea that poor woman imbibed. Every thought in her tormented head. And what's more, he wants her death. Or some clue to it.

Carol Shields writes about the personal & the domestic life better than almost anyone else. In the four chapters of the book focusing on Sarah, Morton, Rose & Frederic, we witness their whole lives, not only the parts of their lives that intersect with Mary Swann. I first read Mary Swann in the 1980s, not long after it was first published & I'd forgotten how movingly she describes loneliness & regret, even as she also reveals the absurdities & mistakes in every life. Mary Swann is much more than an academic comedy, poking fun at the pretensions & ambitions of those who make their living from the work of others. It's a moving examination of life & the different ways that events & facts can be interpreted. We learn a lot about these four lives, even if the person we know the least about at the end, is the one thing they have in common, Mary Swann.

Stonehenge - Rosemary Hill

Reading this article by Will Self in the Guardian the other week made me want to read more about Stonehenge. I've always been interested in it but I also have a pretty hazy idea about the chronology of prehistory & Stonehenge is one of the most fascinating yet frustrating elements of Britain's prehistory. Rosemary Hill's book isn't really about who built Stonehenge & why (does anyone really know?), it's about how Stonehenge has been interpreted through history & it's a very interesting journey.

Stonehenge has been appropriated by antiquarians, historians, archaeologists, Druids & New Age enthusiasts at different times during its history. It's been a symbol of barbarity & of ancient civilization to writers, poets & painters. Architects such as Inigo Jones in the 17th century believed that the Romans had built it. Rome was the greatest civilization known to Man, therefore, only the Romans could have constructed such a monument. There were no written records about Stonehenge & no conception that the people who lived in Britain before the Roman invasion could have had the skill or knowledge to construct it.

William Stukeley published his book on Stonehenge in 1740 & he was the first person to really investigate the monument, taking measurements & trying to analyse the data. His book, with his meticulous drawings & measurements, has been indispensable for the historians & archaeologists who came after him. Archaeology as a discipline was an invention of the 19th century & Stukeley & his fellow antiquarians often did more harm than good as they dug up historical sites. Stukeley's scientific work was much appreciated but, where later archaeologists tend to take a step back is in his theories about who built Stonehenge. Stukeley believed it was the Druids, those strangely half-real, half-mythical teachers & wizards. This is when the Druids became inextricably connected to Stonehenge & nothing that science has done since has been able to disentangle the two.

Stukeley's book also made Stonehenge into a tourist attraction & the pressure of tourism is at the heart of Will Self's article. It is still a major factor in the standoff between archaeologists, English Heritage & modern-day Druids that has just reached a new crossroads with the recent opening of the new visitor centre at the site. The influence of Stonehenge on architecture can be seen in the layout of Bath & the development of the modern traffic roundabout.

The Romantic movement of the early 19th century was also influenced by Stukeley. Stonehenge appears in many paintings & poems of the period. William Blake used the image in his poem, Jerusalem & it was central to the final chapters of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. This is also the period when the study of prehistory became possible as archaeologists began to push the timeline of history further & further back & excavations revealed aspects of the site that had been hidden for centuries, including burials & artefacts. Theories of why the monument was built began to centre on astronomy & the importance to ancient people of the midwinter & midsummer solstice. This also led to clashed in the twentieth century between archaeologists & New Age groups who each have their own ideas about how the site should be used & preserved.

Rosemary Hill's book is a useful overview of Stonehenge & how it has been perceived over the last 500 years. It's a measure of its fascination that there is still no definitive theory about who built it & why. Every investigation seems to push the origins back even further & I think that's why Stonehenge can be so many things to so many different groups.

Ringing Church Bells to Ward off Thunderstorms - ed Justin Lovill

Ringing Bells to Ward Off Thunderstorms is a collection of letters & replies from Notes and Queries. This magazine started in 1849 & is still published today. The idea was that people, mostly fussy antiquarians & clergymen by the querulous tone of the letters, wrote in with interesting facts about history or language or with a question like Were animals put on trial in the Middle Ages? or Was Clarence really drowned in a butt of Malmsey? or Do game bird's feathers in a pillow or quilt stop the ill from dying? This last made me think of the scene in Wuthering Heights where Catherine has fasted for three days & tells Nelly that she couldn't die because there were pigeons' feathers in her pillow. Very obscure & pedantic but interesting all the same.

The modern editor of the book, Justin Lovill, gives a history of the magazine & often adds some context & extra information to the entries. It's the perfect book to dip into in an idle moment. I kept it beside my reading chair & read a few entries every day as well as looking through the table of contents to find entries that piqued my curiosity. Who wouldn't be intrigued by entries such as

BOILING TO DEATH : A punishment for cooks?
BYRON'S BRAIN : How much did it weigh?
CUSTARD : Why did the Puritans abominate it?
DEAD MEN'S HEADS : Unusual attachment to
LIVERS, WHITE : A sign of murderers and cowards?
MELANCHOLY : Does it cause waistcoat-bursting?
SWEARING : An Act of Parliament against

I found it fascinating that people could write in with their queries & someone fossicking in their library would come up with an answer or a reference to the original  account of a legend or the derivation of a word or phrase. The book is illustrated with woodcuts & other pictures of the time. As Justin Lovill explains, Notes and Queries was the first magazine almost entirely written by the contributors & readers & can be compared with internet communities like Wikipedia. The contributors used pseudonyms such as Bookworm, Mr Blink, Dryasdust & Old Fogie to protect their anonymity so they weren't without a sense of humour. Lovill has picked the plums from the original volumes of Notes and Queries & if you're at all interested in history, the etymology of words & phrases or even just about the kinds of subjects that interested the 19th century scholar, this book has a lot to offer.

Anglo-Saxon Art - Leslie Webster

This is a beautifully-produced book on a fascinating subject. I've been interested in the Anglo-Saxons ever since I first read about the Sutton Hoo ship burial. The gold & garnets, the mix of Christian & pagan objects, that helmet with the distinctive, mustachioed face looking back at me, were all captivating. Since then I've read about the Sutton Hoo dig & many other archaeological discoveries, all of them adding to our knowledge of this period. The glorious Staffordshire Hoard, discovered only a few years ago, has added to our knowledge & posed more questions at the same time.

The Anglo-Saxon period begins in the 5th century, after the end of Roman occupation of Britannia & ends with the Norman Conquest of 1066. Leslie Webster's book is divided into thematic chapters describing the different influences from Europe & beyond that created the distinctive style known as Anglo-Saxon. The Germanic tribes who settled in Britain after the Romans, the Christian missionaries sent by Pope Gregory in 597, the Celtic Christianity of Iona & Lindisfarne, the trading routes bringing influences from eastern Europe & Byzantium & the Vikings & other Scandinavian raiders & settlers.

What we think of as the characteristic features of Anglo-Saxon art is dependent on what has survived. This seems an obvious point but it's worth making as Leslie Webster does in her book. What has survived is only a fraction of what must have originally existed. If you think about the Viking invasions, the religious upheavals, the periods when Anglo-Saxon manuscripts & artwork wasn't valued, the random events such as fires & floods where so much was destroyed, it's amazing that we have as much as we do. Sometimes objects survived in Europe because they were taken there by missionaries from England. Sometimes, as with the Staffordshire Hoard, objects were buried & only rediscovered centuries later. Sometimes, the objects were grave goods. Imagine how much more could still be buried, waiting for rediscovery.

I wish I could show you every page of this book. There are over 200 illustrations in a book of just over 200pp. Almost every object described in the text is illustrated. There is magnificent gold & garnet jewellery, illuminated manuscripts decorated with interlace & animals in the initials, carved ivory caskets, stone crosses, intricate metalwork & embroidery like the Bayeux Tapestry. Webster describes the objects in detail, explaining the symbolism & imagery used & comparing it to other objects of the same period & style. Looking at the manuscripts, personal possessions & jewellery of the Anglo-Saxons is an excellent way to begin to understand the people.Webster weaves enough history into her narrative to set the scene but the focus is always on the objects. All the iconic objects are here from the Sutton Hoo helmet to the Alfred Jewel, the Lindisfarne Gospels, & the Franks Casket. There are also many objects that were new to me. This is a beautiful book written by someone who knows her subject intimately & can convey her knowledge easily.

The Best of Books and Company - ed Susan Hill

I love books that send me running to my shelves, inspired to read or reread a book I'd forgotten I even owned. This selection of articles from Susan Hill's little magazine Books and Company is just that sort of book. Books and Company was published by Susan Hill from 1997-2001. How I wish I'd known about it, I would have subscribed immediately. It strikes me as a forerunner of the wonderful literary magazine, Slightly Foxed. The articles are not really reviews, more appreciations of an author or a book, a reminiscence about learning to read or in Jeanette Winterson's case, learning how to hide her reading from her mother by memorising chunks of fiction & writing them down on slates. Winterson's description of reading is one I think all readers would agree with,

Time with a book is not time away from the real world. A book is its own world, unique, entire. A place we choose to visit, and although we cannot stay there, something of the book stays with us, perhaps vividly, perhaps out of conscious memory altogether, until years later we find it again, forgotten in a pocket, like a shell from a beach.

There are articles that made me smile with recognition & remembrance, like Andrew Taylor's two essays about crime fiction. Corpses in the Quad, about the origins & delights of Oxbridge crime, & P C Plod Apprehended, about the way policemen have been depicted in crime novels from Enid Blyton's Mr Plod through the gentlemen policemen like Alan Grant & Roderick Alleyn to modern day sleuths Dalziel & Pascoe.
Penelope Fitzgerald's perceptive essays on two small masterpieces, Sarah Orne Jewett's Country of the Pointed Firs & J L Carr's A Month in the Country which I wrote about here encapsulate the delights of discovering a perfect novel,

This short novel (Country of the Pointed Firs) is her masterpiece, no doubt about that, but it is difficult to discuss the plot because it can hardly be said to have one... In a few pages Jewett establishes forever the substantial reality of Dennett's landing. We know it, we have been there, we have walked up the steep streets and we taste the sea air. Now we have got to get to know the inhabitants, slowly, as the narrator does herself and, in good time, to hear their confidences.

W E K Anderson's wonderful article about the delights of reading Sir Walter Scott had me racing off to check what I had on the shelves. I read quite a few of Scott's novels when I was a teenager but in the last few years I've only read The Lady of the Lake & The Bride of Lammermoor with my 19th century bookgroup. We have The Talisman coming up soon & I'm looking forward to it very much, even more so now that I've read this enthusiastic championing of a novelist who reigned supreme for over a hundred years but then fell out of favour along with the historical novels he wrote. Anderson is the editor of Scott's Journal, which I also have on the tbr shelves & the Journal documents a fascinating period of Scott's life when he was working hard to clear his debts. Anderson champions Scott's ability to write about a broad range of characters. He says only Shakespeare & Dickens can compare with his range & vision,

In reality, the novels appeal to the reader on two levels. They tell a good story, set in an authentic historical period filled with real people, but at the same time they explore the notions of progress, of civilized values and of those qualities which are the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Then, there are the books I'd never heard of that I want to read right now even if they're out of print & hard to find. I've read a couple of novels by H Rider Haggard but I had no idea that his daughter, Lilias, wrote books about her life in the Norfolk countryside among other things. Jane Gardam writes about a wet summer holiday in North Yorkshire with a wakeful baby that was only saved by the discovery of the Rev J C Atkinson's memoir, Forty Years in a Moorland Parish, the story of his life as Vicar of Danby near Whitby in Yorkshire,

He estimated that in his first forty years at Danby he had walked seventy thousand miles on parish duty and at least as many again for his 'recreation'. His 'recreation' was often a sort of mystical rapture and often hard digging into Anglo-Saxon barrows. He was blissfully happy. 'Angels would forget their wings.' he said.

He married three times (the last when he was 70 & his wife was 30) & had 13 children. A remarkable life indeed.

There are essays on the Brontes by Lucasta Miller, M R James's ghost stories by John Francis, William Maxwell by Adele Geras & Osbert Sitwell's autobiography by Philip Ziegler & Margaret de Fonblanque on the independent women writers of the 20s like Dorothy L Sayers, Ivy Compton Burnett & Vera Brittain & Winifred Holtby. My only problem with a book like this is deciding what to read next. I've pulled out a few of Walter Scott's novels to look over & downloaded some more of Sarah Orne Jewett's short stories from ManyBooks & popped a few other bits & pieces into my Amazon basket & wishlist. The possibilities are endless. With collections like this, I will never be short of something to read next.

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!

Professor Sutherland's literary puzzles

I'm reading Thomas Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes with one of my online reading groups at the moment. I last read it over 20 years ago so the plot isn't exactly fresh in my mind but the scene where Elfride walks around the parapet of the church tower & almost falls, reminded me of one of the essays in John Sutherland's book of puzzles in 19th century fiction, Can Jane Eyre be Happy? When I checked the book, the chapter What is Elfride's rope made of? refers to a later incident but it reminded of this wonderful series of books written by John Sutherland.

The first book in the series, Is Heathcliff a Murderer?, was written as an antidote to the deadening effect of literary criticism on the enjoyment of the ordinary reader. Sutherland is a well-known academic & critic with a lively sense of humour & fun. He has edited many 19th century classic novels for the Oxford World's Classics series & is obviously as intrigued as any common reader by the mistakes, errors & unanswered questions in these books. The questions he asks in Is Heathcliff a Murderer? range from What is Jo sweeping? (Bleak House) to Is Will Ladislaw legitimate? (Middlemarch) What does Arabella Donn throw? (Jude the Obscure) and Why does the Count come to England? (Dracula). He looks again at questions that have puzzled many readers & critics. What sex is Lady Bertram's Pug in Mansfield Park? At different times in the book, Pug is referred to as He & She. Then there are the obvious mistakes like the apple blossom in June in Jane Austen's Emma.

Of course, there's also the title essay where Sutherland examines the evidence of Hindley Earnshaw's death in Wuthering Heights & speculates whether the beating he received from Heathcliff contributed to his death. There's also Joseph's evidence that he was sent for the doctor & Heathcliff & Hindley were left alone for some time when anything might have happened. As Joseph says, '... he warn't deead when Aw left, nowt uh t'soart'. The joy of these essays is that Sutherland discusses the characters & situations as though they are real. He discusses the improbability of a 27 year old man like Hindley drinking himself to death in a single night. Although Joseph is not a sympathetic character, he is invariably honest & Heathcliff had a motive in wanting Hindley dead - his ultimate aim of triumphing over the Earnshaws & taking control of the Heights. This is Sutherland's conclusion,

Whether or not Heathcliff is guilty of capital crime remains a fascinating but ultimately inscrutable enigma at the very heart of the narrative. For what it is worth, I believe he did kill Hindley, although for any unprejudiced jury it is likely that enough 'reasonable doubt' would remain to acquit him.

Is Heathcliff a Murderer? was so successful that a second & then a third volume was called for. Sutherland quotes some of the letters he received from readers querying his conclusions & suggesting other conundrums that had always puzzled them. The title essay asks how Jane Eyre can expect a happy married life with a man who locked his first wife in the attic, discarded mistresses all over Europe & tried to trick her into a bigamous marriage. Sutherland's tongue is often in his cheek but anyone who loves 19th century fiction would enjoy these books. Some of the other essays in Can Jane Eyre be Happy? are about Vanity Fair (How many pianos has Amelia Sedley?), Armadale (What, precisely, does Miss Gwilt's purple flask contain?) & Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Who will Angel marry next?). In Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? the conundrums continue. The essay on A Christmas Carol is on a point that has always puzzled me. How do the Cratchits cook that enormous turkey sent by Scrooge on Christmas morning? In the title essay, he discusses how Lady Catherine could have heard the rumour about Lizzie's imminent engagement to Mr Darcy in Pride & Prejudice.

Sutherland then moved on to Shakespearean enigmas, including the evidence that Henry V was a war criminal for his actions after Agincourt, does Lady Macbeth really faint when she hears of Duncan's murder or is she putting on an act? and how old is King Lear?

20th century fiction is covered in Where was Rebecca shot? Now, we all know Maxim de Winter shot Rebecca in the boathouse on the beach near Manderley but the essay asks where on her body was she shot? Why did Maxim just happen to have a gun with him when he went to the boathouse that night? Who was the woman whose decomposing body Maxim identified months later? She is lying in the family vault but when Rebecca's body is found in her boat, this other woman & her identity are ignored. No inquest takes place to enquire into her identity & how she died. Was she left in the family vault beside Rebecca? All excellent questions that the reader ignores in the excitement of devouring a wonderfully absorbing book as Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca.

Finally, the Folio Society have produced a volume of Sutherland's essays relating to books they have published.

I often dip into these books when I'm reading a 19th century novel & enjoy all over again Sutherland's close reading of the books & his ingenious solutions to the many mysteries he investigates.

Gentlemen, Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature...

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff is another of my favourite comfort reads. I’ve read it many times since I first discovered it over 20 years ago. It’s the story of the correspondence between Helene Hanff, a writer living in New York after WWII & Frank Doel, a bookseller working at Marks & Co, a bookshop in the Charing Cross Road in London. The correspondence begins in 1949,

Gentlemen:
Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase “antiquarian bookseller” scares me somewhat as I equate ‘antique’ with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions... I enclose a list of my most pressing problems. If you have clean secondhand copies of any of the books on the list for no more than $5 each, will you consider this a purchase order and send them to me?
Very truly yours,
Helene Hanff

Helene Hanff’s taste in literature was formed by reading Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s lectures on English literature (a journey she describes in Q’s legacy). She had grown up in Philadelphia & moved to New York to be a playwright. She wrote plays, TV scripts & also worked as a script reader as well. She lived frugally in a one-bedroom apartment but her one luxury was books. She wanted to read essays by Robert Louis Stevenson, Leigh Hunt & Walter Savage Landor. She wanted to read John Donne’s Complete Sermons & George Bernard Shaw’s letters to Ellen Terry. She didn’t want to read fiction because, “ I never can get interested in things that didn’t happen to people who never lived.” Helene is a sassy New Yorker, not shy in venting her wrath from 20,000 miles away,

WELL!!!
All I have to say to YOU, Frank Doel, is we live in depraved, destructive and degenerate times when a bookshop = a BOOKSHOP – starts tearing up beautiful old books to use as wrapping paper... You tore that book up in the middle of a major battle & I don’t even know which war it was.
Then there was the incident of the Pepys’ Diary,

WHAT KIND OF A PEPYS’ DIARY DO YOU CALL THIS?
This is not pepys’ diary, this is some busybody editor’s miserable collection of EXCERPTS from pepys’ diary may he rot. I could just spit. Where is jan.12 1668, where his wife chased him out of bed and round the bedroom with a red-hot poker? ... i will make do with this thing till you find me a real Pepys. THEN i will rip up this ersatz book, page by page, AND WRAP THINGS IN IT.

Frank is more reserved at first, but finally decides to drop the formality of Miss Hanff after three years of correspondence & she also received letters from the other staff at the bookshop & from Frank’s wife, Nora.

Helene found a kindred spirit in Frank Doel & the other employees at Marks & Co. She sent them food parcels when she discovered the meagre rations the British were surviving on after the war. They sent her a book of Elizabethan poetry & a beautifully embroidered linen tablecloth. They became friends even though they had never met. Helene’s plans to visit England for Elizabeth II’s coronation were foiled by her need to have a lot of very expensive dental work. By the time she was able to get there, in the 1970s, Frank had died & the shop was closed. Helene wrote about her trip to England, paid for by the book, in The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, where she was amazed by the generosity of so many strangers who had read & loved 84 Charing Cross Road. The letters were written with no thought of publication but after Frank’s death, an editor who heard about the letters, encouraged her to make a book of them. The book was an immediate success, a Cult Book as Helene calls it, & has been made into a play & a film.

This is another example of a film being as good as the book. Anne Bancroft’s husband, Mel Brooks, bought her the film rights as a gift because he knew how much she loved it. Anne Bancroft & Anthony Hopkins are just perfect in the film along with a cast of wonderful actors in minor roles. Maurice Denham never fails to move me in his few brief scenes along with Ian McNeice & Judi Dench. I also have the audio book read by Juliet Stevenson & John Nettles.

The beautiful illustrations are from my Folio Society edition & are by Natacha Ledwidge. I love her work. She also illustrated the Folio Society editions of Dorothy L Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey books.

Helene’s enthusiasm & love for English literature is what makes this book so special. Her voice is so distinctive & her passion for books is so strong that book lovers everywhere can identify with her love of learning & her desire to read the great writers. Anglophiles everywhere love this book & I’m happy to be one of them.

The literary tourist : readers & places in Romantic & Victorian Britain - Nicola J Watson

Nicola Watson’s book is an exploration of literary tourism from its beginnings in the 18th century through to the early 20th century. She begins the book in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, looking at who is buried or memorialised there, the inclusions & omissions. Literary tourism really began with the 18th century fascination for graveyards & the desire to visit the last resting place of a poet. Shakespeare & Thomas Gray of Elegy fame were the fist writers to become the objects of this kind of literary pilgrimage. She also looks at the graves of Keats & Shelley in Rome.

Later in the 18th & early 19th century, the birthplace of the writer was the place to go. Shakespeare’s birthplace & Burns’s cottage at Alloway became the tourist’s choice. In the 19th century, the writer’s house, the place where the work was done, was paramount. Scott’s Abbotsford is a monument to the successful literary man, a symbol of hard work & honour as Scott strove to pay off his debts at the end of his life. Haworth Parsonage, the home of the Brontes, on the other hand, is a symbol of genteel poverty, a 19th century narrative of the woman writer. Other authors such as Rousseau, R D Blackmore & Thomas Hardy are celebrated because their works evoked a landscape for the tourist to explore. The map of Wessex which is still reproduced in editions of Hardy’s novels is a testament to the hold that this idea of England, based on reality but renamed by the author, still has on his readers.

This is a fascinating book. Written in an easy, accessible style, Watson tells the stories of all these literary sites of pilgrimage. Often it’s the fashion of the times that decides whether the literary pilgrim will visit the writer’s birthplace or their grave. Watson has visited all the places in the book & brings a very personal experience & humour to the text. This is the kind of literary criticism – if it can be called that – that I love. A book that explores a literary idea. The story of the afterlives of the writers who have captured the imagination & affection of readers & an exploration of our desire to visit the places associated with them.

Charles Dickens & the house of fallen women - Jenny Hartley

Charles Dickens was one of the most energetic men of the Victorian age. He was the most famous novelist of the period, he edited or “conducted” as he put it, his own weekly journal, he was a journalist & philanthropist. His most famous experiment in philanthropy was Urania Cottage, a home for fallen women. The aim was to take young women off the streets or, more usually, from prison after they’d served their sentence, & give them the skills they needed to leave behind a life of crime. They would be trained in the domestic arts & sent to Australia, Canada or Sth Africa to start a new life. Dickens’s partner in this as in many of his philanthropic ventures was Angela Burdett Coutts, a young woman who was the heiress to the Coutts Bank fortune. She provided the money & certainly took an interest in the girls but Dickens was the driving force behind Urania Cottage. Dickens had always been interested in crime & punishment. His early experiences when his father was imprisoned in the Marshalsea for debt are well-known. The effect of this & its consequences for him – the end of his formal education & the time he spent working in Warren’s Blacking Factory – are well-known. He was fascinated by prisons & had very enlightened views of how prisoners should be treated - reformed rather than punished. Prisoners were forced to do repetitive, menial work, often in complete silence & there was no idea of reform. Dickens understood that many prisoners had started their life of crime through poverty rather than vice. Women were especially vulnerable. Orphaned or abandoned by their families or partners, it was almost impossible to make a living through respectable work. A seamstress could barely make enough to live on & if they didn’t have the skills to become domestic servants, prostitution or petty theft were the only alternatives. Urania Cottage was to be a home for the girls, not an institution or penitentiary, where they could be treated with respect, as individuals & earn the right to emigrate to a new life. Only a small number of women could be accommodated, about a dozen, but they usually only stayed for a year (if they stayed the course) before leaving for the colonies. Of course, not all the girls were grateful for this interference in their lives. It could be seen as middle-class meddling. But, Dickens & Miss Coutts really wanted to make a difference in the lives of their charges. The alternative was horrible, a short, miserable life on the streets or in prison. Urania Cottage was an enlightened alternative to some of the other schemes of the time, most of them with overtly religious or punitive aims. Jenny Hartley has written a fascinating account of the project. Dickens took a hands-on role in every area. He leased the Cottage, employed the staff, bought all the furniture, set out their daily timetable, personally interviewed the prospective inmates & was the moving force of the Committee set up to manage it. He wrote hundreds of letters, engaged the help of two prison governors who suggested suitable girls, & took an avid interest in every aspect of the work. He was involved for over 10 years & the effects of it can be seen in his books. Characters such as Martha Endell & Little Em’ly in David Copperfield, Tattycoram in Little Dorrit & Susan Nipper in Dombey & Son, are all testament to the effects of Dickens’s involvement at Urania. Dickens wrote up the story of every girl who entered Urania Cottage in a Case Book. He interviewed them all personally on arrival & throughout their stay. Although the book has disappeared, there’s enough evidence from his mentions of it in letters to know that a very full record was kept & only Dickens saw it. What a resource for a novelist! Although very little is known about the inmates apart from Dickens’s letters & Census records, Hartley has managed to trace several of them once they emigrated. Rhena Pollard was 16 when she was admitted to Urania Cottage. She was a troublemaker, spirited, but with a temper. Even so, Dickens thought she had potential, “The little girl from Petworth is an extraordinary case of restless imposture & seeking after notoriety; but there are chances (not desperate chances, I think) of something better being made of it.” Rhena lost her temper once too often & declared that she was off, she wouldn’t stay another minute. All Dickens’s theatrical instincts came to the fore. He ordered her to be turned out at once, as was the rule. But, it was Christmas, & he didn’t want Rhena to go at all so he called her bluff. She was shocked into admitting that she wanted to stay & she pleaded with the matron in front of the other girls to be allowed to change her mind. Dickens then wrote a letter to be read out to the girls that had the effect of allowing Rhena to stay, showing the others the consequences of disobedience & reinforcing the authority of a new matron as Dickens pretended that it was the matron’s pleas which had changed his mind. Rhena eventually emigrated to Canada, married a homesteader & had a family. Her descendants live in Ontario today. Hartley even speculates that Rhena is the model for Tattycoram as she resembles her in looks & temper.
Another descendant of a Urania girl was traced on Hartley’s last day of a trip to Australia in a retirement home here in Melbourne. She had no idea of the Dickensian connection in her family. This is a wonderful book for anyone interested in Dickens or in the social history of the 19th century. The Urania Cottage project was a period of ten years of Dickens’s life that had a profound impact on his life & work.