Give a Book

I received an email a few days ago from Victoria at Give a Book, a new initiative to give books to people who need them. The idea is that for every £5 donated to Give a Book, you can choose a book from their list to be donated to the charity of your choice from their list. They've started with three charities - Age Concern, Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres & First Story which supports literacy & creativity in UK schools. The idea of Give a Book was inspired by the late writer, Simon Gray, & the selected books reflect his tastes & include some of his favourites. New books are added to the list by special guests. Last month, Antonia Fraser selected William Trevor's Love & Summer & this month, actor Dominic West selected A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor. Other titles on the list include Emma by Jane Austen, Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, George Orwell's Essays & the fantastic picture book for all ages, It's a Book by Lane Smith. There are lots of my favourites on the list & I suppose my only reservation about the list is that it's quite classic. I love a lot of these books but I wonder if all the recipients will be pleased to receive Anna Karenina or The Great Gatsby when they might prefer a good thriller or family saga. I do think it's a great idea though. Anything that gets books into the hands of people who need them is worthwhile.

The charities involved have already had some excellent feedback from workers & recipients. Maggie's Centres were pleased to be able to offer patients something to read that didn't focus on their treatment. Age Concern are using the books to facilitate visitors visiting clients in their homes & reading to them & also to set up friendship groups for isolated people. So, I think it's a great idea & as the list of books grows, I'm sure it will incorporate a wider range of genres & tastes. The importance of reading can't be underestimated & I think any idea that promotes reading should be supported.

If you're interested, just click on the link above to find out more about the project & how to donate. Here's an article in the Telegraph by Charles Moore with some more information about Simon Gray's legacy as a writer & Give a Book. I chose two of my favourite books to donate to Age Concern - Palgrave's Golden Treasury & Siegfried Sassoon's Complete Memoirs of George Sherston.

The Highland Widow - Sir Walter Scott

After reading the essay on Sir Walter Scott in The Best of Books & Co, I was inspired to have a look at what I had of Sir Walter's on the tbr shelves. My 19th century bookgroup is about to start reading Scott's The Talisman next week, so I didn't want a full-length novel. I did find this novella from Hesperus Press & another volume of three short stories which was just about right.


The Highland Widow is from the collection of three tales, Chronicles of the Canongate. The tales are framed by a story about a man called Chrystal Croftangry who wants to show the past of Scotland through a series of tales told to him by his friends. The Highland Widow is told to him by Mrs Bethune Baliol, who is travelling through the Highlands & comes across a woman sitting silent & motionless in front of her croft.

She guessed, perhaps, that it was curiosity, arising out of her uncommon story, which induced me to intrude on her solitude... Yet the look with which she regarded me was one of scorn rather than embarrassment. The opinion of the world and all its children could not add or take an iota from her load of misery, and, save from the half-smile that seemed to intimate the contempt of a being rapt by the very intensity of her affliction above the sphere of ordinary humanities, she seemed as indifferent to my gaze, as if she had been a dead corpse or a marble statue.

When she enquires about her, she is told the story of her life. Elspat MacTavish is feared & shunned by her neighbours. Known as the Woman of the Tree, she has lived alone for many years. Elspat was married to MacTavish Mhor, a scoundrel & cattle thief who ran a protection racket in the area. The MacTavishs & their son, Hamish, lived well on the proceeds of crime. Elspet was beautiful, happy & rich. MacTavish Mhor came out for Prince Charlie in the 1745 rebellion & was outlawed. He was killed fighting desperately against a detachment of redcoats sent to capture him, Elspat at his side, loading his gun.

After MacTavish Mhor's death, Elspat focuses on her son, Hamish, expecting that he will take up his father's mantle. She has cut herself off from her neighbours & is unaware of the changes in Scotland since the failure of the Jacobite rebellion. Hamish grows up to realise that his father's trade was dishonourable & although he loves his mother, he decides that he needs to follow his own path. As he becomes more independent, his mother's jealous love becomes more obsessive. When Hamish joins a Highland regiment of the British army, Elspat's disgust knows no bounds. She sees this as a betrayal of her, his father & all the Highland traditions that had been destroyed by the English. Hamish sees it as a way to make a living & provide for his mother. Hamish accepts that the clans have been finally defeated & must bow to the inevitable but Elspat never will,

'Dearest mother,' answered Hamish, 'how shall I convince you that you live in this land of our fathers, as if our fathers were yet living? You walk as it were in a dream, surrounded by the phantoms of those who have been long with the dead.... The land is conquered - its lights are quenched - Glengary, Lochiel, Perth, Lord Lewis, all the high chiefs are dead or in exile. We may mourn for it but we cannot help it. Bonnet, broadsword, and sporran - power, strength and wealth, were all lost on Drummossie Muir.'
'It is false!' said Elspat fiercely, 'you, and such like dastardly spirits, are quelled by your own faint hearts, not by the strength of the enemy. You are like the fearful waterfowl, to whom the least cloud in the sky seems the shadow of the eagle.' 

Elspat then makes a fateful decision. She decides to prevent Hamish returning to his regiment after his leave. He will be condemned as a deserter & flogged & she thinks that, rather than submit to such humiliation, Hamish will consent to her plan of hiding him in the Highlands as happened in the old days. Elspat's plan destroys her & she lives out the rest of her days alone, shunned & feared by her neighbours.

The Highland Widow is about the fury of a woman who can't embrace change, whose love for her son destroys them both. Elspat is almost an elemental creature. She seems to subsist on very little, she lives on her rage & desire for revenge & on her terrible nostalgia for the old days. Elspat is like a fierce witch or soothsayer, prophesying doom & cursing those who don't see things as she does. She never softens or asks for help, even at her lowest point.

I also read a few short stories by Scott. The most interesting was My Aunt Margaret's Mirror, a Gothic tale originally written for The Keepsake annual in 1828. Aunt Margaret tells the narrator a story about her ancestor & namesake who died 200 years before. This Margaret had a sister, Jemmie, a delicate beauty but not a clever girl. Jemmie married a young rake, Sir Philip Forester, who soon tired of her & neglected her. He spent little time at home &, eventually decided to go to the Continent where he hoped to join the Army & have an adventure or two. He left Jemmie fretting at home &, when he had been gone some time, Jemmie decided to consult a mysterious doctor from Padua, Baptisti Damiotti, who had a reputation among the society ladies of Edinburgh of being able to see into the future. Margaret is determined to go with her sister &, although they disguise themselves, the Doctor sees through this immediately. The Doctor, by some supernatural means, shows the ladies a scene in a huge mirror that he says is happening many miles away at that very moment. The shock destroys what's left of Jemmie's intelligence & she never recovers.

My Aunt Margaret's Mirror is a suitable spooky tale for an Annual. Annuals were usually published around Christmas time & were full of ghost stories, holiday tales & poetry. The story was apparently based on one told to Scott by his own great-aunt, Margaret Swinton & her stories formed part of the inspiration for his novel, The Bride of Lammermoor.

Sunday poetry - Wooings

This week's poem from Antonia Fraser's anthology of Scottish love poetry is by a poet I've never heard of. Born in 1735, Robert Graham of Gartmore (picture from here) was a politician, a landowner & a poet & this is his best-known poem. It's been set to music twice, by the poet's great-great-grandson the Rev Malise Graham & also by Sir Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert & Sullivan fame.

O Tell Me How To Woo Thee is a lovely poem, full of joyful determination on the part of the wooer. He doesn't sound too desperately unhappy so I think he's had enough encouragement from his beloved to hope that his love will be returned. She just wants to make him wait a little longer, & prove just how much he loves her, that's all.

If doughty deeds my ladye please,
Right soon I'll mount my steed;
And strong his arm, and fast his seat,
That bears frae me the meed.
I'll wear thy colours in my cap,
Thy picture in my heart;
And he that bends not to thine eye,
Shall rue it to his smart.


Then tell me how to woo thee, love;
O tell me how to woo thee!
For thy dear sake, nae care I'll take,
Tho' ne'er another trow me.


If gay attire delight thine eye,
I'll dight me in array;
I'll tend thy chamber door all night,
And squire thee all the day.
If sweetest sounds can win thy ear,
These sounds I'll strive to catch;
Thy voice I'll steal to woo thysel',
That voice that nane can match.


But if fond love thy heart can gain,
I never broke a vow;
Nae maiden lays her skaith to me,
I never loved but you.
For you alone I ride the ring,
For you I wear the blue;
For you alone I strive to sing,
O tell me how to woo!

Mary, Queen of Scots : truth or lies - Rosalind K Marshall

Mary, Queen of Scots is one of those historical figures that I find endlessly fascinating. There are so many questions & myths about her life, her motives & her beliefs. She was revered as a Catholic martyr & reviled as an adulteress who murdered her second husband to marry her third. Was she more French than Scots after her childhood at the French Court & her first marriage to Dauphin Francis? What was her real relationship with Elizabeth I? Was she in love with the Earl of Bothwell & did she conspire with him to murder Darnley?

Rosalind K Marshall is a historian who has written many books about Scotland's history. Last year I read her fascinating book about Anne, Duchess of Hamilton & posted about it here. She has also written about Mary & the influential women in her life in Queen Mary's Women. This book is a short (only 120pp) & succinct examination of some of the myths about Mary's life. Marshall sets out the myth & then examines the facts & the evidence to try to come to a reasonable opinion about the truth or otherwise of the myth.

The idea that Mary was more French than Scottish & knew very little about Scotland until she returned after the death of her husband, Francis II, has very little substance. Mary was Queen of Scots almost from birth as her father, James V, died when she was only a few days old. Her formidable French mother, Mary of Guise, was determined to protect her inheritance &, because she feared Mary would be abducted or assassinated by unruly nobles or Henry VIII (who wanted to marry Mary to his son & combine the kingdoms), she eventually agreed that Mary would be sent to France to be brought up at Court & marry the Dauphin. Mary was only five years old but she went to France with a retinue of Scottish servants & companions & it was expected that she would be treated as a Queen & not lose sight of her Scots heritage. Mary of Guise was Regent of Scotland & she wrote to Mary, keeping her informed of political developments.

When Mary returned to Scotland at the age of 18, after her mother & husband had died, she was not ignorant of the political or religious situation & her Personal Rule began well because she was determined to rule justly & with tolerance towards the religious reformers like John Knox. Mary's second marriage to Henry, Lord Darnley, was a disaster. Darnley was a cousin of Mary's & had Tudor & Stewart heritage. Their marriage began well but Darnley's immaturity & petulance soon made him enemies at Court & he was easily manipulated by the wily Scottish nobles who wanted to control the Queen & thought controlling Darnley was the way to do this. The murder of Mary's secretary, David Rizzio, in her presence when she was six months pregnant, was the beginning of the end of the marriage. Whether Mary had an affair with Rizzio, whether she was involved in the plot to murder Darnley at Kirk o'Field, & whether she connived with Bothwell in his abduction of her to force their marriage are some of the other stories examined in the book.

Mary, Queen of Scots : truth or lies is an interesting examination of Mary's life through the myths that have grown up around her. It's not a comprehensive biography & I think you'd need to know a bit about the subject to keep track of the many characters. Antonia Fraser's biography is still the best in my opinion, still in print over 40 years after publication. A more recent biography by John Guy, My Heart is My Own, is also excellent.

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.

Penny Plain - O Douglas

I discovered O Douglas through Greyladies, the Edinburgh publishing firm that specializes in early 20th century fiction. So far, they've published Pink Sugar, Eliza for Common & The Proper Place & I hope they continue to reprint her books. While hunting around for more O Douglas, I discovered that several more of her novels were available from Project Gutenberg to download free for my e-reader. Among them was Penny Plain. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was reading Penny's blog, Scottish Vegan Homemaker (lovely blog by the way. Books, cats & delicious vegan recipes) & she showed off her collection of O Douglas novels & mentioned that she was reading Penny Plain for the umpteenth time. That was all the encouragement I needed to decide to read Penny Plain next.

O Douglas was the pseudonym of Anna Buchan, sister of the more famous John, author of The 39 Steps & many other adventure novels. I would describe her books as charmingly comfortable & I mean that as the highest praise. Her characters are charming, her stories are full of human interest, there's always a lovely romance & there's a lot of humour too, mostly through one of her small boys. Poignantly I learned from Penny's blog that the small boys in her books (in Penny Plain it's Gervase Taunton, known as the Mhor) were all based on her own young brother who was killed in WWI.  

Penny Plain is the story of the Jardines. Jean is 23 & has had the care of her two younger brothers & an adopted brother, the Mhor, since the death of dourly religious Great Aunt Alison who brought them up in Priorsford, a small town on the Tweed based on Peebles. David is about to go to Oxford & Jean has been scrimping & saving to make this happen. The family live frugally at The Rigs, a quaint, inconvenient house in the older part of town. Pamela Reston, a 40ish society beauty, arrives to stay in Priorsford while she considers her future. She's had a proposal of marriage from a wealthy politician but isn't sure what she wants to do. She soon makes the acquaintance of the Jardines & finds herself caught up in the life of the town. Pamela's brother Biddy, Lord Bidsborough, is an adventurer & explorer & she describes Priorsford life in her letters to him. When he finally arrives for a visit, he's attracted to Jean although she can't see past his wealth & her poverty & responsibility for her brothers. Lewis Elliott, a cousin of the Jardines, is also an old friend & sweetheart of Pamela's & they tentatively renew their friendship.

The other inhabitants of Priorsford are an interesting lot, their exact social relationships to each other very finely described. There's the overbearing Mrs Duff-Whalley & her unpopular daughter. She's the sort of woman who is always organising something & most people agree with her suggestions & directions because they just want to get rid of her. Mrs Hope is a spiky woman with a kind heart who has lost all three of her sons & lives with her daughter, making the best of her time until she can be reunited with her sons after death. The kindly minister, Mr MacDonald & his wife are good, true Christians, doing good on a tiny stipend. The genteel Miss Watsons who are delighted to be asked to Pamela Reston's tea party but secretly wish they could forego the social trauma & just sit at home in their comfortable clothes. When Jean receives an unexpected inheritance, she finds that the money is more of a burden than a blessing & her position in Priorsford society undergoes a change that disconcerts her.

The charm of Penny Plain is the depiction of small town Scottish life after WWI. I loved all the domestic detail of the Jardines' house. Glaswegian Mrs M'Cosh who looks after the family faithfully but yearns for the kitchen in one of the smart new villas on the other side of town. Pamela's landlady, Bella Bathgate, with her dreadful cooking & genteel ideas about furnishings. Jock & the Mhor (which is Gaelic for the Great One), with their dog, Peter, always in the middle of an adventure or planning mischief. Jean is good but not priggishly so. She lives for the boys & takes her responsibilities seriously. Her inner life is nourished with books & poetry & in the kindnesses she can do for others. She reminded me of Kirsty in Pink Sugar, another good young woman, but I liked Jean more because she doesn't have a perfectly comfortable life. She has to struggle & there's a feeling that her youth will pass her by while she lives & works for her brothers. Pamela Reston is the catalyst that starts to bring Jean out of her comfortable but limited sphere & the inheritance, while a worry, is also a way to broaden Jean's horizons & give her a chance to live for herself.

As I said, O Douglas's novels are charmingly comfortable but they also have an undercurrent of sadness. The books I've read so far were all written in the 1920s & are very perceptive on the social reality for many women who had lost men in the War.
I read Penny Plain on my e-reader, having downloaded it for free from Project Gutenberg. My only problem with reviewing books from my e-reader is finding pictures of the covers to illustrate my posts. The only cover I could find for Penny Plain had a sailboat on the cover & I couldn't see what on earth that had to do with the book. If there was a sailing chapter, I missed it! So, I've chosen a photo of Peebles, the original of Priorsford, which I found here.

Sunday afternoon in the garden

It's been a while since I posted some pictures of the garden. I haven't spent much time in the garden lately. It's been cold & wet for one thing but it's also a bit lonely without Abby here to supervise my very amateur attempts at gardening. It rained all morning yesterday so when the sun finally broke through at about 3 o'clock, I went for a walk to get some air & when I came home, decided to take a few photos of some of the late winter beauties of the garden. You can see my preference for white flowers! Earlicheer daffodils have a lovely creamy colour & the white geranium is always reliable. I don't think I've ever killed a geranium. There used to be a white daphne next to the geranium but it was in one of Abby's favourite spots for digging & it didn't survive her attentions.

Then, there are the single white daffodils & snowdrops. I wanted to take some photos of the pink striped camellia but the rain had ruined all the flowers.

The most exciting thing is that the rose garden is going well. We've had some high winds & quite a lot of rain but the roses are all still standing &, as you can see, one of the Squire roses has started sprouting. I can't wait for the first roses to bloom.