Sunday Poetry - Andrew Marvell

This week I've chosen a poem by Andrew Marvell (picture from here), one of my favourite poets. The Definition of Love is quoted in Linda Gillard's absorbing new novel, The Glass Guardian, which I reviewed yesterday.
I knew the first & last verses but it was a lovely opportunity to read the rest of the poem again. It's a difficult poem to understand but the melancholy of an impossible love is so beautifully described that I don't feel I have to understand all the metaphysical conceits.

My Love is of a birth as rare
    As 'tis, for object, strange and high ;
It was begotten by Despair,
    Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
    Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,
    But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
    Where my extended soul is fixed ;
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
    And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
    Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
Their union would her ruin be,
    And her tyrannic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
    Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel),
    Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
    And earth some new convulsion tear.
And, us to join, the world should all
    Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

As lines, so love's oblique, may well
    Themselves in every angle greet :
But ours, so truly parallel,
    Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
    But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
    And opposition of the stars.

The Glass Guardian - Linda Gillard

The Glass Guardian is a very difficult book to review. It's almost impossible to review it without spoilers. The author herself admits this so I'm not just trying to avoid writing a review! I could just say "I loved it, trust me, it's unputdownable." but that would make for a very short post. I think I summarised the book pretty well in my teaser on Monday, the story is about love, loss, grief, music, WWI, Skye, family secrets, loneliness & a ghost who will break your heart.

Ruth has suffered more grief in a very short time than anyone should have to bear. She's lost her lover, her father & her aunt. Her Aunt Janet's death has hit her hard. Janet virtually brought Ruth up after her mother's death & the time she spent at Janet's house, Tigh na Linne, on Skye, represents Ruth's happiest memories. Ruth inherits the house & travels to Skye to decide what to do with her life. Her career as a television gardener has come to an end. Maybe Skye represents a new beginning?

Ruth begins working on the garden & looking through Janet's archive. She was a well-known composer & a Canadian musicologist, Athelstan Blake, wants to write her biography. Ruth's discoveries cause some concern. The manuscript of Janet's most famous work, In Memoriam, based on a poem by Andrew Marvell, is in three different hands. In Memoriam is very different from Janet's work before & after. Could she have appropriated someone else's work?

Ruth also finds a childhood friend still living on Skye. Tom & his mother had spent summer holidays in a rented house near Tigh na Linne & now, after his mother's death, Tom has returned, working as a general gardener & handyman. Ruth feels an immediate attraction to Tom & as he begins to help her get the house ready for a possible sale, Ruth begins to realise that a childhood friendship may not necessarily be the best basis for a relationship with a man she doesn't really know.

Ruth gradually realises that she's not alone at Tigh na Linne. The house is haunted & the ghost is not entirely a stranger to her. As winter envelops the house & Ruth's loneliness & confusion increase, it becomes apparent that her future is intimately entwined with her family's past & her passion for a man who died one hundred years ago.

Atmosphere is so very important in any supernatural story. Linda Gillard has created a completely believable world in The Glass Guardian that spans the real & the unreal, the past & the present. The best ghost stories take place in winter, illuminated by cosy fires & flickering candlelight. Skye is the perfect setting, the bare wintry landscape mirroring Ruth's despair & grief when she first arrives at Tigh na Linne. Ruth is a vulnerable & very believable character. She has few warm memories & all of them are bound up with Skye & her Aunt Janet. Her determination to discover all she can about Janet's life & the earlier family history is a fascinating part of the story.

I can't say too much about the romantic hero of the book as it would spoil the story. I'll just say that if you've loved the heroes of Linda's earlier books, you won't be disappointed. The love story is tender & romantic but tinged with the grief & regrets of an earlier age. If you don't know Linda's books, what are you waiting for?! Click on the link to my teaser post above, & you'll find links to my reviews of Linda's books & to her website.

As usual with Linda's novels, I read The Glass Guardian in almost one sitting, I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. I was completely caught up in Ruth's journey. If you enjoy a love story with atmosphere, intelligent, multi-faceted characters & a touch of the supernatural, I think you'll enjoy The Glass Guardian. You can buy Linda's books for the Kindle (or Kindle app) from Amazon in the UK & US.

Mrs Robinson's Disgrace - Kate Summerscale

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale was a massively successful book that told the story of the murder of Savile Kent, the child of a prosperous middle-class Victorian family. The case was a sensation at the time & influenced many novelists. The book was successful at drawing parallels with the media frenzy that follows any case of child abduction or murder in our own time. Kate Summerscale's new book, Mrs Robinson's Disgrace, is also set during the Victorian period & deals with the family, the law & scandal.

Isabella Robinson becomes infatuated with Edward Lane, a doctor 10 years her junior. Isabella is married, she has three sons (including a child from an earlier marriage) but she is restless & dissatisfied. Her husband, Henry, is an unsympathetic man. Isabella is afraid that he married her for her money & they have no interests in common. While the Robinsons are living in Edinburgh, they become acquainted with Dr Lane, his wife, Mary, & her mother, Lady Drysdale. Isabella is smitten with Edward at first sight & confides her feelings to her diary.

Isabella & the Lanes become friends, going on outings & holidays with their children. Dr Lane sets up a hydropathy clinic at Moor Park in Surrey, treating various physical & nervous disorders with water therapy. Charles Darwin was one of his patients. Isabella visits the clinic several times as a friend & a patient. Isabella writes in her diary of the increasing attraction she feels for Edward & then that her feelings are returned. She even hints that they are having an affair. When Isabella falls ill, her husband discovers her diary & what he reads there outrages him. He sues Isabella for divorce, using the recently introduced Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857. For the first time, divorce was a civil matter & affordable for the middle classes.

Isabella's diary is the primary evidence to support Henry's accusations of adultery. Edward Lane denies any improper relationship & Isabella does not appear in the case. Her diary must speak for her. But is it fact or fiction? Henry's lawyers paint a picture of a woman so depraved that she thinks nothing of writing down the most intimate details of her passion for a married man. Isabella's counsel contended that the diary was a fantasy, written by a bored woman married to an unsympathetic man. They also tried to assert that she had a physical illness, uterine disease, that caused extravagant sexual delusions. The newspapers were avid for details & the public scandal was immense. Everyone's reputation is at stake as the judges deliberate on the veracity of Isabella's diary.

Isabella seems to have had a habit of flirting with younger men, especially those in her employment such as her sons' tutors & she also described these relationships in her diary. Edward's denials of any improper relationship are very convincing but then, he had a lot to lose. A doctor accused of an affair with a patient, even if she was also a family friend, would not have much reputation left. It seemed to me that Isabella had kept boredom at bay by flirting with a handsome man & fantasising about him. Her mistake was to write down her fantasies & leave the diary lying around for her husband to find. 

I was looking forward to this book very much as I'd so enjoyed The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. I read it in a couple of days but I'm afraid I found it rather unsatisfactory & I find it difficult to explain why. I think the story is really rather slight & Summerscale spends quite a lot of time setting the scene. She describes everyone's family background, especially the story of Mary Lane's brother, George Drysdale, who fakes his own death on a walking tour & reappears some years later after suffering a breakdown.  Maybe I'm being unfair & it's just that my expectations were fed by the hype & I felt unsatisfied.

Isabella's plight as a woman trapped in an unsatisfactory marriage should have been interesting to someone like me who loves Victorian fiction. I'm also very interested in the constraints women suffered before laws on divorce & child custody were reformed. The court case is interesting & the course of the arguments is fascinating, especially as Isabella could not speak in her own defence. Her diary had to speak for her & we're never really sure how much of it is true.

Harry Heathcote of Gangoil - Anthony Trollope

After reading Miss Mackenzie last week, I mentioned Catherine Pope's list of her Top Ten Trollopes on her blog, Victorian Geek. I decided to read Harry Heathcote (picture from here) because it's the only one of Trollope's novels set in Australia. Trollope's son, Fred, emigrated to Australia & so Trollope had some first hand knowledge of Queensland where the novel is set. He spent a year travelling around Australia & spent time with Fred on his sheep run.

Harry Heathcote is a young Englishman who has come out to Australia to seek his fortune. He lives at Gangoil, his sheep run in Queensland where he runs 30,000 sheep on thousands of acres leased from the government. Harry is a squatter & he despises the free selectors who have come out & bought land adjoining his. Don't let anyone tell you that Australia is a classless society - at least, it certainly wasn't in the 19th century when convict transportation had not long ended & there was a very definite hierarchy based on your origins. Harry's neighbour, Giles Medlicot, is one of the free selectors. A new chum from England, Medlicot has bought land next to Gangoil & set up a sugar mill where he lives with his mother.

Harry lives at Gangoil with his wife, Mary, her sister, Kate & his two young children. Harry is a proud young man who has made his own way in the world since he was orphaned young.  His manner is rough & imperious, he doesn't suffer fools gladly. His obstinate manner has resulted in bad relations with many of his neighbours & employees. Harry dismisses two of his employees who then go to work for Medlicot. He suspected them of planning to light fires to destroy his land & is furious with Medlicot for employing them. He sees it as a betrayal. It's the middle of a hot summer & only those who live in the bush can really understand how terrifying bushfire can be. Harry fears that he won't be able to keep up his payments on Gangoil if his stock or feed are destroyed. Harry has let his fear of fire become an obsession as he patrols his boundaries every night, accompanied by the few men he trusts.

As well as Harry's dislike of Giles Medlicot, he is contemptuous of his other neighbours, the shiftless Brownbies. A family of ex-convicts, the Brownbies are slovenly & sly, always on the lookout for trouble & usually finding it. Working all day & riding all night on the lookout for fire has left Harry paranoid & exhausted. When Harry discovers a deliberately-lit fire on the boundary of his property with the Brownbies' land, he trespasses on their land to fight the fire & is surprised to be helped by Medlicot. The Brownbies have been joined by Harry's disgruntles ex-employees & a fight breaks out as they discover Harry desperately fighting the fire.

I enjoyed Harry Heathcote of Gangoil very much. The character of Harry was fascinating. I'm not sure that he will ever become more moderate in his judgments & harsh opinions but he did have to reassess his opinion of Medlicot - especially as he has had the temerity to fall in love with Kate. Trollope evoked the bush very well - the loneliness of life on remote stations, the reliance on neighbours, the egalitarian lack of deference of the servants towards their masters. Mary & Kate were important characters in bringing out these aspects of bush life. There's one very tense scene when Harry is out patrolling at night & the women are left alone at Gangoil. They sit out all night on the verandah, nervously watching & waiting. They are also determined to make friends of the Medlicots, not willing to let a personable young man & his mother be strangers when there is little company to be had.

The only mistake I caught Trollope out in was that it wouldn't have been dark at 7pm at Christmas. December is the middle of summer here & it doesn't get dark until 9pm. I did enjoy the Heathcotes & Medlicots sitting down to a hot Christmas dinner, complete with plum pudding, though. Many Australians (including my family) still do that. It's ridiculous but it's a tradition that we just can't break. Harry Heathcote of Gangoil is much shorter than the average Trollope novel - only about 140pp. It's tightly-written, with one main plot & none of the subplots beloved of the Victorian novelist. In his Autobiography, Trollope says that he wrote the novel for the Graphic as a Christmas story in 1873 & was paid £450 for it. I can imagine that it would have been an exciting, almost exotic story to read by an English fireside in the winter of 1873. I found it very enjoyable & I'm looking forward to my next Trollope from Catherine's Top Ten.

Linda Gillard's new book available now!

I'm a big fan of Linda Gillard's intelligent, involving novels. Linda's new book, The Glass Guardian, has just been released as a Kindle e-book.

I downloaded The Glass Guardian yesterday morning, started reading in the afternoon & finished it late last night. I loved it & I'll be reviewing it properly at the weekend. The story involves love, loss, grief, music, WWI, Skye, family secrets, loneliness & a ghost who will break your heart.

 If, like me, you don't have a Kindle but do have an iPad or tablet, you can download a Kindle app & read it that way. You can download The Glass Guardian here or here. There are some tantalising extracts on Linda's website here.

I've reviewed Linda's last two books, Untying the Knot & House of Silence & Linda wrote an insightful guest post about her decision to e-publish her most recent books. If you enjoy a well-written story about real people (well, except for the ghost, obviously, although he seemed pretty real to me) that's totally involving, unputdownable in fact if you'll excuse the cliché, I think you will love The Glass Guardian.

Sunday Poetry - W H Auden

Auden (photo from here) is one of those poets I always feel I should read more of. I have a lovely Folio Society edition of the Shorter Poems which seems like a good place to start. This is a particularly lovely poem, the first verse is so beautifully calm & serene. Does anyone have any Auden favourites to recommend?

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away,
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.


Soul and body have no bounds: 
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's sensual ecstasy.


Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.


Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

Findings - Kathleen Jamie

I first heard of Kathleen Jamie's books through reading about the publication of her new book, Sightlines, at Dovegreyreader & at Desperate Reader here & here. I love reading about Scotland, especially the islands & this sounded perfect. Findings is a series of essays about journeys that the author takes around Scotland & the observations she makes. Jamie is a poet & this is obvious from the beautiful way she describes the places, animals & objects that she observes. There are essays about the skyline above Edinburgh, a visit to Playfair Hall which houses a collection of anatomical specimens & a boat trip out of Tobermory where she sees whales & dolphins playing. Bird watching is a constant theme as Jamie watches a pair of peregrines nesting or sighting a rare crane.

My favourite essay is about a trip to the prehistoric monument of Maes Howe on Mainland Orkney. There are many prehistoric monuments on the Orkney islands. Maes Howe is a chambered cairn where the bones of the dead were placed. The cairn was constructed so that the light of the setting sun would enter the tomb for just a moment at the midwinter solstice. Jamie has been thinking about the metaphors of darkness & light & how they've been used over the years so decides to see if she can visit the cairn at the solstice & see the light filling the tomb. This happens for several days around the time of the solstice if the weather conditions are favourable. No one really knows what the purpose of the light was. Was it a religious symbol or a way of telling the time of year? Did it have some magical significance? Did Neolithic people enter the tomb at solstice or was the show just for the ancestors?

You enter into the inner chamber of the tomb by a low passageway more than 25 feet long. It's more of a journey than a gateway. You don't have to crawl on hands and knees, but neither can you walk upright. The stone roof bears down on your spine; a single enormous slab of stone forms the wall you brush with your left shoulder. You must walk in that stooped position just a moment too long, so when you're admitted to the cairn two sensations come at once: you're glad to stand, and the other is a sudden appreciation of stone. You are admitted into a solemn place which is not a heart at all, or even a womb, but a cranium.

The atmosphere was slightly marred by the presence of surveyors from Historic Scotland, taking measurements of the tomb to check whether there has been erosion to the fabric of the stone. Their bright lights & the presence of webcams detract from the atmosphere a little. The weather is cloudy & Jamie doesn't experience the moment of light entering the tomb but she isn't too disappointed.

My ventures into light and dark had been ill-starred. I'd had no dramatic dark, neither at sea nor in the tomb, and no resurrecting beam of sunlight. But lasers are light, aren't they? Intensified, organised light. I'd crept into Maes Howe at solstice, hoping for Neolithic technology; what I'd found was the technology of the 21st century. Here were skilled people passing light over these same stones, still making measurements by light and time. That thought pleased me.

I enjoyed reading about Kathleen Jamie's journeys through time & around Scotland. In a busy world, she manages to stop & experience nature, watching birds & examining the corpse of a whale on the beach. I'm looking forward very much to reading Sightlines.