Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather

This is a very quiet, elegiac book that tells an epic story. In 1851, Jean Marie Latour is appointed Apostolic Vicar to the new American state of New Mexico. Latour sets off for his new home & experiences many hardships. He must bring together the European, Mexican & Native American people of the diocese with very little help or guidance. He experiences great hardships, travelling long distances through hostile territory & has to impose his authority on recalcitrant priests. He hears stories of the past & struggles to make sense of the place of the Church in the lives of his most impoverished parishioners. Forty years later, as Latour, now Archbishop, reaches the end of his life, he spends his retirement gardening & training new missionary priests from France in the ways of his parish.

Born in France, Latour has been a parish priest near Lake Ontario since he left the seminary & went to the United States as a missionary, with his great friend, Father Joseph Vaillant. Latour is sent to New Mexico to take charge of a vast diocese that has had no real discipline imposed on it for some time. The original Spanish missionaries who went out to New Mexico were driven out in the early 18th century & the current Bishop of Durango simply ignores the directives sent by his superiors in Rome. Latour & Vaillant reach Santa Fe to discover that no one knows who they are & no one pays them any attention. The documents sent to announce his appointment are at the mercy of a non-existent postal service so Latour decides to go to Old Mexico to visit the Bishop in person.

On this first journey in his new home, Latour becomes lost & is lucky to stumble across a Mexican settlement where he is welcomed & his arrival is seen as the answer to prayer as the villagers have been without the services of a priest for some time. There are marriages to be performed & children to baptize. This first experience shows Father Latour where his efforts must be directed. He sees his deliverance from almost certain death as a sign that he has made the right decision in coming to New Mexico.

Father Latour returns to Santa Fe after meeting the Bishop & receiving his accreditation from him to find that Father Vaillant has already made progress with the priests of the city. The two men are opposites in almost every way but the mission needs all their qualities. Father Vaillant is practical & determined. He has reorganized their house & taken charge of the cooking. While Father Latour worries about the size of the diocese & the many irregularities he has already heard about, Father Vaillant urges him to concentrate on sorting out Santa Fe first. Father Vaillant is often sent out to bring an unruly parish back into the fold & spends his life as a missionary in the farthest reaches of the country. Father Latour impresses by his compassion, his integrity & his devotion to the people he serves. Neither would have been successful without the other. At the end of the novel, Father Vaillant reflects on the differences in the two men,

Wherever he went, he soon made friends that took the place of country and family. But Jean, who was at ease in any society and always the flower of courtesy, could not form new ties. It had always been so. He was like that even as a boy; gracious to everyone, but known to very few.

There are some wonderful stories in the novel. Father Vaillant is short & has trouble riding a horse comfortably. He convinces a wealthy parishioner to give him not one but two mules - one for himself & one for Father Latour. Father Vaillant could not be happy with a comfort that his friend could not share & the mules had been brought up together & so would be miserable apart. It's done with such humour & humility that the parishioner, who was happy to give one mule, decides that he's just as happy to give both his prize animals. Father Vaillant later goes to the goldfields of Colorado to minister to the miners & bring some religious comfort to a lawless place. He has a wagon constructed especially to carry all the things he will need to save souls & spread the Gospel & he & his wagon soon become famous throughout the territory. He would return to New Mexico on what he called begging expeditions but never returned for good.

Another time, the two priests are travelling in unfamiliar territory when they stop to ask shelter from a man whom they instantly dislike. His frightened, downtrodden Mexican wife, at great risk to herself, warns them to leave immediately &, acting on their own instincts, they do so. The woman, Magdalena, escapes in fear of her life & follows the priests back to Santa Fe. She tells them of her husband's cruelty & that he had murdered four travellers & had planned to murder the priests as well.

The journeys taken by the priests show them the vastness of the territory. I loved the descriptions of the wilderness & the landscape. Father Latour is a very self-contained man but he responds to the beauty of the landscape. He respects all his parishioners & treats them all with love & compassion. He is strict in his expectations of his priests, however, & his standards of behaviour are met eventually by the many renegade priests who had exploited the laxity of the previous Bishop's rule.

As I said at the beginning, this is an elegiac book. That may seem odd when there is so much action, so much danger & peril. However, there's a serenity in Willa Cather's writing that I find so attractive. Father Vaillant often said that he had wished for a life of contemplation before he agreed to go out as a missionary but realised that God had other, better plans for him. The strength of the two men's belief & conviction is at the core of the story & it's their confidence that they are on the right path, no matter how difficult or perilous their situation, that is so admirable. They are humble, very attractive personalities & I loved reading about their lives & about a part of the world I knew nothing about. Death Comes for the Archbishop is a beautiful book & I'm looking forward to reading more Willa Cather very soon.

Sunday Poetry - Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov

Apart from Pushkin, Lermontov is probably the best known poet in this anthology. His novel, A Hero Of Our Time, is still in print. I have vague memories of reading it a very long time ago. His poetry was also influrntial. Tolstoy apparently said that Lermontov's poem, Borodino, gave him the inspiration for War and Peace. Lermontov was another military man from an impoverished noble family, as so many of the Russian poets of the Romantic period were. He was outspoken in his belief that Pushkin's death in a duel was covert assassination. When his poem on the subject came to the attention of the Court, he was sent into exile. Lermontov was also killed in a duel, at the age of only 26.

I'm reading Jack London's The Sea-Wolf with my 19th century book group at the moment & so I'm drawn to this poem, The Sail, just because of the seagoing theme.

A white sail gleams alone out yonder
Amid the ocean's pale-blue haze...
What quest has driven him to wander?
Why has he left his native bays?

The waves crest as the fresh wind rises,
The mainmast bending in the breeze...
It is not happiness he prizes,
Nor is it happiness he flees!

Beneath, the azure current flowing;
Above, the golden sunlight glows...
Perverse, he seeks the storm winds blowing,
As if in storms to find repose!

Very Inspiring Blogger Award

Thank you very much to Pam at Travellin' Penguin for nominating me for this award. I don't usually participate in memes & merry go rounds but I enjoy Pam's blog (especially her trips around Tasmania searching for vintage Penguins) so here goes.

Here are the rules for this award:

•     Thank and link to the person who nominated you.

•     List the rules and display the award.

•     Share seven facts about yourself.

•     Nominate 15 other amazing blogs and comment on their posts to let them know they have been nominated.

•     Optional: display the award logo on your blog and follow the blogger who nominated you.

Well, here are the seven facts about myself.

1. I've been a librarian for 25 years.

2. I used to do Highland Dancing when I was young (I'm sure I could have a go at the Sword Dance, even now)

3. I have almost 1000 unread books on my shelves (I confessed to that just the other day but I have to say I'm closer to the magic 1000 now than I was then).

4. I can't swim (can't see very far without glasses) & have never ridden a bike, probably because I'm very clumsy & would be sure to fall off.

5.  I've become an enthusiastic veggie gardener over the last few years.

6.  I've read Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights & Persuasion at least a dozen times each.

7. I've amazed many people at work by becoming part of the ELearning Team, embracing new technology & proving that I'm more than a 19th century woman in a 21st century world (something a friend often says about me).

I'm not going to nominate favourite blogs. All my favourites are in my blog list on the right >>>>>>
If any of those bloggers see this post & wish to join in, that would be great.

Campaigning for the Vote : Kate Parry Frye's Suffrage Diary - ed Elizabeth Crawford

Kate Parry Frye worked as an organiser for the New Constitutional Society for Women's Suffrage (NCS). In 1911, when the diary begins, Kate was 33 years old. She came from a family whose fortunes had declined. Her father, Frederick, was the owner of a chain of grocery stores & a Liberal MP in the 1890s. Kate's mother, Jane, was connected by marriage to the famous Gilbey family of wine & spirits fame. This connection was useful for Mr Frye's grocery business but, unfortunately, by 1911, the business had all but failed. The family gradually retreated to their home at Bourne End, called The Plat. Eventually they had to rent The Plat out & lived in rented houses until, by 1913, they were forced to sell.

Kate had grown up in a secure middle-class family. She had little formal education, but loved the theatre & took lessons in singing, dancing & recitation. She became an actress & had some limited success, touring in a production of J M Barrie's Quality Street. It was on this tour in 1903 that she met John Collins, & they became engaged. Kate often seems rather lukewarm about John, who was very much in love with Kate although she doesn't seem to care for him nearly as much. Certainly in the diary, she mentions her infatuation with at least one other man. John was a fairly unsuccessful actor & they had a long engagement as they couldn't afford to marry. Kate's family supported her theatrical ambitions &, later, her interest in suffragism. She began as a volunteer for the NCS but was glad to accept a paid position as an organiser in 1913 as the family fortunes declined.

The NCS was one of several organisations dedicated to extending the franchise to women. The most famous was the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU) founded by the Pankhursts & notorious for their militancy. As the name suggests, the NCS wanted a constitutional solution to the problem & worked on spreading the word & trying to influence politicians to introduce a Parliamentary Bill for women's suffrage. They also canvassed against anti-suffrage politicians. Kate first became interested in suffrage through attending meetings of the Actresses' Franchise League in 1909, the year before the NCS was founded. Kate's job was to travel around England, mostly Kent, Norfolk & Essex, organising meetings, gathering speakers & canvassing for women's suffrage.

Most of Kate's work involved setting up meetings & canvassing & her diary certainly depicts a relentless struggle to gather support. The work involved was considerable as Kate would arrive in a new town, have to find lodgings for herself & maybe speakers, make contact with supporters, find a venue for the meeting, deal with printers producing posters & handbills, find someone to chair the meeting & drum up an audience. She often describes hours spent canvassing but finding few people at home or meeting an unsympathetic response. Sometimes her lodgings are uncomfortable & her colleagues uncongenial. The meetings could be an outstanding success with interesting speakers & a good turnout or dismal failures with insufficient support from the locals or a rowdy crowd of hecklers. Kate is usually optimistic but this outburst, after a meeting at a rich woman's house where the guests only came for the food, is heartfelt,

I am clean off this campaign. Then home to my pic-nic existence with a mood on me one could have cut off in chunks. I suppose it's a mixture of fatigue and homesickness and disappointment. If the work would only go well I would not mind and it would help me put up with my lot. Why must I live in horrid rooms amongst other people's hideous possessions. What am I paying for, shall I ever have done paying - if only something would come out of it, if only I could justify my existence somehow!!!!
Friday October 25th 1912 - Folkestone 33 Coolinge Road

As well as the day to day work of an organiser, Kate took part in some of the great set pieces of the suffrage movement. She marched in the Women's Coronation Procession organised by the WSPU as a demonstration of women's solidarity. It was the biggest such demonstration ever held & was timed for a few days before the coronation of George V. Kate marched with the Actresses' Franchise League & had a wonderful day, culminating in a meeting at the Royal Albert Hall addressed by Mrs Pankhurst. She was a Group Captain & very proud of the honour.

I was the 3rd section behind the third Floral Arch - very pretty it all looked but some of the walkers of the AFL looked very dowdy. But it was all simply magnificent - 70,000 of us, five abreast, and some of the Sections were just wonderful - a real pageant and I enjoyed myself tremendously. ... The end had not left the Embankment before we started the meeting at 8.30 - 7 miles, 1,000 banners 70 bands. We were just behind one and it was quite lovely marching to it. We kept time to it and at least walked well. Several of the onlookers I heard say that ours was the Smartest Section.
Saturday June 17th 1911

Kate also witnessed the funeral procession for Emily Wilding Davison, who was killed when she ran in front of the King's horse at Epsom on Derby Day 1913.

We saw it splendidly at the start until we were driven away from our position and then could not see for the crowds and then we walked right down Buckingham Palace Rd and joined in the procession at the end. It was really most wonderful - the really organised part - groups of women in black with white lilies - in white and in purple - and lots of clergymen and special sort of pall bearers each side of the coffin. She gave her life publicly to make known to the public the demand of Votes for Women - it was only fitting she should be honoured publicly by the comrades.
Saturday June 14th 1913

John Collins had joined the Territorial Army & was in the Essex and Suffolk Royal Garrison Artillery & so was mobilised with his unit on the outbreak of WWI. He & Kate were married on her 37th birthday in January 1915. She resigned from the NCS in 1916 & the remaining diary entries in the book are on suffrage matters - the granting of the franchise in 1918, the first time she voted in 1924 & attending Mrs Pankhurst's funeral in 1928.

Elizabeth Crawford made the decision to edit the diary severely to only include information about Kate's suffrage activities. While I can understand that the book needed a focus, I would have liked a bit more about Kate's personal life outside the movement. Crawford writes linking passages between entries when Kate is on holidays or visiting family but restricts the entries to Kate's activities as an organiser.

Elizabeth Crawford's blog, Woman and her Sphere, is a great resource for information about the suffrage movement. There are links to all the entries she has written about Kate & other suffrage stories as well. Kate (played by Romola Garai) is going to be featured in the ITV series, The Great War, the People's Story.

Elizabeth Crawford has also written a biography of Kate to be published as an ebook in early August (today, in fact), Kate Parry Frye – The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette, which I'm looking forward to reading to find out what happened to Kate after the struggle for women's suffrage was over.
Edited to add : and here it is, just downloaded this very minute!

The Four Feathers - A E W Mason

The Four Feathers is one of the most famous adventure stories of all time, although probably through the many movie adaptations rather than the original book. The story of Harry Feversham, who is handed white feathers for cowardice by three friends & his fiancée, & his quest to make them take back their feathers, is well-known. I was surprised to find that, for me, Harry wasn't the hero of this story at all.

Harry Feversham has grown up in a military family. The portraits of his ancestors look down upon him at Broad Place & his father fought in the Crimean War. Every year, on the anniversary of a great battle in the Crimea (& also Harry's birthday), a group of old soldiers get together at Broad Place to tell stories & remember their fallen comrades. On one occasion, when Harry is home from school, he joins the men & hears stories of great bravery & also great cowardice. Harry is a sensitive boy, who takes after his dead mother, Muriel, rather than his stolid, unimaginative father. As he goes to bed on that night, he looks at the portraits of his ancestors & believes that he is destined to be a coward rather than a hero. Only one of his father's friends, Lieutenant Sutch, sees what the boy is feeling & offers to help him if help is ever needed.

Years later, Harry has joined the Army & is engaged to a beautiful Irish girl, Ethne Eustace. At dinner with friends in London, he talks of resigning his commission & living with Ethne in Ireland. She loves her home in Donegal & will never leave it. A telegram arrives for Harry telling him that his regiment is about to be deployed on active service in the Sudan. He burns the telegram without telling his friends of the contents. One of the men, Captain Trench, has glimpsed his own name on the telegram as it burned & determines to find out what was in the telegram. He & Lieutenant Willoughby visit a mutual friend, Castleton, who had sent the telegram, discover the contents of the message & realise that Feversham had sent in his commission on the very same night, as if he hadn't known about the deployment. The fourth man at the dinner, Lieutenant Jack Durrance, is unaware of all this as he can only focus on the fact that Harry is engaged to Ethne, the woman he loves.

At a grand ball at Ethne's home in Ireland, Lennon House, all seems set fair for Harry & Ethne's future. A box is delivered to Harry in the middle of the ball. He opens it in Ethne's presence & three white feathers flutter to the ground. Ethne asks the meaning of the curious gift & Harry tells her the truth, that he resigned his commission even though he knew that his regiment was destined for war. Ethne is shocked & her proud nature won't allow her to marry a man she can't respect. She takes a white feather from her fan & adds it to the three feathers from Castleton, Willoughby & Trench. The engagement broken, Harry leaves next day to tell his father what he has done & he effectively disappears.

Harry eventually decides that he must force all four to take back their feathers. He goes to Egypt & the Sudan in disguise & lays his plans to prove his bravery & remove the stain of cowardice. Meanwhile, Ethne has never stopped loving Harry. She burns all his gifts & letters but keeps his photograph by her always. Jack Durrance doesn't know of the feathers & has no idea why the engagement has been broken off. He continues his friendship with Ethne, hoping that one day she will turn to him. On active service in Africa, Durrance is blinded & Ethne decides to marry him. Staying with a friend, Mrs Adair, who is herself in love with Durrance, Ethne receives a visit from Willoughby, who brings her his feather & tells the story of Harry's bravery. Ethne is torn between her love for Harry & her determination, as she says, to not ruin two men's lives. She says nothing to Durrance but his perception is keen & he will not stop until he has discovered the secret of Harry's disappearance.

The Four Feathers is the kind of book that could only have been written before WWI. The story is full of a very Victorian notion of bravery & honour that the characters believe in absolutely. Harry is the most influenced by it & the fact that he endures great hardship & pain during the years of his quest barely redeem him in his own eyes. All he cares about is that his reputation is restored in the eyes of the others, especially Ethne, as he asks that the men return the feathers to her. He feels that his life is effectively over. He assumes that Ethne doesn't love him & will marry someone else but he wants her to know about his deeds so that they may meet as friends in the afterlife.

I found Ethne a difficult character to sympathise with. She is just as rigid in her notions of right & wrong as old General Feversham, Harry's father. Her determination to marry Durrance although she doesn't love him, is misguided & she is very cruel to him in one scene where she walks away from him as he is talking, knowing that he's blind & thinks she's still there. To me, Jack Durrance was the real hero of the book. He gradually discovers Harry's story &, because he believes that Ethne has ceased to love Harry, asks her to marry him. When he's blinded, he offers to release her from their engagement & eventually believes that she loves him, mistaking her changed attitude to a growing love for himself rather than her delight at hearing of Harry's redemption. His unselfishness in helping Harry & Trench escape from the horrific prison at Omdurman & releasing Ethne from her promise made him more heroic to me than Harry's quest. Harry is no coward. He could have gone on active service & would probably have acquitted himself well. I suppose it reflects the different attitudes to heroism that we have now, over 100 years after the book was published. And, of course, if the telegram had come the day after Harry has resigned his commission, his honour would have been intact but there would have been no book! The Four Feathers is a great read & a portrayal of a way of life & of attitudes that have disappeared.

Anything you can do...

Lucky & Phoebe have very definite ideas about their favourite cosy places. Lucky loves to sleep under her blanket (really my old dressing gown) & I've never seen Phoebe anywhere near this much-loved but battered piece of cloth before. So, I was amazed to see Phoebe settle down on the edge of the blanket the other night. I was even more amazed when Lucky scrambled underneath & went to sleep anyway.

The next day, Lucky had obviously decided that she would show Phoebe that no cosy spot was out of bounds & climbed up on the top of the new chair I bought a few months ago. This has been Phoebe's spot since the day it arrived but Lucky had decided that all's fair in love & war. She looked very comfortable, too.

Another prime spot in this cold weather is in front of the wall heater. This is Lucky's place but she looks a little disconcerted to find Phoebe staking a claim. Lucky looks as if she's appealing to a higher authority (Me) to make an adjudication on this point but I'm not going to get involved. Of course, there would be plenty of room if they would just snuggle up together but I don't see that happening...

I can't resist adding this photo I took yesterday morning. It was the coldest morning in Melbourne for 16 years (0.5C in my suburb) & we all had trouble getting out of bed. At least it was Sunday & we could sleep in a bit. I thought we were all up & ready for the day until I went in to make the bed & found Phoebe under the doona. Normally she sleeps on top of the doona (or on top of me). She must have got a shock when she stuck her nose out of the catflap because she wasn't outside for very long. The frosty morning became a beautiful winter's day as they often do but it took courage to take that first step & Phoebe wasn't quite ready...

Sunday Poetry - Nikolai Mikhailovich Yazykov

Yazykov was born into a gentry family & seems to have spent his youth enjoying himself so much that he spent long periods in later life travelling for the sake of his health. He was known as a writer of poetry & drinking songs & was very popular among his fellow students. He became more conservative as he grew older, but this poem, written when he was 20, reflects his more liberal youth.

O money, money, tell me why
My purse and you are so soon parted.
For now that Christmastime is nigh,
and all good Christians glad-hearted,
I am alone, cut off from all
The promises, the expectation;
My dreams are dreams of desperation,
My finances - very small!
Oh, there, where Peter's city rises
I'd gladly fly; 'tis dear to me,
For there the first few modest prizes
My ardent muse bestowed on me;
It can't be done, no use repining!
Sans money - what makes people glad -
No travel order for the signing
And no post-horses to be had.

A warrior on a field of woe
Might curse his fate in some such fashion
when, shattered by the stubborn foe,
He casts his spear aside in passion:
The garland not for him to wear,
No warrior's fame in saga knowing;
He looks far off - his warlike stare
Now glinting as the tears start flowing.