Sunday Poetry - Thomas Hardy

A poem from another war this week. Hardy's Drummer Hodge is about a young Wessex soldier, killed during the Boer War in South Africa & buried under a foreign sky, with "strange stars amid the gloam". I thought of this poem because I read an article in the latest BBC History magazine about the Relief of Mafeking & that reminded me that, in Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain writes that the celebrations for the Relief were among her earliest memories (another coincidence - if you read the article on the Relief in History Today that I've linked to, you'll see another highlighted article, about Somerville College as a military hospital in WWI. Is it any wonder that I spend too much time on the internet when one thing leads to another like that?).

The mentions of the veldt, the kopje & the Karoo also reminded me of one of Vera & Roland's favourite books, The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner. I read this many years ago & remember being unimpressed by it. I probably read it in the afterglow of my first reading of Testament of Youth. I feel that I should read it again & see how I feel about it 35 years later.

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined -- just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the drummer never knew --
Fresh from his Wessex home --
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

Memoirs of a Professional Cad - George Sanders

The extra edition of Shiny New Books (which used to be called the Inbetweeny) is now available & I've reviewed George Sanders' Memoirs of a Professional Cad. I enjoyed reading it very much, especially after reading one of the mystery novels Sanders co-wrote, Crime on My Hands. Both books (as well as another thriller, Stranger At Home, which I've yet to read) have been reprinted by Dean Street Press.

Memoirs of a Professional Cad is a witty recollection of the life of one of the great Hollywood stars. Sanders comes across as a melancholy man with his pose of cynicism and his sardonic turn of phrase. His musings on everything from why actors want to win an Oscar to the advantages of fame (good tables and excellent service in restaurants seems to be the highlight) are told with panache but there’s an underlying sadness in the writer that left me feeling rather melancholy myself.

Other highlights of the extra edition of SNB include reviews of The Youngest Lady In Waiting by Mara Kay (one of my favourite childhood reads, now reprinted at last), The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths (just read this, one of my favourite crime series), Great Shakespearean Actors : Burbage to Branagh by Stanley Wells, & a tribute to Ruth Rendell.

The alternative was to stop buying books...

... or buy more bookcases & I was never going to stop buying books! The result is two beautiful Tasmanian oak bookcases. They're standing just inside the front door. My living area is open plan so they're in the place a hallway would be if I had a hallway.

I spent last weekend moving books which was fun but exhausting. I decided to begin my alphabetical sequence of books I've read in the new bookcases & to move my gardening & cookbooks to the bottom shelves so they're closer to the kitchen. This is the beginning,

& this is how it looked when I'd finished. There's room for books to be shelved from the tbr shelves as I read them.

A new home for my books by Jane Austen,

Vera Brittain &

the Brontës.

Moving the alphabetical sequence round was easy. The really difficult part was rearranging the tbr shelves. I have the tbr arranged by imprint or by subject. I like to keep my favourite publishers together - Persephone, Greyladies, Slightly Foxed, Virago, Hesperus, Canongate, Girls Gone By, Vintage, British Library Crime Classics, Folio Society, Oxford & Penguin Classics -  & then I have sections for literary criticism, biographies, letters & diaries & history (in chronological order by country, of course), general fiction & crime fiction.

The shelves had become a bit mixed as I desperately tried to fit a few more books on to already overcrowded shelves. In the end, I had to put some books on the floor in categories to see where I needed to make space.

This is where I left it when I stopped for a cup of coffee & a rethink.

In the end, I had to combine literary biographies, letters & diaries in one chronological sequence which gave me more room for general historical non-fiction & biographies in the bay on the far right. I have bays of fiction on either side of the non-fiction because, quite honestly, I was exhausted by the end of all that & needed a cup of tea. Maybe I'll move all the non-fiction together next weekend...

Here's the end result. It was a relief to go to work on Monday for a bit of a rest.

An Old Captivity - Nevil Shute

This is such an unusual book, a mixture of exploration of the far north, the minutiae of flying a seaplane & a possible reincarnation experience reaching back to the Vikings & the time of the Icelandic sagas.

An Old Captivity (cover picture from here) is the story of an archaeological expedition to Greenland. Pilot Donald Ross has spent time flying seaplanes in the far north of Canada. When he returns to England, he is offered a job flying a seaplane on a survey commissioned by Oxford don, Professor Lockwood. Lockwood's industrialist brother finances the expedition & Ross, once approved by the Lockwoods, is given carte blanche to order a plane & organize everything they'll need. He sees this job as a great opportunity, a stepping stone to more lucrative work. Professor Lockwood's prickly daughter Alix, is not so impressed with Ross. She suspects him of inflating the cost of the expedition & taking advantage of her unworldly father's enthusiasm for surveying the remote location. Ross is equally unimpressed with Alix & is disconcerted when Lockwood announces that his daughter will be accompanying them on the trip. A photographer, Jameson, will meet them at Greenland but, until then, Ross has to do all the work involved with flying & maintaining the plane.

The Lockwoods soon realise just how much work Ross has to do & regret that they hadn't insisted on an engineer taking Alix's place. The testy relationship between Ross & Alix gradually thaws as she begins to appreciate Ross's abilities & begins to help him as much as she can. After adventures including an unexpected night at a native settlement, they reach the town from which they'll set off on the survey to discover that Jameson has a broken leg & can't make the trip. Ross & Alix quickly learn to operate the camera & take the survey photographs.

Ross is a conscientious & methodical man. His constant worry about the work he has to do & the responsibility of the plane interfere with his sleep. He's given a bottle of sleeping tablets by a chemist in Reykjavik & he soon finds he can't sleep comfortably without them. On reaching the settlement in Greenland, they make camp at a location where earlier settlements had long since vanished. Their native workmen refuse to sleep at the camp & move to another place a mile away. All they will say is that they're afraid to sleep where the old people once lived. The survey work goes well, the weather is in their favour & Ross & Alix become closer as Ross realizes that he's fallen in love.

One night, Ross falls asleep after taking three sleeping tablets & falls into a coma that lasts 36 hours. Spooked by the tales of the old people, the Lockwoods manage to move Ross to the other camp &, gradually, he regains consciousness. He tells an amazing story about a dream he'd had while he was unconscious, a dream where he was a young Scotsman, Haki, taken as a slave by Viking raiders. He becomes a member of Leif Erickson's expedition to Greenland & then on to Vinland, the almost mythical settlement on the coast of North America. The dream is so vivid that Ross is constantly thinking of it. In the dream, he's accompanied by a young girl, Hekia, whom he equates with Alix. On the final leg of their journey home, they cross the Atlantic to Canada & then, down the coast of Massachusetts towards New York. Ross is suddenly convinced that he's found the place the Vikings called Wondersward &, when they land to have a look, he recognizes everything, including a place that was special to Haki & Hekia. Alix begins to wonder whether Ross's experience was just a dream or something more uncanny.

The story begins with one of Shute's framing stories, a device he often used. Ross is on a stranded train in Europe & tells his story to a fellow traveller, a psychologist. Shute must have forgotten how he began the story because we never return to the stranded train & the viewpoint of the story isn't just Ross's which it should be if he's telling his story as he experienced it. However, that didn't bother me too much. I enjoyed the story very much - the early scenes in Oxford with Ross & Alix irritating each other while Lockwood is completely focussed on his research without any idea of what such a trip entails. I love novels set in the 1930s, with all the assumptions about class & privilege. Alix Lockwood looks down on Ross & her middle class assumptions about him & his abilities were typical of the period. It certainly sets up the combative relationship between Alix & Ross very well & contrasts with the slow dawning of respect that she feels for him when she realises how naive she & her father had been. I also loved Donald's Aunt Janet, who had brought him up on her meagre earnings as a teacher. As always, Nevil Shute writes about the work of pilots & engineers with authority. Sometimes, I admit, the endless detail about fitting out a seaplane, filling the engine, changing the plugs, became a little mind-numbing, but the story was fascinating.

The scenes in the north reminded me a little of Michelle Paver's Dark Matter, a terrific ghost story that I listened to on audio read by Jeremy Northam. A young man is left as the only member of a scientific expedition to a remote station where something horrible happened in the past, something so dreadful that it left an enduring impression on the landscape & the atmosphere of the place. It was a story that left me with such a feeling of dread, I don't think I could have read (or listened) to it at night.  I listened to An Old Captivity on audio too, read by Cameron Stewart. He did a good job narrating the story & his male voices were fine but Alix's voice was dreadful. Still, the lure of the story kept me listening & I'm keen to go on reading more of Nevil Shute's novels.

Sunday Poetry - Rupert Brooke & Vera Brittain

I finished rereading Testament of Youth last week so two more poems, both quoted in the book, before I move on to something else.

Vera quotes this sonnet by Rupert Brooke, Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, in the aftermath of Victor's death. He was blinded at Arras & Vera returned home from nursing in Malta with the idea of marrying Victor & looking after him. However, Victor died soon after she returned &, as she admits, such a marriage would have been a disaster for both of them.

Not with vain tears, when we're beyond the sun,
We'll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread
Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead
Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run
Down some close-covered by-way of the air,
Some low sweet alley between wind and wind,
Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find
Some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there

Spend in pure converse our eternal day;
Think each in each, immediately wise;
Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and say
What this tumultuous body now denies;
And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;
And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.

In 1919 Vera returned to Oxford to take up her studies. After four years away, she felt lonely & depressed. She was also suffering from what would today be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She had dreams of Edward & Roland returning or that they were still alive but so badly wounded that they didn't want to be seen. She also had hallucinations, imagining that her face was changing & that she was growing a beard, like a witch. This almost unbearably sad poem, Boar's Hill, October 1919, was written at this time & later published in the 1920 edition of Oxford Poetry.

Tall slender beech-trees, whispering, touched with fire.
Swaying at even beneath a desolate sky;
Smouldering embers aflame where the clouds hurry by
To the wind's desire.

Dark sombre woodlands, rain-drenched by the scattering shower,
Spindle that quivers and drops its dim berries to earth —
Mourning, perhaps, as I mourn here alone for the dearth
Of a happier hour.

Can you still see them, who always delighted to roam
Over the Hill where so often together we trod
When winds of wild autumn strewed summer's dead leaves on the sod,
Ere your steps turned home?

Cousin Henry - Anthony Trollope

April marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anthony Trollope & there have been articles galore (just google Anthony Trollope 200 if you don't believe me). I even found a checklist to count how many of Trollope's novels I've read (22 out of 47 so not quite halfway). To celebrate the anniversary, I'm rereading Miss Mackenzie with my online reading group & I also took Cousin Henry off the tbr shelves.

Cousin Henry is one of Trollope's standalone novels. It's not part of the famous Palliser or Barsetshire series & it's not a blockbuster like The Way We Live Now or He Knew He Was Right. It's short by Trollopian standards (under 300pp), has no subplots & is an acute psychological study of guilt & indecision.

The plot is easily told. Mr Indefer Jones, owner of Llanfeare on the coast of Carmarthenshire, is an old man. He has no children & is undecided as to what he should do with his estate. He has made many wills as he dithers between leaving the property to Henry Jones, the next male heir, or to his niece, Isabel Brodrick. Henry Jones is a clerk in London, a very unprepossessing young man with no real vices but he just fails to please. On the other hand, Isabel is the darling of her uncle's eye. She has lived at Llanfeare for some years, mostly to get away from her unsympathetic stepmother. She is loved & admired by all the tenants on the estate & she loves them & the estate in return. However, Uncle Indefer's conscience inclines him to leaving the property to Henry & to leave £4000 to Isabel. Isabel is a noble, proud girl who would scorn to try to influence her uncle in any way. She leaves him to wrestle with his own conscience & never reproaches him. His lawyer, Mr Apjohn, has remonstrated with Uncle Indefer about disinheriting Isabel but to no avail. The only result has been a breach between lawyer & client which contributes to the misery that follows.

The final will seems to be the one leaving Llanfeare to Henry. He has been brought down to visit his uncle in the last months of his life & introduced to the servants & tenants, all of whom take an instant dislike to him. When Uncle Indefer dies, there's talk of a later will, favouring Isabel, having been written & witnessed by two of the tenants. Isabel was with her uncle when he died & he told her that he had made such a will. Mr Apjohn knows nothing of it because Uncle Indefer refused to consult him about it. However, he had told Henry of the will & showed Henry where he had hidden it, in a volume of sermons in the library. After the funeral, the tenants tell their story of witnessing a new will but Henry stays silent. As no later will can be found, the will favouring Henry is read & must stand.

Isabel immediately makes plans to return to her father's house in Hereford. Unfortunately the £4000 her uncle bequeathed her doesn't exist because the old man sold the land that was meant to provide the cash. So, she returns home with nothing. Henry is persuaded by Mr Apjohn to offer Isabel the money as soon as he can get it but she scornfully refuses him. She suspects that Henry knows the whereabouts of the later will. She despises him & has no reservations about telling him so to his face. Isabel is in love with William Owen, but her uncle didn't think a poor clergyman was good enough to marry his heir so Isabel has refused him. Now that she's poor, she refuses to marry him because she's too proud to go to him with nothing. Isabel's father & stepmother don't see why she shouldn't accept Cousin Henry's offer of the £4000 & marry Mr Owen but she refuses. She hates living with her family but her father won't allow her to earn her own living.

Henry, meanwhile, is at Llanfeare. He is tortured by guilt & paralysed by indecision. He knows where the will is hidden, & he can't bring himself to leave the library in case the will is discovered. He knows he should confess & produce the will but he can't. He vacillates between planning to tell all & wallowing in self-pity about his treatment & his dislike for Isabel. He's despised by the servants, who all give notice, & he's too cowardly to go about the estate because he fears the wrath of the Cantors, the tenants who witnessed the will. So he skulks around the house, afraid to leave the library in case the will is discovered but wishing someone would find the will to extricate him from the torment he's suffering.

Mr Apjohn suspects Henry of knowing about the will but can't prove anything. Without the will, nothing can be done. Then, as rumours spread about the will & about the injustice suffered by Isabel, the local newspaper, the Carmarthenshire Herald, prints a series of articles questioning Henry's honesty & his right to the estate. The editor hopes to provoke Henry into a libel action that would see him cross examined in court about the will & exactly what he knows about it. Could Henry commit perjury by lying in court or the even more serious crime of destroying the will? Mr Apjohn enlists Isabel's father & the two men decide to confront Henry & try to prove Mr Apjohn's theory about the will.

Cousin Henry is such an interesting character study. Henry is a coward, snivelling & self-justifying. He spends most of his time cowering from imaginary blows, vacillating between opposite courses of action, avoiding the servants & tenants & crying with self-pity over his situation. However, he's not altogether an unsympathetic character. Uncle Indefer doesn't help by openly disliking him & preferring Isabel. The tenants take their cue from him &, of course, Henry has never had an opportunity to get to know the estate. He's bullied by everyone from Mr Apjohn to the Cantors, despised by Isabel, but he's not evil. He could have destroyed the will & brazened it out but he doesn't do that. He does have a conscience but his fear of the consequences of almost any course of action leave him doing precisely nothing.

Isabel is an even more interesting character. Proud & prickly with a streak of masochism (she plans to work as a housemaid or starve herself rather than accept Henry's offer of money), Isabel prides herself on her moral rectitude. She refuses to blame Henry publicly, even though she is sure that he knows of the later will. She declares her love passionately to Mr Owen but then refuses to marry him. She drives her stepmother mad by standing on the moral high ground, refusing Henry's money, refuses to marry Mr Owen while she can bring him nothing &, as Mrs Brodrick puts it, taking the boots from her own daughters' feet as her husband has to provide for his ungrateful daughter. I sympathized with Henry & Isabel but was furious with Uncle Indefer for being such an old ditherer & creating such a mess. As Mr Apjohn says, the danger in owning property is in leaving heirs & tenants in ignorance of what is to come afterwards. I enjoyed Cousin Henry & I'm looking forward to reading more Trollope in this anniversary year.

Sunday Poetry - Vera Brittain

I'm rereading Testament of Youth again after seeing the new movie version last weekend. I enjoyed the movie, Alicia Vikander was wonderful, & the changes to the story didn't irritate me as much as I thought they might. But, it didn't affect me emotionally as reading the book always does. It's been a few years since I last read it & I find something different in every reading. This time, I'm noticing how much foreshadowing Vera does in her telling of her story. The shadow of Roland & Edward's deaths are there from the very beginning & I wondered how much the first readers knew of her story before they read the book. She certainly doesn't lead up to the tragedy gently by painting a picture of pre-war paradise. Maybe that's what makes reading Testament of Youth such a personal experience.

I'm up to December 1915. Vera is nursing in London & about to go on leave to meet Roland in Brighton but she won't be meeting him because he dies of wounds just before he was due to go on leave. I don't know when Vera wrote this poem, but I think it would have been very soon after Roland's death, the feelings are so raw.

Perhaps -
(To R.A.L. died of wounds in France,
December 23rd, 1915)

Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel once more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of You.

Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet
Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,
And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,
Though You have passed away.

Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,
And crimson roses once again be fair,
And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,
Although You are not there.

Perhaps some day I shall not shrink in pain
To see the passing of the dying year,
And listen to Christmas songs again,
Although You cannot hear.

But though kind Time may many joys renew,
There is one greatest joy I shall not know
Again, because my heart for loss of You
Was broken, long ago.