The Haunted Hotel & other stories - Wilkie Collins

I can’t stop reading Wilkie Collins! I read three novellas a couple of weeks ago & went straight on to another selection of his short stories. This collection is published by Wordsworth Editions, a terrific company specialising in the classics at incredibly reasonable prices. I’m especially fond of their series of horror & ghost stories, Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural. I love a good ghost story & Wordsworth have reprinted many once popular authors like May Sinclair, Amelia Edwards, D K Broster & Louisa Baldwin in this series as well as better known authors like Elizabeth Gaskell, Edith Wharton, Arthur Conan Doyle & Wilkie Collins.

This volume contains The Haunted Hotel which I’ve already read, as well as a range of ghost stories from different periods of his career. Blow up with the brig! was one of his earliest published stories. It‘s a suspenseful tale that has a scene where a young man waits as a candle burns down to set off an explosion that will kill him & destroy the ship he’s trapped on, that would not be out of place in a modern thriller. The Dream Woman is a story that reminded me of Thomas Hardy’s tales of fate & destiny. A man has a dream of a woman attacking him with a knife. He describes the dream to his mother who superstitiously writes it down in minute detail. Later, he meets a woman very much like the woman of his dream but he ignores his mother’s warnings & marries her with terrible results.  

The Dead Hand is a truly creepy story of a young man who spends a night in an inn with a dead man. It’s race day & he’s left it too late to get a bed. He arrives at a dingy tavern & the landlord offers him a very quiet room mate indeed. Collins describes the growing unease of the young man as his candle slowly burns down & he realises that he will soon be in the dark with the corpse. Just as darkness is about to descend, he sees the hand of the man slowly move to the edge of the bed & fall over the side.  

The Devil’s Spectacles is a story of a mysterious pair of spectacles that give the wearer the ability to see the true thoughts of anyone he looks at. This story is about a young man, Alfred, who is torn between two women & when he is given the spectacles by a dying man, he can’t resist trying them out on the women in his life. The previous owner of the spectacles was a villainous old man, Septimus Notman, disliked by everyone, who tells Alfred a horrible story of cannibalism & an encounter with the Devil as he lays dying. He gives the spectacles to Alfred who accepts them reluctantly but can’t resist the temptation to try them out. I like the humorous touches in this story although some parts of it are shocking. Alfred cleans the glasses thoroughly before putting them on as the old man had been dirty & he’s a fastidious young man. Alfred hears some truly catty comments while wearing the spectacles, not only from the two girls he’s involved with but also from his mother who is trying to encourage him to marry her niece. The Devil, when he appears to Septimus in the icy wastes of the Arctic, is quite a humorous fellow,

A human being who elevates himself, and rises higher and higher to his immortal destiny, is a creature I hate. He gets above me, even in his earthly lifetime. But you have dropped – you dear good fellow – to the level of a famished wolf. You have gobbled up your dead companion; and if you ever had such a thing as a soul – ha, Septimus! – it parted company with you at the first morsel you tasted of the Boatswain’s mate. Do you think I’ll leave such a prime specimen of the Animal Man as you are, deserted at the North Pole?

Wilkie Collins certainly knew how to tell a good story. I’ve borrowed another collection of his stories from work & I’ve been dipping into the Cambridge Companion to Wilkie Collins as well. I’m also tempted to get hold of his novel, Hide & Seek, after reading this review of it over at Desperate Reader. His fascination with the weird & the mysterious is certainly a fascination I share, especially when the stories are set in the Victorian period & are as good as the stories in this collection.

I love this portrait of Wilkie Collins by Rudolph Lehmann. I think it shows the humour & good nature that i think were among his best qualities. I'm certainly glad he wrote so much & there's still much to discover.

Something Fresh - P G Wodehouse

Something Fresh is the first in the Blandings series. The main characters in this series are Lord Emsworth, the most absent-minded peer in the kingdom & his dim son, the Hon Freddie Threepwood. Lord Emsworth is a hilarious character. He can’t hold the thread of a conversation longer than a couple of seconds. When he visits his rich American friend, Mr J Preston Peters, he absent-mindedly puts a priceless Egyptian scarab into his pocket & sets off a plot filled with imposters, dyspepsia, romance & superior servants.

Mr Peters’s daughter, Aline, is engaged to the Hon Freddie, more to please her father than because she’s in love. Freddie is concerned that a dancer he once sent poetry & love letters to will sue him for breach of promise because he can’t remember whether or not he ever proposed to her. He would have had to propose to her in writing because he never actually met her, he just loved her from afar. This dancer, Joan Valentine, is now an impoverished writer of magazine love stories, who lives in the same building as another writer, Ashe Marson. Ashe writes adventure stories starring Gridley Quayle, Investigator (the Hon Freddie’s favourite literary hero) & is in a rut & depressed about his future.

Freddie hires a shady character, R Jones, to track down Joan & buy back his love letters. Jones finds Joan, discovers that she has no idea who Freddie is & didn’t keep his letters, but he decides to string Freddie along & make some money out of him by telling him that Joan is demanding huge amounts of money for her silence. When Mr Peters discovers the theft of his scarab & then discovers that Lord Emsworth is proudly displaying it in his private museum at Blandings Castle, his already bad temper & terrible digestion threaten to explode. He doesn’t want to upset the wedding plans of Aline & Freddie & cause a scandal, so he decides to steal the scarab back while on a visit to Blandings. Ashe Marson answers a newspaper ad,

WANTED: Young Man of Good Appearance, who is poor and reckless, to undertake delicate and dangerous enterprise. Good pay for the right man. Apply between the hours of ten and twelve at offices of Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole, 3, Denvers Street, Strand.

and finds himself engaged to act as Mr Peters’s valet & steal the scarab. The reward is a thousand pounds. Aline Peters happens to be an old schoolfriend of Joan’s, & when Joan hears about the reward, she proposes to go along to Blandings as Aline’s maid & steal the scarab. The visit to Blandings is full of comic scenes & misunderstandings. Ashe & Joan find themselves thrown together in their new roles as imposters & rivals for the reward. Joan, who has done many different jobs in her short life, initiates Ashe into the mysterious hierarchy of the Servant’s Hall presided over by the butler, Beach, a man who suffers from a Weak Stomach, Swollen Joints & an Ingrowing Toe Nail.

Above stairs, Lord Emsworth is protected from the worst of his follies by his efficient secretary, Baxter, who is suspicious of Ashe & decides to guard the scarab by staying up all night in the museum. Even Baxter can’t prevent the scarab disappearing from the museum, though, & he sets himself to find the thief. Freddie, meanwhile, causes a scene by tripping over his Aunt’s cat, Muriel, as he’s coming downstairs & is confined to bed with the latest Gridley Quayle adventure to amuse him. All is resolved in the final chapters. The lovers find their true mates & Lord Emsworth decides to allow Freddie to return to his life in London as long as tries to stay out of trouble.

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to discover Wodehouse. This is the third book I’ve read (after The Inimitable Jeeves & Joy in the Morning which I listened to on audio) & I loved it. It’s full of mad characters & humour. Lord Emsworth is a wonderful character. I’m glad there are lots more Blandings novels, I think I’ll enjoy them as much as Jeeves & Bertie. I’ve also bought the complete Jeeves & Wooster TV series with Hugh Laurie & Stephen Fry. It was on special at Amazon for a ridiculous $22 including postage so I could hardly resist, could I? It’s exciting to find a new author & to know that there are dozens of books ahead to read & enjoy.

Last week's arrivals

I had a bumper week last week with some lovely books arriving on the doorstep. It looks as though I've broken my no book buying vow with a vengeance, but it's actually not as extravagant as it looks. All but the last book in the pile were bargains from my favourite remainders bookseller, Clouston & Hall in Canberra.

The first five books are part of the Turnham Malpas series of village novels by Rebecca Shaw. They were packaged as a  boxset at a fraction of the price they would have been individually - they worked out to about $6 a book. I believe this series is a little like a modern version of Miss Read. I've taken a chance on buying five at once, has anyone read them?

Devoted Ladies & The Rising Tide by Molly Keane - Several members of my online book group have read & enjoyed Molly Keane recently & these are lovely Virago editions.

Body Parts by Hermione Lee - I've read this book of literary essays & reviews twice already but I love Hermione Lee's writing & I didn't own it. It was remaindered so I had to have it, didn't I? There are essays here on Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, May Sinclair, Penelope Fitzgerald & Rosamond Lehmann. Just wonderful.


The Last White Rose by Desmond Seward - I've read a lot about the Tudors but I'm always eager to read a book taking a different angle on that most written-about family. Desmond Seward has written many books on medieval history. My favourite is The Wars of the Roses where he looks at that conflict through the lives of five men & women involved in it. This new book is a sequel to The Wars of the Roses looking at the lives of the Pole family. The Poles & de la Poles were a Yorkist family who were involved in many of the rebellions against the Tudors in the reigns of Henry VII & Henry VIII. I'm looking forward to reading about their lives in more detail.

Confession over, now I just have to find time to read them all.

Royal mistresses - Madame de Pompadour & Mrs Howard

I’ve been reading about royal mistresses this week. I’ve just finished reading Nancy Mitford’s biography of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV & I’m half way through listening to the audio book of Tracy Borman’s biography of Henrietta Howard, mistress of George II. Both women lived in the 18th century, a period I’ve never been terribly interested in, but recently I’ve been reading more about it. I’ve always been more attracted to the Tudor & Victorian periods. Then, I became interested in Richard III so that led me back a little through the medieval period. Then the Anglo-Saxons took my fancy & my love of early 20th century fiction led to an interest in the history of the period & the World Wars. So, it was inevitable that I would get to the 18th century sooner or later.

I’ve dabbled in the 18th century before with Amanda Foreman’s Georgiana, Flora Fraser’s Princesses & Stella Tillyard’s Aristocrats, all biographies of fascinating women. There are also big gaps in my knowledge of French history. Apart from the Revolutionary period & the 16th century, I really only know about French history when it impinged on English history. So, Nancy Mitford’s witty, elegantly written biography was a good place to start.

Madame de Pompadour’s full name was Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Madame Le Normant d’Etioles, Marquise-Duchesse de Pompadour, known to her family as Reinette. I’ll refer to her as Madame, I think! Born into a loving bourgeois family, Madame made an early marriage to Monsieur d’Etioles but she always had great ambitions. Her charm & beauty had captivated everyone she met. She visited a fortune teller when she was nine & was told she would be the mistress of a king & she was called Reinette (little queen) after this. She was an excellent amateur actress, a skill she put to good use in later years when she put on theatrical performances to amuse the King at Court. She was lovely without being truly beautiful. None of the many portraits by artists such as Boucher are said to be very like her. Mitford quotes some descriptions of Madame by her contemporaries, such as Dufort de Cheverny,

Not a man alive but would have had her for his mistress if he could. Tall, though not too tall; beautiful figure; round face with regular features; wonderful complexion, hands and arms; eyes not so very big, but the brightest, wittiest and most sparkling I ever saw. Everything about her was rounded, including all her gestures. She absolutely extinguished all the other women at Court, although some were very beautiful.

It was almost unheard of for a bourgeoise to become the King’s mistress & her ascendency caused much gossip & jealousy. Although any woman would have caused just as much gossip as gossip was almost the only thing that kept the courtiers from dying of boredom. Madame was a great patron of the arts. She was responsible for the Sevres china factory’s success & was a great admirer of writers such as Voltaire who she helped with her friendship & contacts at Court. She was a great gardener & when the King built the Petit Trianon for them to retire to, Madame was responsible for the design of the gardens. She was sincerely devoted to Louis & he to her, although his devotion didn’t prevent him sleeping with as many other women as he fancied. Madame became quite influential politically as well. The King & his chief ministers would meet in her apartments & she was very involved in the peace negotiations during the Seven Years War.

Louis remained devoted to Madame for nearly twenty years. Her poor health was the only blot on her happiness & she died of a lung complaint at the age of 43. Louis was so attached to Madame that he allowed her to die at Versailles (it was the custom that only members of the royal family were permitted to die there). Her body was immediately removed after her death to a chapel at the Hotel des Reservoirs nearby. The King watched the cortege on its journey to Paris from a balcony of the palace,

He watched the Marquise as she went back up the long Avenue de Paris; in the bitter wind he stood there without coat or hat until she was out of sight. Then he turned away, tears pouring down his cheeks. “That is the only tribute I can pay her.”

In some ways, Henrietta Howard’s story is similar to Madame de Pompadour’s. Henrietta was born into a noble, but impoverished family. After her father’s death in a duel & her mother’s death when Henrietta was just 12, she had to rely on the kindness of relatives. She made an early, disastrous marriage to a distant relation, Charles Howard. He was a drunken womaniser who abused his wife physically & mentally. They were not well-off as Charles gambled & drank away what money they had, mostly Henrietta’s allowance. Henrietta’s only joy in the years of her marriage was her son, Henry. The Howard’s precarious financial situation led to them living with relations until their welcome wore out & then in a succession of dingy lodging houses.

Then, Henrietta had the idea of selling everything they had & going to the Hanoverian Court at Herrenhausen in Germany. The last of the Stuart monarchs, Queen Anne, was ailing & her heir was her cousin, Dowager Electress Sophia of Hanover & her son, the Elector George Louis. Henrietta thought it might be possible to ingratiate herself with the Hanoverians that would result in a position at the English Court when they succeeded Queen Anne on the English throne. Henrietta was an attractive young woman, resourceful, intelligent & witty. She was also discreet & modest. Sophia was delighted with her as was her grandson, George Augustus & his wife, Caroline.

Sophia died just two months before Queen Anne so it was George Louis who became George I of Great Britain. Fortunately for Henrietta, the new Princess of Wales, Caroline, honoured a promise to find her a position at Court & Henrietta became one of the Princess’s Women of the Bedchamber. Here was the longed for financial security at last. Henrietta was separated by Charles by this time, made easier by the fact that he was in King George’s Household & the King & Prince of Wales loathed each other & kept very separate Courts. She was constantly afraid of Charles’s temper though & worried that he would create a scandal that would harm her position. She was also devastated that He would not allow her to see young Henry, who was growing up to despise his mother.

Several years after the Hanoverians arrived in England, Henrietta became the mistress of the Prince of Wales. Prince George wasn’t a very prepossessing character, unattractive physically with his stoutness & bulging eyes, he had a choleric temper & was an incredibly boring conversationalist. He was also still very much in love with his wife & retired to bed with her at every opportunity, much to the laughter of his courtiers. George felt he must have a mistress. It was expected of a Prince & he was tired of people saying that he was dominated by his wife. It was certainly no love match but it did give Henrietta a measure of influence & she used this to further the careers of her friends, including the writers, John Gay & Alexander Pope.

I’m just at the halfway mark of this fascinating book & George has paid Henrietta off very generously with enough money, furniture & jewels to buy & furnish her own house at Twickenham. George was notoriously miserly so this was a magnificent gesture & he tied the gift up legally so that Charles couldn’t get his hands on any of it – vitally important in this period when everything a woman possessed belonged to her husband. Henrietta is looking forward to leaving Court & living quietly in the country but I can’t help thinking Charles is destined to make trouble for her. I’m looking forward to the rest of Henrietta’s story.

Abby's Sunday afternoon

I have to share these photos of Abby. On warm afternoons, she likes to sleep under the back stairs where she can catch any passing cool breezes. It’s a concrete floor & I bought her a bed to lie on after I cleared out all the junk (like the old Venetian blinds) that she liked to sleep on. This morning it was such a lovely day that I took the striped cover off to wash & left the foam insert on the back porch to air in the sunshine.

Even without the comfy cover & the attached lambs wool pillow, this is still the comfiest bed in the house (when my lap isn’t available).

Early Spring

It's a gorgeous early spring day in Melbourne today. I'm not a football fan so the horror of a draw in yesterday's Grand Final between Collingwood & St Kilda has had no effect on me at all. Except that I'm not looking forward to another week of hype leading up to next Saturday's replay! I was out early this morning hanging out washing & watching Abby stalk the magpie that's taken up residence in the garden. I've been wondering if the bird is an omen for the football as Collingwood are known as the Magpies but I can't work out what sort of omen it is. Certainly not an omen for a draw anyway. I took a few photos while I was out in the garden, mostly of plants I planted in autumn &, thanks to our lovely wet winter, they're all doing well. The white daphne above, I wish you could smell the glorious fragrance.

The hebe along the side fence.

The daisies.

All the lavenders I planted back in March/April have thrived. I suppose they're pretty hard to kill but I'm still surprised when they survive.

And here's Abby in one of her favourite spots when the sun is gentle rather than scorching. Just outside the back door, peeking over the doorstep.

I've done some baking too. A date & walnut loaf & some choc chip muffins to take in to work tomorrow. The muffins are a great recipe that I can mix up & put in the muffin trays today, keep in the fridge overnight & bake at work tomorrow in time for morning tea. Chocolate is always appreciated on a Monday morning & if people are feeling the need for something less decadent, they can have a slice of the date & walnut loaf.

Have a lovely Sunday, whatever you're doing.

The Proper Place - O Douglas

The Proper Place is the second novel I’ve read this year by O Douglas. The first was Pink Sugar which I’ve reviewed here. Both books have been reprinted by Greyladies, a publishing house based in Edinburgh who specialise in between the wars middlebrow novels. “Between the wars” & “middlebrow” are two of my favourite adjectives so I was very excited to discover Greyladies about a year ago. O Douglas was the pseudonym of Anna Buchan, sister of John Buchan of 39 Steps fame. Her books couldn’t be more different from her brother’s adventurous spy thrillers. O Douglas writes of middle class women living quiet, domestic lives in small towns & villages. But, those of us who love middlebrow fiction know how much drama can lurk beneath the respectable facade of village life. The books I’ve read so far have been set in Scotland & Douglas obviously has a great love for the Scottish countryside.

In The Proper Place, Lady Jane Rutherfurd, her daughter Nicole & niece Barbara, have to leave their ancestral family home in the Borders. The book is set just after the Great War, & the feeling of melancholy, grief & loss is obvious in many of the characters who have lost loved ones. The Rutherfurds lost two sons in the War & Lady Jane’s husband died not long after, leaving her without the income she needs to stay on at Rutherfurds. Nicole & Barbara couldn’t be more different in outlook & temperament. Nicole is enthusiastic, interested in everyone & everything. She is heartbroken about moving but puts her mind to the task of finding a new home. Barbara, who has lived with the Rutherfurds since she was a child, resents the move & is determined to stay true to her friends & the home she loves. She’s a prickly character, not as immediately lovable as Nicole & maybe she’s always felt a little overshadowed by Nicole’s sunny nature & good looks.

Rutherfurds is sold to the Jacksons, a nouveau riche family from Glasgow. Mrs Jackson is a wonderful character. Bold, honest, garrulous, with absolutely no dress sense, she doesn’t really want a country seat. But, her husband thinks it’s the next stage of their rise in prosperity. Mrs Jackson is very happy in her Glasgow suburb but she decides to throw herself into county life when the move to Rutherfurds is inevitable.

Nicole eventually finds a house in a seaside town in Fife. Called the Harbour House, it’s right on the quay, in sight & smell of the fishing boats & squawking seagulls. The house itself is wonderful, I loved the descriptions of the rooms & the way the Rutherfurds blend some of their own furniture & possessions to make themselves a new home. Nicole throws herself into this new life, making friends of the neighbours & refusing to let her regret for her old home blight her life. Barbara is harder to reconcile. She yearns after her old friends & finds acquaintances among the local county families.

The new neighbours in Kirkmeikle are an interesting lot. Miss Symington, a wealthy spinster, living in a comfortless house & living only for cold duty. Her little nephew, Alistair, who becomes friends with Nicole & leads to her friendship with Simon Beckett, a young man who has returned from an expedition to Everest & is writing a book about his experiences. Mr Lambert, the minister & his wife who loves reading. Mrs Heggie, a kind, outgoing, inquisitive woman with a sulky daughter, & the Bucklers, who have returned to Scotland after 30 years in India.

Meanwhile, Mrs Jackson is nervously finding her feet among the gentry & taking on some of the duties that Lady Jane used to perform. There are some wonderful scenes when she decides to invite Nicole to visit & give a dinner party & dance in her honour. She has an ulterior motive because she wants Nicole to marry her son, Andrew. Nicole catches a chill & Barbara takes her place with unintended consequences for Barbara, Andrew & Mrs Jackson.

This was such a readable book. It reminded me of the qualities I love in Dorothy Whipple’s books. Unputdownable & with characters I care about. I loved the feeling of gentle melancholy that is evident in so many books of that post-war period. As well as the grief there's also a quality of stoicism in these women. So many men gone & the women left behind to get on with living & they do get on with living & find some compensations in the changes that life brings. Greyladies also publishes Eliza For Common by O Douglas & I can’t wait to get my hands on that. Douglas wrote quite a few novels according to the list inside my copy of The Proper Place & I hope Greyladies keep reprinting them.