a gallimaufry

a reminder: Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week (1–7 July 2019)

Just popping back from marking exams and cramming as much of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s work as possible into my brain to remind you that in eight days Sylvia Townsend Warner reading week begins. So dust down your copies and get reading! If you’re looking for inspiration, there is a list of her work here... and the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society has a fascinating site here. Have fun!

Corvus: A Life with Birds, by Esther Woolfson

It began when Esther Woolfson settled down in Aberdeen with her family. Despite never having kept birds before, she was asked if she would take on some doves, looking for a good home. Fortunately, there was a coal-shed which the family swiftly repurposed as a dove-cot or doo’cot. Then one of her daughters asked for a pet bird and Bardie the cockatiel came to live with them.

Then word got round.

People started bringing injured wild birds and abandoned nestlings to the Woolfson house. The pet-shop lady gave them a parrot with French moult whom she could not sell. Another parrot and some canaries were given to them by people who could no longer keep them, as was Max, a sweary starling. Woolfson bought a book called Feeding Cage Birds: A Manual of Diet for Aviculture by Kenton C. and Alice Marie Lint, and so began her life with birds.

The two birds who dominate this book are both corvids, of the crow family. One spring the bird-requesting daughter and her friends found a fledgling rook near their Guide camp. The little bird had fallen from her nest, or been pushed out, or had tried to fly and got lost. Of course, they brought her to Woolfson. Unlike previous wild birds, she thrived and received the fantastically inappropriate name of Chicken (short for Madame Chickeboumskaya). Spike, another fledgeling, fell from a nest near Woolfson’s home. He was a magpie, who learnt to talk a little (‘Spike, Spikey. Hello! Spikey? SPIKE!’ and ‘Bugger off!’ being typical remarks). Spike and Chicken became house birds, hopping about, perching on people’s knees and stuffing their food in holes in walls, under carpets and even in trouser turn-ups. The Woolfson home was soon crammed with cages, sprinkled with poo and liable to odd whiffs from food stashed in unexpected places, yet the humans adapted with grace to their fellow residents’ eccentricities and valued them as they should.

(Photograph of Esther Woolfson and Chicken by Simon Chubb; found here)

Feeding Cage Birds only gets Woolfson so far; soon she is reading about avian evolution and physiology, natural history and culture, bird habits and bird reputations, and she shares the fruits of her reading in Corvus, balancing anecdote with information, enthusiasm with consideration. However, it is the quality of her observation of her corvid companions and her thoughtfulness about human and bird relationships which made this book special in my eyes.

Often, as I sit at my desk, the sounds behind me are of tearing newspaper, of beak and claw as Chicken carries out some elaborate ritual of domestic rearrangement. It may be early morning and Chicken still at breakfast, the consummate corvid process of eating and hiding, the sound of her beak closing on fragments of bread and butter alternating with the rustle and rip of the paper that carpets the floor of her house, as she hides things. I don’t know her criteria for choosing what’s to be hidden, whether, as a child might, she’s keeping the best bit until last, or if she’s storing the dull, butterless portions to be dealt with when the rest is gone, or the food runs out [..] Since I am the only person with her, I assume she is hiding it from me. [...]

When it comes to caching, nowhere, or rather no one, is sacred. Chicken is on the floor. I am eating lunch. I give her a flake of poached salmon from my plate. She takes it with alacrity and immediately begins to cache it. Her choice of site, were I a habitual cacher, would not be my own. Thrusting her beak under the hem of my jeans, she wedges the fish between the laces of my boots. I do nothing, for it will not, I know, be there for long. She hovers for a moment, then retrieves it. She carries it into the hall and, since I haven’t yet noticed the odour of rotting salmon, I have to assume that it was eaten.

Woolfson records her birds’ actions but she wants to understand them too and she instinctively wants to ascribe meaning to them. Is Chicken thinking when she is caching food? What then are her criteria for good hiding places? And how can Woolfson write about this without falling into anthropomorphism?

[...] trying to understand, for humans, is only possible through the sole means we have, the filter of ourselves and our ideas, our prejudices and often irrational beliefs. The lines we draw between sentiment and rigour are fine indeed.

For me, she succeeds in balancing between sentiment and rigour perfectly; her book charms and educates in equal measure. And it reminds us that we should cherish the urban wildlife around us and accommodate ourselves to it, rather than destroying its habitats and decrying its less salubrious behaviours.

Oh, and it has some very nice illustrations by Helen Macdonald, who went on to write H is for Hawk.

Castle Dor, by Daphne Du Maurier and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

Only very belatedly did I discover that this week has been Daphne Du Maurier Reading Week, hosted by heavenali, so this, my contribution, is rushed. As it happens the last time I was in the UK I acquired a second-hand copy of Castle Dor; obviously it was destined for this moment. Appropriate, really, since the novel concerns a sort of predestination in the guise of the past replaying itself.

Castle Dor is set in Cornwall in the 1860s; events are set in motion when Linnet Lewarne, the beautiful young wife of a publican, first claps eyes on Amyot Trestane, a Breton sailor saved from a beating by a French notary. This notary, Ledru, has come to Cornwall seeking the ‘true’ locations of events in the story of Tristan and Iseult. With the local physician, Dr Carfax, he becomes convinced that in Castle Dor and its surroundings he has succeeded. But Carfax is increasingly concerned about the bond between Amyot and Linnet. Could the ancient story of Tristan and Iseult be repeating itself through them? And if so, can disaster be averted?

Like The House on the Strand, published eight years later, Castle Dor explores how the past affects the present, and how it is stored up in places. In The House on the Strand, Dick accesses the past by means of a drug, but it only transports his mind and not his body. If he takes the drug in an old farmhouse, he will witness what happened in that farmhouse. It is the place that holds the history. Amyot and Iseult, on the other hand, do not time-travel. They are possessed at certain moments by powers beyond themselves: they speak or even appear different to their normal selves but remain unconscious of the drama they are re-enacting. But their actions are governed by place and what happened in that place centuries before: were they not in this particular part of Cornwall, their behaviour would be quite different.

The genesis of the book is slightly unusual: it was started by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and after his death his daughter gave the half-finished manuscript to Daphne Du Maurier to complete. I should love to know how much of the published book is his work and how much hers; certainly it hangs seamlessly together and is perfectly paced. Although it isn’t one of her best-known works it is really very good with Du Maurier’s trademark atmospheric setting, convincing characterisation and whiff of the supernatural (how much of a trademark of Quiller-Couch’s anything I cannot say since I’ve never read anything else by him).

some short reviews

Time has passed and I haven’t written here.

I’ve been busy gardening...

...collecting some odd eggs from the hens...

...releasing a frog back into the wild (don’t be like Some People in my family and bring them home, leave frogs be where you find them)...

...attending to the whims of cats...

...and actually working too.

I have also been reading! But since my reviewing energies are all focused on preparing something for Shiny New Books, I thought I’d just mention some other books briefly here.

• Bath Tangle, by Georgette Heyer – If Heyer ever wrote an anti-Heyer novel, this is it. Her hero is so atrocious that you are simply begging the heroine not to marry him, quite opposite from the usual dynamic. He shares characteristics with some of her other, more likeable, heroes, but here we see only the dark side of them. Arrogant, rude, snobbish, bullying and guilty of sexual assault if not worse (his crime is alluded to in rather vague terms), Rotherham has not one redeeming feature and after reading this I doubt you will be able to look at Avon, Beaumaris and Alistair quite so indulgently ever again.
  (Though I did always worry about Avon and Léonie, even as a teenager that struck me as rather a dodgy relationship...)
• The Immaterial Murder Case, by Julian Symons – A rather brittle but engaging spin on the detective novel which pokes fun at the art establishment. Immaterialism is an art movement that believes in the value of what is not there, so the subject of a painting is what is omitted from it. During the opening of an exhibition of Immaterial art Stephen Follett, a universally loathed art critic, is found murdered.
  The case is narrated in turn by one of the suspects, a fairly dreadful amateur detective and a professional detective, somewhat in the manner of the multiple narratives of The Moonstone. The comedy is occasionally a little heavy-handed but I enjoyed Immaterialism a lot.
• Waiting for Willa, by Dorothy Eden – I started this hoping for something Mary-Stewartesque and it had a good premise: Grace receives a letter from her cousin Willa, who now lives in Stockholm, which is signed with their childhood code for ‘help’. When she arrives in Sweden, Willa has vanished.
  Overlooking the rather leaden writing and uninspired characterisation I read on but the dénouement was disappointing and basically everyone was an idiot. The only surprise was Grace’s callous victim-blaming at the end. Eden seems to have been very popular so perhaps this is not representative of her work?
• The White Witch, by Elizabeth Goudge – I read this over quite a long time as it has a slow pace and bears being put down and picked up again well. It’s a historical novel set during the English Civil War, and explores how a group of characters are tested by the conflict: Robert Haslewood, the squire; Froniga, his cousin and the white witch of the title; and Francis, a nobleman masquerading as an artist in order to spy for the Royalists.
  Goudge shows how courage on the battlefield is only one sort of courage, and that those without much power – children, women, gypsies, the elderly – are no less brave than the rich men who are prepared to die for their ideals. It was very soothing while Brexit madness was whirling about and a helpful antidote to cynicism.
• Gingerbread, by Helen Oyeyemi – As ever Oyeyemi’s work defies expectations, categorisations, and cleverly seduces you into accepting whatever she throws at you. A country that may or may not exist? Gingerbread that tastes like revenge? A childhood friend who might be secretly influencing every step of your life?
  I can’t even begin to summarise this novel and am still reeling from finishing it last night, it’s rich, playful and mysterious to the end.
• The Diaries of Sylvia Warner, edited by Claire Harman – I am slowly reading these for Sylvia Townsend Warner week and they are wonderful.

Friday evening and a glass of wine are calling. Happy weekend everyone! Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them?

Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week (1–7 July 2019)

 

(Portrait of Sylvia Townsend Warner, undated, from here)

In response to overwhelming popular demand (ahem!), I’d like to invite you to celebrate the life and works of Sylvia Townsend Warner with me this summer! As far as I know, there has been only one Sylvia Townsend Warner reading week, which took place in March 2015, so I hope I am not treading on any toes here. And I hope you’ll take part!

Why read Sylvia Townsend Warner? Well, let Sarah Waters persuade you, writing in the Guardian: 

When Sylvia Townsend Warner died in 1978, she left behind her a body of work of exceptional richness and variety. In a career that had lasted just over half a century, she had been a talented musicologist, an admired poet, diarist and letter-writer, a political journalist, an occasional translator and biographer, a prolific short-story writer, and the author of seven remarkable novels, of which Lolly Willowes was the first. The intelligence of her writing has sometimes resulted in her fiction being misunderstood as difficult, and has perhaps lost her readers; she's certainly one of the most shamefully under-read great British authors of the past 100 years.

Or perhaps Maud Ellmann, writing in The History of British Women’s Writing 1920–1945 Volume 8:

Sylvia Townsend Warner stands alongside Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen as one of the finest British fiction writers of her century, and she also achieved distinction as a poet. [...] To put it bluntly, Sylvia Townsend Warner is much too good to miss.

Townsend Warner’s writing is witty, occasionally malicious, often fanciful to the point of magical realism, lyrical and melancholy. She writes about middle-aged spinsters, failing missionaries and abandoned wives who suddenly cast aside their dull or repressed lives and embark on a transformative adventure. The settings of her novels range from a fourteenth-century Norfolk convent to seventeenth-century Spain to a nineteenth-century volcanic island. In her collection The Kingdoms of Elfin she writes about fairyland in a typically ironic manner; in The Cat’s Cradle Book about cats. Her subjects are so varied it’s possible to love one novel and feel unmoved by another. Ellmann points out that although not ‘modernist’, Townsend Warner experiments continually with form and content, playing with the reader’s expectations. It is sometimes hard to know what to think of her work as she can be unsettling, twitching aside the curtain of dry humour to reveal profound sadness or suffering.

What should you read? Well, as you can see she had a wide range: poetry, novels, short stories, diaries, letters and biography; there’s even a book about Somerset if you enjoy travel writing. You can find a full bibliography (and information about her life, and resources) at the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society but here is a list of what I believe is currently in print (though a few are surprisingly expensive, I think they must be print on demand) and their original publication dates:

Lolly Willowes (1926) (reviewed here by litlove)

Mr Fortune’s Maggot (1927; reissued by the NYRB with a novella under the title Mr Fortune)

The True Heart (1929) (reviewed here on Stuck in a Book)

Summer Will Show (1936)

After the Death of Don Juan (1937) 

The Corner that Held Them (1948) (reviewed here on Vulpes Libris)

The Flint Anchor (1954; Kindle only)

Winter in the Air and Other Stories (1955) 

A Stranger with a Bag and Other Stories (1966) 

Kingdoms of Elfin (1977)

Scenes of Childhood and Other Stories (1981)

Selected Stories (1988) (reviewed here on Desperate Reader)

The Music at Long Verney (2001)

 

Voices from Fairyland: The Fantastical Poems of Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew and Sylvia Townsend Warner (2008)

 

Letters (1982; Kindle only)

The Element of Lavishness: The Letters of William Maxwell and Sylvia Townsend Warner (2001)

The Akeing Heart: Letters between Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland and Elizabeth Wade White (2013)

So come on and join in! If you haven’t tried her work before, now is the time. All you need to do is read something by Sylvia Townsend Warner and then write about it during the first week of July. Leave a comment here or on one of my STW posts that week with a link to your post – it can be anywhere, a blog, faceBook, GoodReads – or even write your review in a comment if you like! Or if you’d like to write a guest post here, let me know.

 

the state of me

Today the sun is shining, an afternoon’s training on evaluating students’ speaking and writing skills has been cancelled and we are not exiting the EU with no deal. Reasons to be cheerful!

Another reason to be cheerful: my review of Forms of Enchantment, Marina Warner’s collection of essays on art and artists, is up at Shiny New Books.

Another reason to be cheerful: the world is full of wonderful books! Worried by the prospect of never again being able to buy a British book after Brexit, I have been stockpiling. A little reckless, considering how many unread books I already have, but no half-measures in a crisis...

First: a collection of fairy tales and fairy-tale poems by Theodora Goss. Confession: I’ve already read this. Although I like her novels, I believe she’s a better short-story writer (at the moment, anyway). I did not think that everything in this collection was great but I enjoyed everything, especially ‘Blanchefleur’, a new version of ‘The White Cat’, and ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, which adds a lovely twist to Oscar Wilde’s story (as a child I disliked Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales and found them mawkish, perhaps I should revisit them).

Next: Helen Oyeyemi’s latest novel, Gingerbread. A novel about a gingerbread-maker, a mysterious long-lost friend, a country that may not exist, by one of the best British writers working today, I can’t wait to start on this. (But I still have about eleventy billion pages of Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree to read, not that this is a chore, plus something for SNB...)

Then, well, this is all Hayley’s fault. She wrote a review of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s short stories so beguiling that I had to order a copy immediately. And then I accidentally bid on a lot of STW books plus Valentine Ackland’s autobiography, For Sylvia (Ackland was a poet and the lover of STW), and won! Tthe books are the novel The Corner that Held Them, and a collection of short stories called The Innocent and the Guilty.) On a roll, I then bought STW’s diaries, edited by Claire Harman. I suspect the only justification for this will be a STW week. Is there a STW week?

Finally, although not strictly stockpiling as I bought these locally in the kringwinkel or recycling shop:

(Bandits, by Elmore Leonard; Maigret and the Madwoman, by Georges Simenon; The Best Man to Die, by Ruth Rendell; Waiting for Willa, by Dorothy Eden.) I had never heard of Dorothy Eden but who could resist that cover? And it was only 25 cents. According to Wikipedia she was born in New Zealand and emigrated to Britain. I am assuming she’s going to fill the Mary-Stewart-shaped hole in my life.

I like to have at least a small pile of detective novels to hand for times when I am ill or unhappy. Nothing like murder to cheer you up I suppose.

But even while I’m writing this, I am still obsessing over Brexit. Crossing my fingers that the WA is voted down (again) today and that MPs can find a way forward on Monday. Now I am going to take advantage of the nice weather and do some gardening, and then I’m going to work on a rather limp short story I am writing. Have a happy weekend, everyone! What are you reading at the moment?

(Nala, demonstrating how to cope with British politics)

brexit: crunch time...

Yesterday, I was like this:

(John William Waterhouse, Isabella and the Pot of Basil (1907, oil on canvas); found here; this used to belong to Rod Stewart, should you be interested)

But today, I am like this:

(Marc Chagall, Final model for the wall painting at the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York: The Triumph of Music (detail), 1966, tempera, gouache and collage on paper mounted on Korean paper, 109 × 91.5 cm. Private collection)

Thank all the powers that be: the EU has thrown the UK a lifeline over Brexit. Next Friday will not bring the Apocalypse.

The pressure remains on Britain to find an acceptable solution, as is entirely right. But Theresa May’s policy of scaring MPs into voting for her deal however much they disliked it has been de-fanged, the gaming is over and the imminent possibility of No Deal – in which direction I fear May was turning, perhaps I do her a disservice – has been removed.

However, do not throw away your stockpiled tins of beans and loo paper quite yet. It is now up to the British Commons to take advantage of this lifeline. If they reject May’s deal a third time next week, they must take control of the process themselves and seek compromises that are acceptable to a majority of MPs. They must develop a plan, agree to EU elections and negotiate a longer extension to Article 50. Otherwise it is No Deal or revocation – and while I would be overjoyed at revocation it can hardly be characterised as a compromise which would find the support of a majority at the moment.

Therefore, I have written to my MP begging him to support the amendment proposed by Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn, Nick Boles and other MPs, which would make it possible for MPs to take over where the government has clearly failed. This is only the first step out of the impasse but I genuinely fear that without it the future for Britain looks dire.

British readers, I urge you, if you agree with me, to write to your MP too. Here is a list of MPs’ contact details, and here is how you can find out who your MP is, if you’re not sure. Our MPs have a tough job but it’s important they know our views if they are to represent us. Now is the time to encourage them to act and to support the amendment.

the last week of brexit?

Of all the Big Dramatic Weeks we’ve had so far with Brexit, this next one may prove to be the Biggest and Most Dramatic. Although the logical action, since Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement, No Deal and a Second Referendum have all been rejected, would be to revoke Article 60 as being the last option left, logic packed up her bags and departed Westminster some time ago along with her good friend common sense.

Instead, it seems almost certain that Theresa May will ask for yet another vote on her WA. Will it pass? Perhaps. Some MPs may choose certainty over further uncertainty, however little they may like the WA. The ERG, who are proving themselves yet again to be not the masterly tacticians they would have us believe, may be realising that this could be their last shot at a ‘hard’ Brexit (hence all that unconvincing waffle about Article 62 of the Vienna Convention). Theresa May is dedicating this weekend to persuading the DUP to back her – who knows what she is promising them, I dread to think. But then again, some MPs may be emboldened by the prospect of a lengthy extension (should the EU grant it) and working towards a cross-party compromise that is more widely palatable to reject the deal again. Then again, if May resigns someone even more inflexible or extreme may replace her. Aaargh! So many games being played...

Whether you are for or against Brexit, it is all pretty stressful, or at least so I find it. The stress is augmented by anger at the cynicism of some MPs, the sheer shoddiness and duplicity. Fellow Brits, how are you coping?

Apart from shouting at screens, I am spending quite a lot of time doing cross-stitch. This is an activity I never would have imagined myself doing. But I am making a cushion cover for my daughter. It is of an owl in the night-time. The design is printed on the canvas and all the wool (enough I hope!) was supplied with the kit, so it’s really so easy that even I can do it. Well, almost, I did absent-mindedly use the wrong colour at one point and have to unpick a lot of it. It seems to hit the same spot as doing a jigsaw puzzle and I find it soothing and addictive.

I am also immersed in an enormous epic fantasy novel, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. There was a lot of hype about this and it has a nice cover. It is also 800 pages long. When I am faced with the prospect of Nigel Farage or Jacob Rees-Mogg, I run away to another world in which there are dragons and magic and I know that the Nameless One and his cohorts will ultimately be defeated by the forces of good.

I recommend both of these to anyone in the same boat as me. Bon courage, mes amis! How are you getting on?

Golden Hill, by Francis Spufford

When [the door] opened, and Geertje Van Loon wide in bright silks stood there, with Flora and Anne crowding behind her to see, a myriad of little flames spangling the dark hall, it looked as if a treasure-house had opened, a winter cavern set with jewels, and an air laden with spices flowed out.

First published in 2016, Golden Hill has been at the back of my mind ever since, one of those books that you don’t quite leap to buy or borrow when you see it but have a vague intention of reading. It was the sort of book that I might choose to make up a ‘buy one get one free’ offer. Then just before Christmas I was ordering some books as presents and I saw this and just on the spur of the moment bought it. And now I have read it and if you’ve heard that it is amazing, well then you heard aright.

The basic plot is this: in 1746 a charming Englishman disembarks in New York and hurries straight to a counting-house in Golden Hill Street where he presents an order to cash a thousand pounds – an unimaginably large sum which will put the merchant, Mr Lovell, to great trouble to realise. Suspicious, Mr Lovell strikes a bargain with Mr Smith: if the corroborating documents, which have not yet arrived, reach New York in the next sixty days, Smith shall have his money; if  not, he’ll take him to court.

Mr Smith agrees, establishes himself in lodgings, almost immediately has all his cash stolen, and waits. Of course, he is not what he seems to be. But what does he seem to be?

What I loved most of all about this novel was the way that the story was told, in language inflected with the eighteenth century but not weighed down by it. His sentences are often long and rich, but supple and vivid. His characters are pleasingly complex. Although I don’t usually care about spoilers, I am not going to give anything away about the plot because part of the book’s charm is its unexpectedness and its feeling of anything being possible. Also, the ending flips everything on its head and you realise that, like Smith, Golden Hill wasn’t what you thought it was about at all. It may seem to be about the solid centre of New York society but in fact it was about the margins all along. More I shall not write, particularly as I have to rush out into the garden and plant some bulbs now, but I do urge you to read it if you like clever and entertaining novels of great charm (and bonus: it’s also educational! I learnt a lot about American currency in the eighteenth century that I hadn’t known I hadn’t known).

writing progress

As I mentioned in a previous post, I decided to enter my novel in The Times/Chicken House Children’s Book Competition. Before I could do this, I had to revise it. After I first owned up to having written it, both my mother and a kind but also very knowledgeable blogger offered to read and comment on it. Their feedback indicated revisions and I got started on this. Alas, my teaching hours from September to the middle of January gave me no time to continue and it’s only in the last few weeks I’ve been able to get back to it. The deadline for submission is the end of February, not a great deal of time.

And I found, going back to it, that I had completely lost faith in it. It’s hard to judge your own work, I think; at times I thought it was all right, at least in places, but now I think that it just isn’t any good not all the way through, like a stick of rock with ‘this isn’t very good’ written all the way through it. I’ve revised it but not enough really, even if the original idea were strong enough the rest of it isn’t. The other day I just got really fed up and submitted it anyway (then instantly realised I’d forgotten to resolve something, only a very tiny detail but still, sloppy, oops). I suspect it isn’t terribly professional to submit something just because you hate it so much you don’t want to see it any more, but then the advantage the amateur has is that she is not professional. Then I stuffed the final draft and my notebooks into a box and closed it. Joy!

Now I am feeling very cheerful and free. I am having lots of ideas for the next book, maybe they’re better and stronger. One thing I have learnt from writing the first book is that no matter how much you want to fling yourself into your chair and start writing, it is much better to do some research (in this case, because it’s going to be a sort-of historical novel) and planning – the world you’re going to write about, the characters, where roughly the plot is going. Though not too much planning because that would kill it for me, and as long as I’m an amateur, writing as a hobby, the main point is for me to enjoy doing it as who knows if anyone else will ever read it anyway. So, onwards!

(Sadly this is not me writing but Christine de Pizan, an illustration in The Book of the Queen (c. 1410) in the British Library, BL MS Harley 4431, fol. 4r; from here)