1900s

Books I Borrowed…

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There are a few books I’ve borrowed from friends and libraries which have now been returned, and so I’m going to give each one a paragraph or two, instead of a proper review.  Partly so I can include them on my Century of Books list, but partly because it’s fun to do things differently sometimes.  Of course, it’s entirely possible that I’ll get carried away, and write far too much… well, here are the four books, in date order.  Apologies for the accidental misquotation in the sketch today… I only noticed afterwards!

Canon in Residence – V.L. Whitechurch (1904)
This was surprisingly brilliant. Rev. John Smith on a continental holiday encounters a stranger who tells him that he’d see more of human life if he adopted layman’s clothes.  Smith thinks the advice somewhat silly, but has no choice – as, during the night, the stranger swaps their outfits.  Smith goes through the rest of his holiday in somewhat garish clothing, meeting one of those ebullient, witty girls with which Edwardian novels abound.  A letter arrives telling him that he has been made canon of a cathedral town – where this girl also lives (of course!)  He makes good his escape, and hopes she won’t recognise him…

Once in his position as canon, Smith’s new outlook on life leads to a somewhat socialist theology – improving housing for the poor, and other similar principles which are definitely Biblical, but not approved of by the gossiping, snobbish inhabitants of the Cathedral Close.  As a Christian and the son of a vicar, I found this novel fascinating (you can tell that Whitechurch was himself a vicar) but I don’t think one would need to have faith to love this.  It’s very funny as well as sensitive and thoughtful; John Smith is a very endearing hero.  It all felt very relevant for 2012.  And there’s even a bit of a criminal court case towards the end.

Three Marriages – E.M. Delafield (1939)
Delafield collects together three novellas, each telling the tale of a courtship and marriage, showing how things change across years: they are set in 1857, 1897, and 1937.  Each deals with people who fall in love too late, once they (or their loved one) has already got married to somebody else.  The surrounding issues are all pertinent to their respective periods.  In 1897, and ‘Girl-of-the-Period’, Violet Cumberledge believes herself to be a New Woman who is entirely above anything so sentimental as emotional attachments – and, of course, realises too late that she is wrnog.  In 1937 (‘We Meant To Be Happy’) Cathleen Christmas marries the first man who asks, because she fears becoming one of so many ‘surplus women’ – only later she falls in love with the doctor.  But the most interesting story is the first – ‘The Marriage of Rose Barlow’.  It’s rather brilliant, and completely unexpected from the pen of Delafield.  Rose Barlow is very young when she is betrothed to her much older cousin – the opening line of the novel is, to paraphrase without a copy to hand, ‘The night before her wedding, Rose Barlow put her dolls to bed as she always had done.’  Once married, they go off to India together.   If you know a lot more about the history of India than I do, then the date 1857 might have alerted you to the main event of the novella – the Sepoy Rebellion.  A fairly calm tale of unequal marriage becomes a very dramatic, even gory, narrative about trying to escape a massacre.  A million miles from what I’d expect from Delafield – but incredibly well written and compelling.

Miss Plum and Miss Penny – Dorothy Evelyn Smith (1959)
Miss Penny, a genteel spinster living with her cook/companion Ada, encounters Miss Plum in the act of (supposedly) attempting suicide in a duckpond.  Miss Penny ‘rescues’ Miss Plum and invites her into her home. (Pronouns are tricky; I assume you can work out what I mean.)  It looks rather as though Miss Plum might have her own devious motives for these actions… but I found the characters very inconsistent, and the plot rather scattergun.  There are three men circling these women, whose intentions and affections vary a fair bit; there are some terribly cringe-worthy, unrealistic scenes of a vicar trying to get closer to his teenage son. It was a fun read, and not badly written, but Dorothy Evelyn Smith doesn’t seem to have put much effort into organising narrative arcs or creating any sort of continuity.  But diverting enough, and certainly worth an uncritical read.

The Shooting Party – Isabel Colegate (1980)
Oh dear.  Like a lot of people, I suspect, I rushed out to borrow a copy of The Shooting Party after reading Rachel’s incredibly enthusiastic review.  Go and check it out for details of the premise and plot.  I shall just say that, sadly, I found it rather ho-hum… perhaps even a little boring.  The characters all seemed too similar to me, and I didn’t much care what happened.  Even though it’s a short novel, it dragged for me, and the climax was, erm, anti-climactic.  Perhaps my expectations were too high, or perhaps my tolerance for historical novels (albeit looking back only sixty or seventy years) is too low.  Sorry, Rachel!

The World I Live In – Helen Keller

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I was trying to remember who told me about The World I Live In (1908) by Helen Keller, when I realised that none of you did.  This joins Yellow by Janni Visman and Alva & Irva by Edward Carey (both wonderful novels) in being a book I happened upon at work in the Bodleian, and decided to buy for myself.  And, like them, it turned out to be a good reading experience – although rather different.

I had heard of Helen Keller, of course, although I must confess to having thought her British rather than American.  For those who don’t know the name, Keller lived from 1880-1968 and at 19 months’ old had an illness which left her completely blind and deaf.  She spent seven years with barely any proper communication with others; she describes it as a period during which she was not alive – then, when Keller was seven, 20-year old Anne Sullivan became her teacher.  With Sullivan’s patient assistance, Keller used hand-spelling to communicate, and became rather more eloquent than most other young women.  She wrote The Story of My Life in 1903, which I have not read; the essays collected within The World I Live In were written during Keller’s twenties, and make for fascinating reading – and certainly not for some sort of novelty value, but because Keller is, in her own right, incredibly intelligent, something of a philosopher, and entirely an optimist.  Indeed, the NYRB Classics edition I have includes Optimism: an essay written in 1903, which includes this excerpt:

I, too, can work, and because I love to labour with my head and my hands, I am an optimist in spite of all.  I used to think I should be thwarted in my desire to do something useful. But I have found out that though the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless.  The gladdest labourer in the vineyard may be a cripple.  Even should the others outstrip him, yet the vineyard ripens in the sun each year, and the full clusters weigh into his hand.  Darwin could work only half an hour at a time; yet in many diligent half-hours he laid anew the foundations of philosophy.  I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble.  It is my service to think how I can best fulfil the demands that each day makes upon me, and to rejoice that others can do what I cannot.
 When I say that Keller’s worth as an author is not merely as a novelty, I mean that she should not be patronised, nor her writing viewed as some sort of scientific experiment.  She is too good and perceptive a writer for that.  But, of course, Keller offers a different understanding and interaction with the world than most writers would.  The sections I found most fascinating were towards the beginning, where Keller writes about hands.  She divides this into three sections: ‘The Seeing Hand’ (how she uses touch as her primary sense); ‘The Hands of Others’ (how hands reveal character), and ‘The Hands of the Race’ (where the explores hands in history and culture.)  Her perspective is not entirely unique, I daresay, but I certainly haven’t encountered documented elsewhere, nor can I imagine it done more sensitively, or with such a good-humoured demeanour:

It is interesting to observe the differences in the hands of people.  They show all kinds of vitality, energy, stillness, and cordiality.  I never realised how living the hand is until I saw those chill plaster images in Mr. Hutton’s collection of casts.  The hand I know in life has the fullness of blood in its veins, and is elastic with spirit.
[…]
I read that a face is strong, gentle; that it is full of patience, of intellect; that it is fine, sweet, noble, beautiful.  Have I not the same right to use these words in describing what I feel as you have in describing what you see?  They express truly what I feel in the hand.  I am seldom conscious of physical qualities, and I do not remember whether the fingers of a hand are short or long, or the skin is moist or dry. […] Any description I might give would fail to make you acquainted with a friendly hand which my fingers have often folded about, and which my affection translates to my memory.

As I say, it is these early sections which I found most captivating; similarly, the essay on smell gave a wonderful insight.  I hope it is obvious that I intend no offence when I say it reminded me of Flush by Virginia Woolf, where the dog’s primary sense is smell, and the world is focalised through this perspective.  Keller does not feel that her experience of life is any less full than anybody else’s – the senses of touch, smell, and taste give her a vivid comprehension of the world and, what is more, a deep appreciation of it:

Between my experiences and the experiences of others there is no gulf of mute space which I may not bridge.  For I have endlessly varied, instructive contacts with all the world, with life, with the atmosphere whose radiant activity enfolds us all.  The thrilling energy of the all-encasing air is warm and rapturous.  Heat-waves and sound-waves play upon my face in infinite variety and combination, until I am able to surmise what must be the myriad sounds that my senseless ears have not heard.
I have to confess that the second broader section of The World I Live In left me cold.  In it, she describes – at length – her dreams, since it is often ‘assumed that my dreams should have peculiar interest for the man of science.’  Well, perhaps they do.  But I am allergic to people describing their dreams, it is utter anaethema to me (as my housemates now know!) and I skipped past this section.  If you have a greater tolerance for dream-descriptions than I do, perhaps it is just as interesting as the first section.
The final parts of the book were added from elsewhere, for the NYRB edition: the optimism essay, mentioned above, and ‘My Story’, written when she was 12, and quite astonishingly mature for that age – let alone for a girl who had only learnt language from the age of seven.
That is what astounds me most about Helen Keller’s book: that someone who came late to language should progress in it so quickly and maturely.  Regardless of the reasons why she could not speak, read, or listen, the fact that she had seven years without language, overcame this, and wrote so beautifully and intelligently  – well, it’s astonishing.  Keller is wise, sensitive, generous, and philosophically fascinating.  I’m grateful to NYRB for bringing The World I Live In back into print in 2003, and would recommend this to anybody interested in intelligent, lovely writing.  Here’s a wonderfully insightful paragraph from Keller to finish:

It is more difficult to teach ignorance to think than to teach an intelligent blind man to see the grandeur of Niagara.  I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in wood, sea, or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books.  What a witless masquerade is this seeing!  It were better far to sail forever in the night of blindness, with sense and feeling and mind, than to be thus content with the mere act of seeing.  They have the sunset, the morning skies, the purple of distant hills, yet their souls voyage through this enchanted world with a barren state.

Another book to get Stuck into:

Halfway to Venus by Sarah Anderton
If this were in a thesaurus it would be listed under ‘antonym’ rather than ‘synonym’ – Anderton had one arm amputated early in life, and Halfway to Venus is a very interesting book that combines memoir with an overview of the absence of hands in art, religion, literature, and history.  As such, it makes a fascinating comparison with Keller’s writing on the primacy of hands in the same.

The Man Who Was Thursday – G.K. Chesterton

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I’ve nearly come to the end of my pile of must-review-before-the-end-of-2011 books (and I really should have spaced them out a bit, perhaps… oh well, we’ll have a bit of a rest after Christmas.  Or an avalanche of my Books of 2011 posts.  We’ll see.)

Now, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) is a curious little book, not least because the central importance of it doesn’t reveal itself right until the end – at which point the rug is pulled from under your feet, and everything you’ve read takes on something of a new dimension.  Hmm… I don’t think it’ll spoil the book if I tell you the revealed theme, but in case you don’t want to know I’ll hide it in a link.  The Man Who Was Thursday would make an ideal companion read to (spoiler fans click here) this.  Ok, confused?  Good.

The Man Who Was Thursday is subtitled ‘A Nightmare’, which I wasn’t expecting, given that I know Chesterton best as a humorist.  Nor does the subtitle come into play for quite some time.  We start with Gabriel Syme, a member of secret anti-anarchist police, who meets anarchist Lucian Gregory at the party of a poet.  The opening scenes, where these characters debate the structure or chaos of poetry, are as amusing as anything found in this whimsical, witty decade, if a little more philosophical and theoretical than usual.

“The poet delights in disorder only.  If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway.”
“So it is,” said Mr. Syme.
“Nonsense!” said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else attempted paradox.

It’s all very jolly and garden-party-esque – cucumber sandwiches all round.  Syme and Gregory exchange verbal quips stridently, but without intending any of their barbs to hit home.  Indeed, far from being offended, Syme agrees to go with Gregory to an underground anarchist meeting, so that Gregory can prove what Syme doubts: that he is serious about anarchism.

What follows is a rather lovely piece of satirical reasoning.  Gregory is a serious anarchist – and had previously asked his leader how he could blend into the world, to perpetrate his ideology:

I said to him “What disguise will hide me from the world?  What can I find more respectable than bishops and majors?”  He looked at me with his large but indecipherable face.  “You want a safe disguise, do you?  You want a dress which will guarantee you harmless; a dress in which no one would ever look for a bomb?”  I nodded.  He suddenly lifted his lion’s voice.  “Why, then, dress up as an anarchist, you fool!”  he roared so that the room shook.  “Nobody will ever expect you to do anything dangerous then.”  And he turned his broad back on me without another word.  I took his advice, and have never regretted it.  I preached blood and murder to these women day and night, and – by God! – they would let me wheel their perambulators.

Clever.  But Syme manages to outwit Gregory, and get himself elected to the central council of anarchists, where each is assigned the name of a day of the week.  Syme, as the novel’s title suggests, is Thursday.  Head of them all is the mysterious Sunday.

That’s as much as I shall reveal of the plot – it becomes something of a intoxicating mix of spy novel, epigrammatical social novel, and even philosophical/theological.  The subtitle ‘nightmare’ is odd, but the style certainly has a dreamlike quality – swirling from one event to another, with twists and surprises along the way.  It’s a little madcap, but never to the extent that you think Chesterton’s been at the opium.

I don’t think it’s the sort of novel that would be published now – it’s too varied and unusual.  Which I think is great, of course, but probably wouldn’t satisfy the demands of a marketing department.  Chesterton still remains a bit of a mystery to me, and The Man Who Was Thursday is intriguing and admirable rather than lovable, but I would recommend it to readers who enjoy satire and surprises, washed down with a bon mot or two.

Others who got Stuck into it:


“Weird. Nightmare-ish. Imaginative. Chestertonian.” – Sherry, Semicolon


“Despite its philosophizing, its humor makes much of it a very light book, and some of the more “adventurous” scenes would make an awfully good film–there’s even a car chase.” – Christopher, 50 Books Project


“To say that the novel develops a nightmarish quality is not to say that it’s scary. I think perhaps most nightmares are only scary to the person who dreams them.” – Teresa, Shelf Love

“The open road, the dusty highway, the heath, the common, the hedgerows, the rolling downs!”

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Rachel (Book Snob), Claire (Paperback Reader), and I were discussing – in the wake of Virago Reading Week, which gave so many ideas to so many of us – the fact that we hadn’t read nearly enough Elizabeth von Arnim. I think the most any of us had read was one – although all of us were pretty good at buying her novels. And so we hatched a plan to read The Caravaners (1909) together. I forget exactly how we chose that title in particular, but I’m glad we did. Rachel has already posted an exceptionally good review; Claire has stalled, I believe. I’m going for the better-late-than-never approach (since I’d foolishly agreed to post in the middle of My Life in Books week) and here are my thoughts about The Caravaners. Which, to get ahead of myself, I loved.


I’d only read The Enchanted April before (my thoughts here) which is light, bright, and sparkling and shouldn’t have worked, but did. It is all about the power of a holiday in a beautiful place to change people for the better. The Caravaners is not… or, at least, that happens quietly in the background, to a secondary character. Our narrator, chronicling his trip, is Baron Otto von Ottringe. He’s not, shall we say, a charmer. He has forthright views on the subordinate position of women, the need for the German army to quash England (I misread ‘1909’ as ‘1919’ at first, on the title page, and was rather shocked – this novel would not have been published a decade later), and basically every opinion that differs from his own being nigh-on heretical. And, naturally, it is a duty and a joy to instruct others about their errors – Otto anticipates that such instruction will be gratefully received each time.

All in all, Otto isn’t the ideal holiday companion – but the lure of the company of a pretty woman convinces him to leave Germany and go on a month’s caravaning holiday in England. It is to help celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary – his current wife Edelgard, true, has only been his betrothed for a handful of years, but when you add that to the duration of his previous marriage to Marie-Luise…
I fail to see why I should be deprived of every benefit of such a celebration, for have I not, with an interruption of twelve months forced upon me, been actually married twenty-five years? […] Edelgard seemed at first unable to understand, but she was very teachable, and gradually found my logic irresistible. Indeed, once she grasped the point she was even more strongly of the opinion than I was that something ought to be done to mark the occasion, and quite saw that if Marie-Luise failed me it was not my fault, and that I at least had done my part and gone on steadily being married ever since.You begin to see the sort of man with whom we are dealing. A lot of novelists in the early-20th century (and still today) incorporate a ridiculous character into their work. Someone whose opinions and manner are absurd but possible, and who is there to have his views held up for ridicule, or fond laughter, depending on the situation. It takes a brave author to make this kind of self-delusional character the narrator. The novel inevitably becomes two-layered: the character’s voice on top, and the reality that the author wants you to see, behind that. Perhaps the most famous example is Diary of a Nobody; my favourite is Joyce Dennys’ Economy Must Be Our Watchword. At first I thought Otto was a Pooter-esque character, but it soon become clear that he wasn’t. Pooter is absurd, but we can’t help loving him. Otto is reprehensible and obnoxious – even the most charitable reader is unlikely to develop a fondness for him. And that’s what makes The Caravaners so delicious to read – he is constantly lampooned by his own words. I know at least one reader who tossed the book aside because of Otto’s character – but I think the more you disagree with his misogynistic, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, arrogant, selfish, militaristic standpoint, the more you will love watching Otto being mocked by von Arnim and naively unaware of his unpopularity. He is SO unself-aware, and yet it is somehow believable that he would be! I loved this sort of thing:
It is the knowledge that I am really so good-humoured that principally upsets me when Edelgard or other circumstances force me into a condition of vexation unnatural to me. I do not wish to be vexed. I do not wish ever to be disagreeable. And it is, I thin, downright wrong of people to force a human being who does not wish it to be so.
I haven’t even introduced you to the other members of the caravaning holiday. Frau von Eckthum is the beautiful woman whose company persuaded Otto to consider the holiday:
I know she is different from the type of woman prevailing in our town, the plan, flat-haired, tightly buttoned up, God-fearing wife and mother, who looks up to her husband and after her children, and is extremely intelligent in the kitchen and not at all intelligent out of it. I know that this is the type that has made our great nation what it is, hoisting it up on ample shoulders to the first place in the world, and I know that we would have to request heaven to help us if we ever changed it. But – she is an attractive lady.It is conversations between Otto and Frau von E which most enjoyably reveal his self-delusion. He acknowledges that his lengthy expositions on all matters political and social meet only with the iterated reply “Oh?” – but into that syllable Otto reads approval, admiration, docility, and agreement. The reader, needless to say, does not.

Other members of the party include Lord Sidge, who is entering the church (Otto is the most unashamed snob, and treats Sidge rather differently when he learns about the Lord part) and Jellaby, a Socialist. It was in his interactions with Jellaby that I had my moments of sympathy with Otto. Not on a political standpoint, I must add, but because whenever Jellaby encounters Otto in inactivity, he says “Enjoying yourself, Baron?” How infuriating that must be! I think we are supposed to love Jellaby. I could not.

I’m rabbiting on, so I’ll ignore the other characters – none of whom are as important as Edelgard, whom I’ve barely touched on. Otto’s wife starts the novel being everything that he envisages a wife should be. As the holiday continues – this is where there are shades of The Enchanted April – she becomes aware that she should be treated better. It starts with hints like this:
She had put my clothes out, but had brought me no hot water because she said the two sisters had told her it was too precious what there was being wanted for washing up. I inquired with some displeasure whether I, then, were less important than forks, and to my surprised Edelgard replied that it depended on whether they were silver; which was, of course, perilously near repartee.Ooo, perilous. During The Caravaners you constantly hope that Edelgard will escape Otto’s clutches, or at least change him for the better… I shan’t spoil for you whether or not she accomplishes that.

For those who might feel a little uncomfortable at the ridiculing of a German on English soil, perhaps I should add that von Arnim (as her name suggests) was married to a German herself – and not happily. She later referred to her husband as the ‘Man of Wrath’, and he was even sent to prison for fraud. I suspect Otto is in part a portrait of Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, rather than an attack against the German people more generally.

The Caravaners is so, so different from The Enchanted April that I don’t now know quite how to think of Elizabeth von Arnim. An author whose writing I considered gentle and beautiful has now added satirical, witty, and biting to her arsenal. What I do know is that she is quite brilliant, and I unreservedly recommend either of those novels – and am keen to discover what’s next. Elizabeth von Arnim admirers – which should follow?

Thanks Rachel and Claire for getting me finally to read my second E von A – I had great fun! Oh, and – the title to this blog post is not from The Caravaners. Can anyone tell me where I found it?

Love’s Shadow – Ada Leverson

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Well, Bloomsbury have done it again. I’m starting to sound increasingly like a self-appointed marketing director (and I do feel a little responsible for Miss Hargreaves, which I’ll be writing about later in the week) but I can’t help it when the titles they’re reprinting are just so darn good. Today I’m talking about Love’s Shadow by Ada Leverson, first published in 1908.

Elaine at Random Jottings has been an online-friend for over five years, and I read her blog everyday – as she has said in one of her latest posts, we have the same opinions of almost every book, especially when it comes to the first half of the 20th century. And when I discovered that she’d recommended Love’s Shadow to Bloomsbury for their Bloomsbury Group reprint series, I knew I was in for a treat.

The novel is the first in a trilogy called The Little Ottleys (perhaps more will be forthcoming from Bloomsbury?) and the Ottleys in question are Edith and Bruce, married for a few years. Elaine, in her recent review, charmingly and accurately, describes Bruce as Mr. Pooter without the charm – I think his character can be summed up by this:

‘He often wrote letters beginning “Sir, I feel it my duty,” to people on subjects that were no earthly concern of his.’

Edith is obviously fond of him, and parries his ridiculous jibes and moans with a light-hearted wit which is both very amusing to read and an act of supernatural tolerance. Bruce really is the most ghastly imaginable husband, obsessed with being granted his due ‘reverence’ – from his son, his parents, his wife, and more or less everyone else. And like most preposterous characters, he is exceedingly vain. A fabulously witty chapter (Chapter 27, fact fans) chronicles his report of a first foray into amateur dramatics. In later chapters he devotes most of his time and energy to the two lines he has been given, but Chp.27 is so cleverly structured, a vignette of his vanity, self-delusion, and inability to tell a story, that I wish I could reproduce it in full.

This marriage lends the trilogy its name, but Love’s Shadow follows a flock of others, in an amusingly complex array of romantic entanglements, unrequited attachments, and refused proposals. (To set the tone, the union of Lady and Charles Cannon is explained peripherally thus: ‘Having become engaged to her through a slight misunderstanding in a country house, Sir Charles had not had the courage to explain away the mistake.’) Hyacinth Verney is the centre of romantic mishaps, the sort of character who can say, with equanimity; ‘I quite agree with you that it would be rather horrid to know exactly how electricity works’. Perhaps because she is attractive in the way that women seemed to be in 1908 – when introduced to a Mrs. Raymond, the latter ‘looked at her with such impulsive admiration that she dropped a piece of cake.’

How to describe the web? Hyacinth loves impulsive Cecil who loves the impressive Mrs. Raymond who falls for Cecil’s uncle. Sir Charles is Hyacinth’s ward, but also quite smitten by her – as is, we suspect through the disapproval, Bruce. And then there’s Hyacinth’s female companion Anne… Love’s Shadow is flung in so many directions that it’s more or less pitch black – except of course Love’s Shadow isn’t. You can tell that Ms. Leverson was a friend of Oscar Wilde – she is consistently witty, though without his love of epigrams, and the novel sparkles with good-humoured teasing, joie de vivre, and clever plotting. On the back of this edition, alongside Elaine’s recommendation, Barry Humphries perspicaciously compares Ada Leverson to Jane Austen and Saki.

Another Bloomsbury Group reprint, another must-read. If you’ve been holding out, just give in and buy the lot – it’s a library of witty, wise, brilliant books which will stand the test of time, because they already have stood the test of time. And once more, kudos to Penelope Beech and her cover illustrations – both cover and Ex Libris page include silhouette illustrations of representative scenes from the novel, and add to the charm of this exceptional series. Thank you Elaine, thank you Bloomsbury.