dovegreyreader scribbles

An Unlikely Countess ~ Louise Carpenter

One of the most exciting aspects of any Port Eliot Festival line-up for the dovegreyreader tent is the book that has completely passed me by...and I hope Louise Carpenter won't mind me saying that about hers. 

Published in 2004, An Unlikely Countess Lily Budge and the 13th Earl of Galloway...my sort of book exactly and yet somehow I had missed it. In fact this 'missing the good books' was one of the reasons I started writing dovegreyreader scribbles in the first place. I was struggling to find them and this was a chance to start exploring and sharing it all, because how exactly was a person to know what was out there.

Catherine St Germans suggested I might like to talk to Louise, so I scurried off to buy the book and see what I thought.

Over two lovely long and relaxing reading days in the garden I met Lily May Miller, born to a working-class family in 1916 in the Borders town of Duns. Life was tough and uncompromising and a life in service beckoned for Lily until she met and married Jock Millar in 1936. Jock a wayward philanderer, and it was never going to end well; two babies later and he was off leaving Lily penniless and eventually homeless.

Meanwhile on October 14th 1928, to the Count and Countess of Galloway, a first-born son Randolph Keith Reginald Stewart. Important enough to receive a mention in The Times Court Circular the next day...

The Court Circular interesting in itself for its relentless tracking of the whereabouts of the aristocracy, and when Randolph is taken back to the family seat at Cumloden (I kept reading that as Culloden, with good reason in the end...battles will follow) in Kircudbrightshire (ker-koo-bree-shire for anyone not from these shores) in Scotland, hopes were high for the future of this son and heir. Imagine his parents horror when Randolph emerges as an eccentric and wayward child ill-suited to the conformities of aristocratic life. I suspect we would now place him somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but with no knowledge of how best to help him, and eventually at their wit's end and fearful of their difficult son, his family pursue some drastic and brutal treatments for him culminating in a lobotomy.

It is hard to countenance now but Louise Carpenter explores this very evenly, placing it in the context of the times... Randolph a tragedy to be managed not spoken of, but I wanted to weep for him all the same.

As the chapters in the book alternate between the lives of Lily, now Mrs Budge and married to Jimmy, a man who 'looked like Fred Astaire only after too much dancing,' and Randolph's prolonged incarceration with the monks in the Monastrey of the Transfiguration in Roslin... I kept turning the pages on these lives that would eventually converge.

Lily along the way to that first meeting with Randolph on a Church pilgrimage in 1976 will have been variously the owner of a children's nursery and animal sanctuary, a relief bar manager, an antique dealer, she will have adopted a child with learning difficulties, turned her house into a hotel and proved herself to be indomitable, fearless, feisty, kind-hearted, caring, good to a fault perhaps, surprisingly sensible and pragmatic, and always capable of brushing herself off and starting over, but Lily is emotionally needy too and her need to be needed will be forever apparent.

When Lily meets Randolph and sees him as a 'bird with a broken wing,'...well can you see what will happen next...

And can you see why I was riveted to the garden chair.

I really don't want to tell you any more because to do so would be to recount some of the best bits of the book, about Lily and Randolph's life together...

And Lord Galloway, Randolph's father's reaction to the union...

And the complex and tortuous paths that all these intertwined lives will take...

And will Randolph ever take his seat in the House of Lords with Lily in the wings...

Suffice to say Lily, twelve years older than Randolph, died in 1999 as perhaps the most unlikely Countess of Galloway there could ever have been, Randolph lives on in sheltered accommodation and Louise plans to visit him again before the event at Port Eliot so will be able to update us. But what a superb story this is and with what skill has Louise Carpenter told it. Quite a few of Team dovegrey have now read and absolutely loved the book prior to Louise's visit to the tent (Happy Campers, Fran H-B and Knit Angel all in rave mode over this one) and we are all bursting with questions. It should be a great event (Saturday July 26th 10.30am) and of course we will report back in full...with pictures.

Footnote : Good news. Though the book had been out of print for some time there are now (or were!) a good number of copies on You Know Where. But even more exciting...my suggestion to Louise that An Unlikely Countess most certainly deserved a second outing, and could we please have a Kindle version, has not fallen on deaf ears. Kindle version in the pipeline and ready soon.

 

 

 

The Baroness - The search for Nica, the rebellious Rothschild ~ Hannah Rothschild

So I had met Hannah Rothschild very briefly at Port Eliot festival, and then made the Rothschild-Waddesdon Manor connection, but beyond that nada, so I opened The Baroness- The search for Nica, the rebellious Rothschild with favourable endorsements ringing in my ears but not knowing what to expect.

I am always amazed (though shouldn't be) at the way that a book about a life unknown to me, and a world that hither to may have been of little interest to me, are both brought so dazzlingly to life that I am seeking out more of the same. I also defy anyone reading this book to not seek out a soundtrack for themselves and want to listen to the music of Thelonius Monk and Charlie Parker, Miles Davies and Dizzy Gillespie. Even if you are not a jazz fan I suspect, like me, you may want to at least try and understand exactly what was the magic that caused a woman, with as much money and comfort as the world could buy, to desert her family for a life in New York where she became the patron of many-a drug fuelled, penniless, frequently homeless and down-and-out jazz musician.

'I'd never heard anything remotely like it. I must have played it twenty times in a row. Missed my plane. In fact I never went home. I got the message I belonged where that music was. I was supposed to be involved in some way.'

Pannonica (Nica) Rothschild born in 1913, the fourth child of Nathaniel and Rozsika Rothschild, aptly named after an elusive moth, and a direct descendant of Mayer Amchsel Rothschild who had founded the family banking dynasty in the Frankfurt ghetto, the Judengasse, during the eighteenth century, and very much against all the odds..

' a place of such indescribable squalor that Europeans, including George Eliot, made it a 'must-see' attraction as part of their grand tour.'

Goethe, also visited and wrote...

'The lack of space, the dirt, the throng of people, the disagreeable accents of the voice, altogether it made the most unpleasant impression, even upon the passer-by who merely looked through the gate.'

To his complete surprise, when he plucked up the courage to enter the gates of the Judengasse, the inhabitants were...

' human beings after all, industrious and obliging, and one could not help but admie even the obstinacy with which they adhered to their traditional ways.'

It was Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who in this unlikely setting, established his small coin business using his wife's dowry, eventually becoming one of the richest men in the Judengasse and the father of nineteen children, ten of whom survived childhood, so plenty to carry on the dynasty that the Rothschild banking empire was to become. As Hannah Rothschild points out, centuries of persecution has made the family 'secretive and inward facing' with little trust for outsiders, coupled with the belief that 'only money and power would protect them from anti-Semetism and a return to that early life of misery.' Marriage had to be within the Jewish faith and increasingly within the family. But as far as the bank was concerned it was only men allowed, the women were completely disempowered. Only Rothschild men could inherit and run the business, a principle still in practice today, whilst the women of the family were barred from working or setting foot in the bank, or inheriting shares, which reverted to surviving fathers and brothers in the event of a death. When the Y chromosome starts to diminish within the family and a succession of girls are born it heralds interesting times ahead.

But alongside all this came great business acumen and complete discretion for clients, an ingrained trait that, even today, made the writing of this book something of a challenge within the family for Hannah Rothschild as she attempted to uncover the life of her great-aunt Nica.

And so to Nica, the wonderful, free-spirited rebellious Nica and with a tension built up by Hannah Rothschild as the fate of the women within this patriarchally dominant family is gradually revealed, and to the point where I would have been seriously disappointed if Nica hadn't done a runner, because in the end I was willing her to escape. Suffering a form of de-oxygenated entrapment from real life, and of the highest order, Nica was never cut out for the rarifed atmosphere in which she found herself, something had to give.

It was the Second World War that did it. Nica's life until that one of dependence and moneyed privilege, pampered to the point of infantilism within a rule-bound, class-obsessed society, but with the war came Nica's chance. She took it and capitalised on it, dutifully travelling to the U.S. for the safety of herself and her children, as instructed by her French husband Jules, but then leaving to return to Europe to join the Free French Army. Nica had a busy and exciting war and as I read of her exploits it became obvious that she would never settle back into life as Rothschild woman... there to 'entertain, inform and breed.'

War decimated the family's fortunes and this makes for sombre reading, not only for the stupendous wealth that one family can amass in the shape of no less than forty stately homes across Europe (including Waddesdon Manor), but also for a family's persecution and demise at the hands of the Nazis when houses were ransacked and a known 3978 paintings seized.

It was 1948, perhaps 1949, no one is really sure, when Nica, stopping off on her way to the airport in New York to fly back to her family, hears the music of Thelonious Monk for the first time and changes the course of her life for ever. New York the 'post-war crucible of innovation' and it is to the jazz clubs of 52nd Street that Nica migrates in preference to the rarified world of European aristocracy. That doesn't stop her driving a blue Bentley convertible around the city and taking a suite in a top class hotel from which she organises and frequently bails out the jazz musicians.  

Hannah Rothschild achieves a remarkable even-handedness as she writes of these tumultuous years in Nica's life, at times uncomfortable with Nica's behaviour, frequently suspending disbelief in order to try and understand her great aunt...how could she leave her children as she did... what about the 360 cats that shared the home that Nica was eventually forced to buy when no hotel would accommodate her.

And what of Nica??

Well I loved Nica. Setting aside the qualms I would share with Hannah Rothschild about the children (though they sought their mother out and Nica seems to have been close to some of them), in her New York life here was a woman who was selfless and generously committed to her cause, yes eccentric but accepting of others unconditionally and regardless of race, unflinching in the face of adversity of which there was a great deal. When Nica risks prison by taking the drugs-bust rap for Thelonious Monk in the hope that he will keep his perfoming licence... only to find that he loses it anyway, you want to weep for her.  It all seemed a far cry, a complete repudiation of the social mores instilled in her as a child...or was it. Surely Nica reshaped those values of family loyalty and used them differently, and for the good of others above self and family.

And so the music. Who would have thought I would be seeking out and listening to the music that Nica loved, and then on tenterhooks waiting for the DVD, The Jazz Baroness, to arrive from Lovefilm (don't miss this film if you decide to read the book)

'The music is what moves me. It has something I also hear in the playing of the Hungarian gypsies, something very sad and beautiful. It's everything that really matters, everything worth digging. It's a desire for freedom. And all my life, I've never known any people who have warmed me as much by their friendship as the Jazz musicians I've come to know.'

As Hannah Rothschild suggests in her response to these words of Nica's ...

'Nica had found her calling, her version of paradise.'

and towards the end of the book...

'She made her sliver of a great fortune go a little further. She made a difference. In return she received the one thing she lacked and desperately missed during her childhood: friendship.'

Magnificent Obsession - Victoria and Albert and the Death That Changed the Monarchy ~ Helen Rappaport

'The Times was confident: 'we have on the throne a Sovereign whose nerves have been braced rather than paralysed by the chill of adversity'. But the newspapermen did not know the Queen as Lady Lyttelton did. Albert's death was, she had no doubt, a ' heart wound' that had torn her world apart.'

I have been unashamedly looking forward to Magnificent Obsession (published today) having followed Helen Rappaport's Facebook updates as she wrote the book... reading of her disappointments when travelling miles to a dusty archive full of anticipation only to find letters which yielded little.. or the excitement when something unexpected gave up its long-held secrets. The trials and tribulations of a writer's life coupled with the certainty that I always enjoy Helen's writing style, books grounded in meticulously accredited scholarly research but all presented in an accessible and informative way; the same style that instantly drew me into No Place for Ladies, Ekaterinburg and Beautiful For Ever.

So I settled into post-London recovery mode...

The book opens with a scene that may well enter my pantheon of Extracts to Read Every Christmas, as Helen describes Christmas 1860 for Victoria, Albert and their children. It creates a wonderful and cleverly contrasting setting for what it is to follow as the Royal family settle down to their traditional Christmas holiday at Windsor Castle, and the coldest for some fifty years.

The ice on the Serpentine is thirteen inches thick and on December 20th the snow started to fall. Windsor is decorated to the hilt with countless Christmas trees whilst the 360lb baron of beef along with fifty turkeys are being roasted in the kitchens. By now Victoria and Albert have been married over twenty years and have nine children ranging in age from three to twenty and the atmosphere is one of spirited happiness as the corridors of Windsor echo to the noise of playful children interspersed with outings for sledging and skating...

And so the scene is set for the dawn of 1861 and Victoria little knew of the annus horribilis that was to follow as she noted in her diary...

'Dearest Albert and I took leave of the old year and wished each other the joy of the new...'

A great deal of fascinating, and to me unknown, detail is revealed as the burdens upon Albert become more apparent. His responsibilities as Prince Consort have become increasingly onerous as he assumes a greater role in the running of the country, whilst Victoria has spent much of the last twenty years mired in pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood; a role which, by her own admission she enjoyed much less than I had realised. Health issues prevail for Albert and with little sympathy from his wife who dismissed many of his problems as being of the 'man flu' variety...and the really-if-men-had-to-give-birth-where-would-we-be genre. So poor Albert, suffering with increasingly worrying gastro-intestinal problems weakens before our eyes, yet largely unnoticed by his devoted wife and eventually the seriousness hidden from her by her closest family and advisors. Albert is on his death bed before the panic sets in and Victoria, still in denial, is prepared for the worst.

Gathering momentum alongside has been Victoria's own grief reaction at the death of her mother, the first such serious loss she has suffered in her life, and as a portent of things to come a clear indicator that the Queen's emotional coping strategies are limited and there may be trouble ahead. Even the excesses (as we may now view them) of 19th century mourning practices cannot contain Victoria's emotions, whilst the evidence of sanctification of the deceased holds worrying predictors. If Victoria is this distraught over the mother she steadfastly maligned then how on earth will she react to the death of the man she loves with all her heart. It is only a stern rebuke from Albert that pulls the Queen to her senses, but when the Prince Consort's time comes there will be no one to do likewise, and the Queen's grief will know no bounds.

Whilst I was aware of the generalities, I had little idea of the fine detail of Victoria's mourning, and as Helen Rappaport burrowed down into the diaries and letters in order to add substance to it all I slowly developed a fascinating picture of an emotionally labile woman, seemingly selfish and woefully oblivious to the needs and feelings of those around her, as any resilience she may have is severely tested to its limits. Helen Rappaport's account steers a steady course through both the personal and the political as the Queen's increasingly alarming retreat from public life leaves the country wide open to talk of revolution and republicanism. Interestingly it is illness that twice saves the Monarchy, firstly when a seemingly hale and hearty Victoria, whose fragility is constantly given credence and fiercely protected by her personal physician William Jenner, does fall prey to a serious illness. This included the miserable spectre of an excruciatingly painful abscess some six inches in diameter under her arm which Lister is called in to lance and drain ... unimaginable. The wayward and troublesome Prince of Wales's near brush with death during a bout of typhoid is all sufficient to arouse public sympathies further, conveniently bringing the populace neatly back on side.

What emerged for me was the pitiful vision of a very lonely, socially detached, unreachable woman, blind to the state of her nation and its people... present-day theraputic parlance might deem Victoria 'psychologically unavailable'. No one can physically touch Royalty... protocol dictates that you can't go and give them a hug (remember the scandal when the Australian premiere may have 'touched' the Royal back?) Royalty are thus effectively cut off from the emotional support that many of us may rely on in times of grief, sometimes the kindness of strangers, whilst Victoria, remote and bereft of that physical contact with others, and especially with Albert, had only the conversations with her grieving family and her courtiers to sustain her. And despite their best and strenuous efforts for many years, especially those of daughter Vicky in her letters, few seemed to came close to offering the comfort that might penetrate Victoria's wall of sadness and make any difference. Nowadays I'd want to give Victoria the Cruse helpline number for a start ...send her along to Kate Boydell's Merry Widow website... make sure she knew about The Way Foundation, whilst all Victoria can do is retreat alone to her beloved Balmoral wearing her widow's weeds and planning yet another national memorial in her dearest Albert's name.

Further latter-day theories could also usefully be employed, especially that of 'secondary gain' where the perpetuation of symptoms can become, for the sufferer, a conscious or sub-conscious means of avoidance. Victoria seemed bereft of confidence and terrified of public exposure in the absence of Albert which, for all that their love seemed deeply genuine, gave me serious pause for thought about the dependency and control he may have exerted over her during their marriage. His death certainly left her seriously disempowered and it became perhaps easier for Victoria to unwittingly sustain her grief as an excuse rather than have to face up to the rigours of her public duties as a monarch, issues which Helen Rappaport explores to the full ...and of course a stance increasingly difficult for Victoria to sustain credibly when Scottish ghillie John Brown comes into her life, bringing with him his down-to-earth no-nonsense philosophies and not a little joy and mirth at his Balmoral hoe-downs.

Utimately good things, if they can be called that, did emerge as Victoria's sensibilities became so carefully attuned to the impact of loss and bereavement, it became her specialist subject and to the point where, with mounting personal bereavements as the years went by, 'her sacred monopoly on grief transcended all criticism'. The death of daughter Princess Alice on the same day as her father some seventeen years later, sealing the deal. Always the first to sympathise with others in times of loss, and something of an expert on the etiquette of mourning practice, yet from somewhere, through it all Victoria did ultimately find the courage and steely determination to endure.

Helen has added an appendix that really did interest me. As I read the book it was hard not to speculate about the possible differential diagnoses for Albert's final illness. Long thought to be typhoid though with very little investigation and no post-mortem results this was questionable, and Helen has extracted some compelling evidence, along with symptoms of an ongoing and chronic gastro-intestinal condition, that may now suggest a possible diagnosis of Crohn's Disease.

So a remarkable book. A brilliant read, great illustrations including one of Albert on his deathbed, and now I really am looking forward to hearing Helen Rappaport's November 15th talk on Magnificent Obsession at the V&A more than ever.

And you still have time to listen to Helen talking about the book on Monday's edition of Woman's Hour here.

 

 

The Castrato and His Wife ~ Helen Berry

'Historical facts about men and women born in obscurity are not easy to come by...[they] leave a body of historical evidence that is like a fine old musical instrument long infested with woodworm: some material traces of the original do survive, but these have become pock-marked with holes, till all that is left is a fragile shell and hollow space...'

Helen Berry's coda at the end of her excellent book The Castrato and His Wife is perhaps a salutory reminder of Hilary Mantel's assertion in her recent televised interview with James Runcie, that as soon as we learn history we should learn to be suspicious, that we should question. There is clearly much we cannot know for sure, but there are legitimate ways of constructing that history as Helen Berry elaborates.

'This book has endeavoured to squeeze a tune from ephemeral materials using the different varieties of time-tempered fragments that are left to us: not just the written words, but the objects, art, and the music that are the legacy of previous generations...

And Helen Berry offers a reference to an overview of this approach to history citing another book which sounds equally readable Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting and Touching in History by Mark M.Smith, and again I am reminded of Hilary Mantel showing us her shelf of reference files and reading out the odd but contemporaneously Tudor contents of one folder.

You may recall that a few months ago, the ink barely dry on the proof copy, I was waxing lyrical about this book  which had arrived from Oxford University Press, Well, it has just been published, so now you can find out the mysteries of the life of the castrato for yourselves.

I'm not sure what it may be about the eighteenth century that makes my eyes glaze over, perhaps a little too far back for comfort and not helped by the fact that the literature has always defeated me despite my best efforts. Clearly all that was needed was an angle that would interest me and this new world of surgical interference and musical intrigue was just the ticket.

Now let's be honest, the book is interesting on many accounts but it is the castrato aspect that intrigues isn't it, and Helen Berry offers a fascinating background to the history and the world of castration, illegal even when a young Tenducci was parted from his bits by an intinerant barber-surgeon wielding his special shears, which could and did double for animal or human use. And all sufficient to leave our lad singing higher up the register and it was off to music school he went. Women in this era banned from church choirs, so someone had to sing the top line.

Moving from Italy to England, Tenducci became quite the celebrity pin up boy, his picture adorning many-a young girl's wall, and when he started to sing in public he quickly established a fan base. The X Factor is clearly only a re-hash of what has been ever thus because with fame came the adulation for Tenducci that we associate with the celebs of today. And all this despite the castrati's barrel chest and

'disproportionately long limbs, making their heads look small in relation to their bodies...'

and the subsequent ridicule this attracted from the cartoonists of the day.

Yet the rumours of relationships with women were rife to the extent that Tenducci was even cited in marriage separation cases, having to flee the country on more than one occasion. He was also absolutely useless with money, so if he wasn't being hunted down by cuckolded husbands he was being chased to pay his debts. Heaven knows what they threatened him with because to be honest... thinking about the fate of poor old Abelard of Heloise fame, well the worst has already been done by the barber's shears hasn't it.

I'm giving a potted and populist version of a rigorous and scholarly work here, meticulously researched and referenced, but for all that the research does not weigh heavy, it is eminently readable. Helen Berry presents her information in the most accessible way, exploring a great deal in the process including fascinating attitudes to sexuality, male beauty and effeminacy in men, (to which women of the day were thought to be more attracted) and the assumed unconsummated love of the castrati...though having assumed they 'couldn't' it is never quite clear what they might have been able to do. It would seem no one thought to write it down in any detail.

So who'd have thought a book like this would prove to be a page-turner, but when Tenducci reached Dublin, well things were really about to hot up. At the pinnacle of his career in the mid 1760s, and invited to Dublin to sing operas in English, it is a meeting with the young Dorothea Maunsell, the daughter of a wealthy barrister, that will really put a bit of a spanner in Tenducci's works.

It was in Dublin some twenty years earlier that Handel's Messiah had received its world premiere to international acclaim, and brought with it a cultural fillip to the city, perhaps not unlike the one happening yet again and which I have witnessed on several recent trips. Eager to be in with the 'it' boy and rubbing shoulders with celebrity, the Maunsell's invited Tenducci into their home where he quickly took on the role of musical mentor to young Dorothea, and, on the basis that surely no mischief could ensue, they spent long periods of time in each other's sole company.

The ensuing elopement, clandestine marriage and quite how the family addressed the humiliating scandal kept me on the very edge of my seat. Dorothea had been raised to make a good society marriage and have children, not to run off with a eunuch, and hell hath no fury like a barrister scorned it would seem. And of course I won't reveal the shocking lengths (well I was shocked) to which Thomas Maunsell resorted in order to try and force his daughter into submission, because that would be to give away the most riveting part of the book. But never underestimate the power of a woman in love either, and when you know that Dorothea subsequently published an account of her ordeal that gives you some clue as to her resilience.

Oh yes, and if you read it for yourself you will discover the mystery of what Tenducci 'may' have carried in his breeches.

But the added reach and attraction of a book like this rests for me in the trails of interest that it opens.

I wanted to go off and look at paintings by Caravaggio,

I wanted to listen to the Scottish ballads.. 'Roslin Castle,' 'The Braes of Ballenden,' and 'Lochaber' made famous by Tenducci.

Is 'the witty Duchess of Gordon', who gets a mention, the same Jane, Duchess of Gordon as in mother of Georgiana, who married the 6th Duke of Bedford and built Endsleigh I wonder. If so I'm sure there is a painting of her in the collection at Port Eliot.

Tenducci sang in Plymouth in 1786 to great acclaim, and I wonder where exactly.

I hadn't listened to the Pergolesi Stabat Mater in ages, now I needed to.

And just what was this aria from Artaxerxes, the first all-sung opera in English, made so popular by Tenducci that even Jane Austen was a little sick of hearing it so many times.

And most of all, with a trip to Dublin coming up on Bloomsday earlier this year, I mapped out a little Tenducci trail around the city just to walk in his and Dorothea's footsteps. It's not hard, having read this book to visit Dame Street and imagine...

or wonder if Tenducci nipped in here for a quick chop after an evening performance...

and then to wander along here, the fashionable street that Dorothea's parents had moved to..

and wonder which house it may have been.
Which one had Tenducci visited and there courted his impressionable young fan...

I also like Helen Berry's next suggestion in her coda...

'By engaging with reconstructed sounds, visiting sites of interest, and touching material traces, as well as reading and looking hard in archives, both historian and reader may in future be able to gain a deeper insight into the long-forgotten cadences, the pulses and social rhythms of previous generations.'

So for all that a book like this is written to give us another version of a lesser-known history, perhaps it is also about sparking the imagination of the reader and letting them take their own journey with it. I know I have done exactly that, and how good to find that as a result, I am friends with the eighteenth century at last, though I haven't quite gone the whole hog and pinned a picture of Tenducci on my wall....yet.

 

 

Victoriana...

I am always delighted to have much-anticipated books lurking on the literary horizon, and one of several I have been waiting for is Helen Rappaport's Magnificent Obsession - Victoria Albert and the Death That Changed the Monarchy, and reading the pre-amble it's not hard to see why...

"When Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, died in December 1861 the nation was paralysed with grief. He was only forty-two and official bulletins had, until the day before he died, given no cause for alarm.

But in fact Albert had been in a progressive physical decline for years – worn out by overwork, stress and the exacting standards he set himself. His death was a catastrophe for the queen, who not only adored her husband but had, through twenty-one years of marriage, utterly relied on him: as companion, father of their children, friend, confidant, wise counsellor and unofficial private secretary. There was not a single aspect of public business on which she had not deferred to his advice and greater wisdom. She would even consult him on what bonnet to wear.

 Britain had lost its king. For that is the role that Albert had performed in all but name. Politicians and the press agreed that his death was a national calamity. The public, totally unprepared, responded with a massive outpouring of grief.

This royal death had a profound impact on Britain. Cast adrift and alone, the Queen donned the widow’s weeds that she would wear for 40 years, till her own death in 1901. Her grieving was relentless. Without Albert to guide and support her, with a feckless heir who had caused her nothing but anxiety, and a family of nine children to parent alone, she retreated into a state of pathological grief which nobody could penetrate and few understood. Her stubborn refusal to return to public life rapidly began to alienate even her closest family and friends and to bring a resurgence of republicanism. There was even talk of abdication.

For the 150th anniversary of Albert’s death, this book examines the circumstances leading up to it, the ritual of his funeral and obsequies, and offers new theories on what killed him. It will describe the overwhelming despondency of a country plunged into mourning: bells tolling, shops shuttered up, everyone – no matter how poor – clad in black. Albert’s death and the Queen’s demand for the most rigorous observance of mourning, while precipitating months of anxiety about its effect on business, also fostered an explosion in the funeral trade and mourning ephemera. The Whitby jet trade went into overdrive to cope with the demand for black jewellery. Over the next ten years, the Queen’s single-handed mission to memorialise and commemorate her husband in perpetuity set in train plans for a range of artistic and cultural monuments that would transform the British landscape and set their visual stamp on the second half of her reign."

I have kept in touch with Helen since writing about her really excellent book No Place for Ladies The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War. It was a book that offered me well-researched history in an entertaining and readable way whilst making no sacrifices to quality, and as a result I have read Helen's subsequent books, Dark Hearts of Chicago, Ekaterinburg, and Beautiful Forever.

It can be interesting when you semi-know the authors too, because you follow and hear snippets about the progress of the book. The highs and lows, the disappointments shared on Facebook after a hope-filled day spent poring over old letters or documents only to find nothing of relevance, or the joyous news of hitting the information mother lode. I still quote Helen's presentation on Ekaterinburg and the demise of the Romanovs all delivered with passion and emotion on the anniversary of the massacre, as one of the most moving literary events I have ever attended. As well as being a Russianist Helen was for many  years an actress and so brings something very unique to her live events, they are not to be missed (and I would say the same about Carol Drinkwater) so I am equally excited to be meeting up with Helen again this November when she will be talking about Magnificent Obsession at the V&A Museum, London on Tuesday November 15th at 7pm.

With all this revisiting of all things Victorian in mind I was therefore delighted when a copy of Letters To Vicky arrived from the Folio Society. This is the correspondence between Queen Victoria and her daughter Victoria, Empress of Germany, 1858 -1901.

The book is going to be sumptuous before I even open it in that case isn't it. The slipcase and the beautifully decorated and embossed spine and cover, fine paper, soft and silky to the touch, and nice bundles of glossy photographs plus an informative introduction from Andrew Roberts.

But the letters, oh my the letters.

What a prolific and wonderful letter-writer Queen Victoria was and how revealing this selection made from six available volumes are; the letters from a woman about whom so little was known by her subjects, and I will write more when I have read them in depth.
 
But it all leads me to think how, for all that we live in the media age wherein we expect to know every last detail, yet how little we know of the details of our own Queen's life.

I wonder  whether our own Queen is a letter-writer and might a volume like this appear 150 years from now with news of Philip's snoring or the rage over the corgis frozen dinner.

Did you hear about it?

Terrible kerfuffle, apparently the palace chefs are under strict instructions that the corgis must o-n-l-y e-v-e-r be fed freshly cooked meat and the Queen draws up special menus for Linnet, Monty, Willow, Holly, Cider, Candy and Vulcan each week. Imagine the chefs leaning on the worktops chatting on the day that Her Maj walks unexpectedly into the Balmoral kitchen and says she'll serve it up herself only to find ...oh heck this is awful... you'd better sit down... the meat was still partially frozen in the middle.

The truth slowly dawned, the corgis were eating re-heated meals... re-heated meals for god's sake. Royal tempers fugit big style etc and apparently no one has seen Her Maj quite so cross in a very long time.

A bit of me wants to laugh like a drain... but I won't because another bit of me admires the Queen's fortitude and commitment to public service so I can make allowances for foibles, and the last bit of me doesn't really fancy the Tower with autumn coming on.

 

 

The Sunlight on the Garden - A Memoir of Love, War and Madness ~ Elizabeth Speller

So having read The Return of Captain John Emmett and knowing that I was going to be hearing, meeting and dining with Elizabeth Speller at the du Maurier festival in Fowey back in May, it seemed sensible to do some homework before I went. And given that I had discovered the existence of a memoir Sunlight on the Garden A Memoir of Love, War & Madness published by Granta, it then seemed like a really good idea. It's all about not wanting to put both feet in it with a pair of size twelves and then not have a leg to stand on really isn't it...and once you read a book with 'madness' in the title there's clearly plenty of potential for the giant faux pas.

Except Lizzie Speller is a delight, self-effacing, modest and hilarious. It was lovely to meet her in person and then choke on my dinner several times because she is very funny indeed, but we were also able to chat about this memoir and her intentions in writing it.

I love a good memoir especially if it's about a life that spans the same era as mine because I can indulge in a big nostalge over shared recollections, in this case that included AA Milne poems, Moonfleet (one of my favourites books and TV series too) Gt Ormond Street Children's Hospital where I trained and Lizzie was treated in the speech therapy department, music because we both loved Tubby the Tuba and Sparky's Magic Piano and remember Sunday evenings and Sing Something Simple on the radio with the Cliff Adams Singers. I went to see Aladdin on Ice at Wembley, whilst Elizabeth wasn't allowed to go for fear of catching polio and she screamed blue murder at the deprivation, and then who remembers wallpapered ceilings?? Was that not the most hilarious activity and wasn't the fashion for it to be the same as on the walls so a vast amount of pattern matching involved and much regret over buying striped wallpaper. I feel sure the Tinker was an expert.

And who else sang sunny lemontina? I'll leave you to think about that.

So I was feeling a real affinity with Elizabeth's life but for one big difference. We're not big on blue blood chez family dovegrey whilst Elizabeth's family nursed a descendency from two of Britain's noblest families, the Cavendishs and the Howards via her great-grandfather. The lineage went slightly off piste when Gerald Howard (1853-1945) sired eight children via his mistress, Ada Curtis descended from pork butchers and machinists. It quickly became clear that they couldn't keep giving the babies away and indeed one of them would become Lizzie's grandmother, so eventually Gerald made an honest woman of Ada and so the lineage dilutes a little more, whilst various branches of the family cling to the memory and try to keep up appearances, and this all recounted in Lizzie's very humorous style. The book darts hither and thither and in doing so reflects the complexities of this huge family, but for all the humour life is about to become a great deal more serious, and Lizzie can turn it on a sixpence so expect to feel awash with laughter one minute and aghast with horror the next.

It is child number seven, Joan, Lizzie's grandmother now married to Eric Edmonds and I hope I'm getting this right and hope you're following...it really is an incredibly complex and vast family tree (and I must digress to tell you that Eric's brother Stuart Edmonds was the love of novelist Anna Kavan's life) but it is maternal grandmother Joan who, standing in front of a fire at a party one day in 1936, suddenly finds her dress in flames...

'...her lovely dress, her lovely lovely dress. Flames are engulfing one side of it. She beats it with one hand, the other keeps hold of her champagne glass. She is a candle melting. Whatever is Eric doing? Is he mad? Drunk? He is pulling at the curtains, but they won't come down. Another man knocks her to the ground, he rolls her in the stiff old rug -she tries to tell him not to, the rug is valuable - Eric bought it in Paris...'

Joan is in hospital for a year where she is treated by the eminent plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe, her children, including Lizzie's mother, are not allowed to see her in that time and Joan unsurprisingly is changed for ever.

It is into this family, with its tragedies and skeletons-in-cupboards that Lizzie is born, with her mother's ongoing need to keep up appearances and maintain the family's sense of being slightly cleverer and better connected than those around them, yet not always quite making the grade. To say Lizzie asserts and charts her own course through these choppy waters as both a child and an adult would be an understatement, and I don't want to reveal quite what leads to the severe depression that she will suffer from later in her life, nor to dwell on the prolonged hospitalisation or the treatments, because what shines out from a book like this is something else entirely. It's that ability to 'get better' because ultimately this is a book full of an indomitable and optimistic spirit, one in which Lizzie does eventually emerge older and wiser but also 'better' and very suddenly recovered, the depression an affliction of the past.

Sufficiently better to embark on in-depth research of her family with a list that went as follows...

1) why mad?
2) Jewish?
3) where did Gerald meet Ada?
4) where did the money come from?
5) where's Rupert?

In the event it would seem Lizzie's mother cleverly side-stepped the madness...

'Instead of being mad she made a career out of judging who else was and became a psychotherapist. You would have thought she'd had enough of that at home but of course treating the disturbed gave her an element of control over the damage and anger that had once been beyond her power to resolve.'

Then there's Rupert. Who's Rupert?

Well he was another of the seven children of Gerald and Ada and I won't reveal more but if you have read The Return of Captain John Emmett and then you read Sunlight on the Garden you may see how the inspiration for the kernel of a novel could be sitting right under your nose. Elizabeth meanwhile then launches herself into a degree in Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge, proceeds to a post-graduate degree in Ancient History and now holds an RLF Fellowship at the University of Warwick. When you discover how little time Lizzie actually spent in school it's clear those achievements seem all the more remarkable, a real lesson in tenacity all making it my absolute pleasure to meet Lizzie Speller both through the pages of this book and in real life.

 

Project :: Now All Roads Lead to France - The Last Years of Edward Thomas ~ Matthew Hollis

It is well-known that Now All Roads Lead to France The Last Years of Edward Thomas, by Matthew Hollis, has had a big tick next to it as one of the books I have been most looking forward to this year and, though not published until August, my proof copy arrived weeks ago.

Faber have very kindly offered to send more advance proof copies to six lucky dovegreyreaders so here is my plan for entry criteria for this one, which is something I don't usually do but this is going to be slightly different.

I wonder if any of you are up for little reading project and would like to read this (veeeeeery slowly) along with me over the next few months and perhaps follow a few literary diversions if the book suggests them??

And would you then like to come back and join in some discussion here, before contributing to dovegreyreader asks... and a chance to put our questions to Matthew Hollis and carry on that conversation in comments??

Having made a start I know we won't be disappointed, there will be plenty to talk about.

You may recall last year I was beguiled and somewhat smitten by Helen Thomas's autobiographical work Under Storm's Wing, creating the impression that all was sweetness and light for Family Thomas when of course the truth seems to be very much at variance with Helen's perspective. I had posted a poem on here on Remembrance Day and was given great pause for thought by Jeannette who elaborated on all this in comments ( Jeannette, your thoughts have stayed in my mind) suggesting reader beware, there are two sides to this story. I decided at that point to call a halt to Under Storm's Wing pending the arrival of this biography, but with the intention of returning to Helen's writing afterwards. sensing that to be better informed would make for an even more fascinating read.

Copies of Now All Roads Lead to France can go worldwide and all a bit of a new departure, but if it works perhaps we could do it more often if you were interested because it occurs to me, after my very excitable read of The Castrato and His Wife by Helen Berry last week, that it would be good to share some of the advance reading in this way, and in the lead up to publication if publishers were willing.

So names in comments if you would be interested in Team ET and we'll take it from there.

Downton Abbey redux... Searching for Grace ~ Carol Henderson & Heather Tovey

It's Endsleigh Salon this evening with the delicious theme of 'Guilt' and I have decided that I will make this book fit the theme because I think it's clear for all to see that several people may... just may, have felt enormous guilt about their part in the story I am about to recount.

We'll be sipping tea ourselves down at Hotel Endsleigh and you might also need a pot of your own for this one, and you'll have to concentrate for this first bit because I need to explain quite how this book arrived in Devon because I was asked if I would like a copy of the memoir Searching for Grace by one of the authors, Carol Henderson. Carol is a friend of the daughter of a retired GP fisher-friend (whose family are mentioned very briefly in the book) of Bookhound's...are you with me? Carol e mailed me about the book from her home in Wellington, New Zealand and then very kindly sent a copy which duly arrived in that huge sack of post we eventually had to drive through snow to collect for ourselves on Christmas Eve, and I was delighted that it did because here was more lovely Christmas reading.

Searching for Grace a book I'm about to explore in more detail than usual here because it is currently not readily available in the UK, (though if you're in New Zealand you're in luck)  but one that definitely should be for the light it shines on a period of time that's much in our national consciousness right now, with Downton Abbey conversation everywhere and a second series to come. Reading it proved to be the perfect adjunct to all that Christmas watching, because it's not only contemporaneous with the era, thus offering further fascinating insights into the lives of the privileged, but it's an extremely well written memoir and I couldn't put it down.

Have you ever wondered about the fate of those children born out of wedlock to the Edwardian aristocracy who were then silently whisked away into obscurity so that the season could continue, the presentations at court needn't be interrupted, the lovers could still be bedded and the summers could still be spent languishing on the Riviera? I'll admit I hadn't given it much thought at all until Carol's book arrived and I settled down to read the poignant story of her mother Heather Tovey's life.

The family memoir predominantly written by Heather (nee Campbell) who was born in London on... well when was Heather born? She thought it was March 3rd 1911 but had no birth certificate to prove it, and nor could Heather apply for one from Somerset House because they held no record of her birth. When Heather came to apply for a new passport in New Zealand in 1975, the country where she had lived for nigh on forty years, that lack became the focal point of her story as she proceeded to trace her life back to those earliest memories of growing up in Edwardian London in the care of three sisters, one of whom she knew as 'Mummy' and who had indeed been loving, but in a strangely remote way.

Slowly the mystery unfolds as Heather travels to England at the age of sixty-four to search for her roots and her past. What became apparent as I read was just how important known parentage and identity can be and how unsettled and rootless it is possible to feel without those constants in your life. Heather had grown up with secrets, a child's awareness that all is not quite right, the brick wall when the questions are asked and this coupled with the knowledge that Heather unearths, that she was indeed a child of the aristocracy, all had me deeply engrossed in this very readable book.

Heather had long suspected that she may be an illegitimate child of a daughter of the Maple family, the owners of that great furniture empire, in which case she had unwittingly met her mother Lady Grace Weigall in her Hill Street home in Mayfair on many occasions. The GP and family friend who seemed to have acted as her guardian and provider, Dr Leonard Boys, had more than a passing interest in her welfare too though he was not her father. Grace had been three months pregnant with Heather by an unknown man when she married Sir Archibald Weigall in 1910, and indeed there are pictures in the book of Grace, heavily pregnant with Heather, as she accompanies her new husband on the campaign trail that will see him elected as an MP.

Dr Boys had been present at Heather's birth and had then immediately taken her in the hushed hours of night, wrapped in a shawl and still unwashed and unfed from the delivery room, to the waiting family of spinster sisters with whom the care arrangement had been made. Most heartbreakingly Heather had also unwittingly played with and wrapped her dolls in that black shawl for many years without knowing of its greater significance.

Quite who takes responsibility for the non-registration of the birth is a debatable point, I have always thought it was the parent's responsibility but Dr Boy's collusion with the circumstances and his professional accountability is much-debated in this book, as is his role as the go-between. Forgive the pun but the saving grace is that Heather and her carers are well provided for and it is Dr Boys who keeps the supply of money flowing from an unknown source and maintains a watchful eye over proceedings in a sort of god-fatherly way, whilst taking his vow of secrecy concerning Heather's parentage to the grave. It is his widow who finally tells Heather the truth about her birth mother and as for Heather's father, his identity remains uncertain, though there was much speculation and plenty of titled men in Grace's life to choose from.The potential scandal can only begin to be imagined had it got out, and quite what everyone who knew her thought Grace had done with the baby born six months after her marriage remains open to speculation.

The book is full of deeply poignant reading as Heather imagines and describes some of these key moments in her young life and who can know how painful that may have been for her to recount.Then there are the ongoing uncertainties and insecurities that Heather has taken into her adult life, lying about her age and secretly marrying the New Zealand artist Gordon Tovey before emigrating to Plimmerton, north of Wellington in New Zealand, to start a new life with him at the age of eighteen. Except Heather has more baggage than she can have possibly imagined, and through her life the leaden weight of that starts to increase until it becomes an almost intolerable burden. The letters to Heather in New Zealand from Mummy urge her to put it all behind her but, as the written words traversing thousands of miles become the vehicles of confession and admission of so many of the secrets surrounding Heather's origins, she is most certainly unable to do that.

The veneer covering Heather's insecurities is often painfully thin and easily scratched to reveal the rawness of what lies beneath, as when she gives birth to her own daughter Carol, the co-author of this book who inherits her mother's cause and researches it further after her death. Or when Gordon sinks into alcoholism and takes a mistress to which Heather displays a limitless degree of tolerance and capacity in coping with his infidelity, perhaps deeply rooted in the infidelities of those who have treated her so badly in her own past. Whilst it's easy to read a book like this and impose your own emotional coping strategies, Heather clearly had her own methods too and used them to shore herself up and protect herself from further hurt.

Knowing and finding her family becomes an obsession that will haunt Heather for the rest of her life, and when she does find a sister, Priscilla once married to Viscount Curzon, and is initially welcomed but subsequently rejected, the pain makes for very sad reading. Priscilla's assertion that if only she'd known of Heather's existence she could have given her a great deal of money when it was distributed from the estate, to make up for the little that Heather had received, somehow misses the point entirely... this was about something no amount of money could buy, it was about belonging.

In fact Heather taps into a seam of sadness, despair, depression and instability within that extended family that perhaps has its deep roots in the fickle nature of those moneyed ancestors. Lady Grace Weigall,
Heather's mother, a wealthy serial adulteress with a string of country seats (now luxury hotels Petwood in Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire, Engelmere in Ascot) and plenty of lovers to meet there, reminded me slightly of Idina Sackville of The Bolter fame. When I read that at eighteen months Heather had almost been whisked back into the aristocratic fold but for Mummy's protestations at the damage it would do, I could only but think what a fortunate escape that had been for her. Whether Heather was ever able to see it in that light seems uncertain, and indeed it is Carol who takes up the burden of the past after Heather's death and finally achieves that search for a different kind of grace, along with some sense of closure for the family and in honour of her mother's memory.

So forget all the fictional accounts, here is a true story, wonderfully written and a brave and honest indictment of  a time when class was everything, when reputations and social standing for those classes in society took precedence over all else, when an unwanted child's life could be spirited away out of sight, when money could buy silence and secrecy and when lives could be cruelly manipulated beyond the grave. A powerful and really excellent read about Heather Tovey (nee Campbell) a woman of indomitable spirit, and my sincere thanks to her daughter Carol for sending me a copy.

A little light history

I thought we'd have ouwselves a welaxing day today because of couwse it's Team Tolstoy tomowow and if you've wead this month's chapters you'll know who I'm thinking of, and it's not Jonathan Woss.
I think I may have mentioned to just about anyone who will listen that I've read and very much enjoyed the biography of Edith Cavell and therin discovered a very interesting local snippet.

In 1901 or thereabouts, Edith Cavell applied for the post of Matron of Tavistock Hospital.
Now the consensus is that this was our Tavistock Hospital and, even if not, my imagination has already run away  on a frolic of its own
Sadly for the town's history, and what would have been a good excuse for another statue that isn't Francis Drake or the Duke of Bedford, to say nothing of interesting road names like Cavell Close and Edith Lane, Edith's application to run our hospital was unsuccessful.

This is Tavistock Hospital now and it all piqued my interest in the history of the town's cottage hospital about which I knew very little despite having worked there, so it was off to the local library to find out more. Luckily the library has a really informative local history section and a complete file of cuttings and articles about the hospital including evidence of a medieval leper hospital thought to have been somewhere beneath what is now the Spar shop.
Browsing the file was fascinating and it's often the incidentals that can reveal the interesting details and the little nuances of social history that give such a wonderful picture of life back then... and how might the path of Edith Cavell's life have differed if she had secured the post of Matron at our little cottage hospital?
Would Belgium and the idea of war service and her ambitions to establish a nurse training school have been quite so urgent had she been settled in Devon, rather than filling a rigorous and exhausting permanent night sister post at the St Pancras Infirmary, located near Highgate Cemetery in London, for want of anything else?
One in five of the admissions would die, and many of those deaths would be from the complications of city living with squalid sanitation leading to infection, and fog-induced respiratory disorders prevailing.
I'm not sure what may have prevailed in Tavistock at the time, rural living probably just as perilous but in different ways ...charging bulls and farm accidents probably.
But in 1923, in order to raise £500 towards the cost of the new Tavistock hospital building there were all manner of community events.
The Royal Marines Band came from Plymouth and gave a concert in the market to 2,500 people and in the arcades around there was a miniature fat-stock show (Tavistock doesn't need much of an excuse to hold one of those) and competitions various run by residents various...
Throwing coins with Messrs Williams & Stenlake
Bran Pie with Messrs Wilmot and Weeks
Hoop-La with Mr Ash
All very enterprising because any gifts won were given back and auctioned for the fund, whilst Matron ran a competition to guess the final total raised, alongside Sister Friend who ran a competition to guess the number of people who paid for admittance.
Nothing like milking the event to the maximum.
But then there was the Draw and this was no ordinary draw with perhaps a dozen or so prizes, heavens they could teach us a thing or two because there were hundreds of prizes, twenty-six column inches of tiny printed details giving names, addresses and items own. I've left out the addresses as they will only be of interest to those who live here, but if you do live here you too may wonder as I did how Mr Muzzlewhite of Brook St or Mr Mitchell of Parkwood Rd or Miss Madaver of Bannawell St fared with their prizes.
And then my imagination ran riot with the others...
Let's hope Mr Maunder's cakes looked nice on his prize
and Mr May had a friend to pass his on to
and then there's Mr Goodman doubtless thrilled to be kept in sandwiches for about a year,
and I wonder who Nurse Hosking took with her
and I expect Miss Hillyar had herself a rare old time,
and thank goodness Mr Muzzlewhite had something to hold his trousers up with while he ran after his other prize,
and I hope to goodness Mrs Titcombe's teeth were up to it
and Mrs Gale must have been thrilled and...
oh I'll let you imagine for yourself...

Col Coleridge 5 cwt of coal
A.Down 4 doz eggs
G. Shellabear a lamb
Col Coleridge a silver pickle fork
Mr Muzzlewhite a cockerel
Miss Hillyar 1 doz Guiness
B.Bailey a goose
W.F.Brown one dozen photographs of yourself
Mrs Gawman a box of cigars
Col Coleridge 2lbs of tea
W.Maunder 2 D'Oyleys
George Giles 2 ducks
Mrs Gale an "EverSharp" pencil
Mrs Titcombe a 4lb tin of toffee
Mrs Cornish a hen and 6 chicks
Mr Muzzlewhite a pair of braces
Mr May a ladies camisole
Mr Woodward one week's washing up to 10/-
Nurse Hosking 2 cinema tickets
Miss Maddaver a gander
Mr Goodman a 6lb tin of corned beef
Rev Peacock 2 fowls
Mr Mitchell a pig
Mr Ball a pair of ladies silk stockings


Two years later in 1925 an £8000 extension scheme was announced for the hospital which would have meant an awful lot of prize draws and hoop-la throwing, so thank goodness the Countess of Mount Edgcumbe, in attendance at the public meeting to discuss the plans, started the ball rolling with a donation of £25.
Mr Alger apologised to her Ladyship for the smallness of the meeting but it was a market day.
Apologies were sent from Mr Sperling who promised £5 towards the scheme and from Mrs Rowe who hoped they would have a good time.

Coco Chanel - The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie

I did that inevitable summer/winter clothes swap last week.
The right day dawns and it's time for the old heavyweights to emerge and opening the lid on the blanket box where I store everything was like saying hello to a load of good friends, all those jumpers I was sick of the sight of earlier in the year re-emerge, old faithfuls ready to do a turn through another winter.
All this annual perusal and culling of the wardrobe whilst I'm reading Justine Picardie's biography Coco Chanel The Legend and the Life wasn't good for me, and I couldn't help imagining what Coco would make of it all if she walked past...
Me muttering " er...je suis desole" whilst Mademoiselle tsks "c'est tres terrible".
I did go through a Chanel No 5 phase many years ago but I still don't think Coco would have been impressed.
First and most importantly I have to mention the book itself.
Harper Collins have really cut their cloth perfectly with this one, high production values, beautifully laid out, perfect weight matte paper with pictures throughout, not the predictable two chunks of glossies, it even smells perfect too. Also an interesting sans serif typeface more of which when I've finished Simon Garfield's fascinating new book Just my Type - A Book About Fonts, who would have thought such a book could be quite so interesting.
But likewise my knowledge about Coco Chanel as sketchy as that about fonts, so I was the blank screen  on which to be written and how fascinating to discover the girl and the woman behind the legend.
A childhood anchored in distress and desertion rather than the love of a family, having been left by her father in the care of the nuns at Aubazine in 1895 after the death of her mother, and at the age of eleven it's not difficult to imagine the impact this must have had on the young Gabrielle Chanel. Images forged in her mind that would emerge in her fashions many years later, but it also sets the scene for a sense of personal shame and embarrassment and a subsequent lifelong obfuscation of the truth about herself that Chanel maintained to her dying day.
How sad too that such humble beginnings lauded as something worthy of praise and mention these days were not so highly thought of in the social-class ridden era into which Chanel emerged as a young woman.
Few people if any knew any single reliable truth about Mademoiselle, so many versions of a life through which Justine Picardie has steered a steady course, via all the available sources, to offer an insight into this complex but ultimately lonely and seemingly 'unloved' woman. Justine draws on evidence from other biographies, sometimes gossip and rumour which has become fact whilst diligently exploring all the detail to arrive at new conclusions.


Coco Chanel's relationships always formed with 'incorrigible womanisers', wealthy ones mind you but mostly caddish and 'unavailable' men. Mistress to the charming and debonair Boy Capel and then after Capel's untimely death, a lengthy affair with surely one of the wealthiest men in Britain, the Duke of Westminster, so plenty of gossip to plough through there.
And I bet like me you'll cheer when you discover the fate Coco had in store for the sparkling emerald and the string of pearls, gifts from the Duke of Westminster as penance for his infidelities and Coco's subsequent humiliation. 
It's enough to make me think about taking up.... no I can't give it away.
Nor will I reveal all the other surprises and revelations but there are plenty in store if you decide to read this. As Justine had promised us at Port Eliot, Mademoiselle did indeed have a very interesting war, counting Winston Churchill amongst her close friends, and a nice little dovegrey family coincidence here too.
Mention is made of a meeting that was due to take place between Chanel and Churchill in Spain in December 1943 but

'..the British Prime Minister had fallen ill after the Tehran conference in December 1943... the meeting with Churchill could not happen - he was very tired... he cancelled his appointements in Spain and went back to England after stopping in Cairo and Tunisia.'

To Winston's rescue the Tinker (father of dgr) on board HMS King George V ...yes can you believe it, I turn to his little book Bugle Boy and there it is confirmed,

'I couldn't be returned to Eastney Barracks as we were in the Mediterranean and I would have to wait until we were sent home - I didn't know that we had the Sicily and Italian campaigns yet to come, so that wouldn't be until October 1943. Even then at Christmas we went back to the Mediterranean to fetch Winston Churchill after he caught pneumonia whilst at Marrakesh...'

Also perused with great interest here, Coco Chanel's salmon fishing records whilst staying on the Duke of Westminster's estates in Scotland. No messing about on the banks of Loch More for Coco. On those three days in 1927, Mlle Chanel upstaged both Winston Churchill and the Duke, none of hers got away, thirteen of the twenty salmon caught landed at Mademoiselle's feet.
The first day's bag for Coco, seven fine and good-sized fish totalling 122lbs in weight.
I was not surprised because there is one fishing book on Bookhound's shelves which even I find interesting, Salmon and Women The Feminine Angle by Paterson and Behan, which advances all manner of arguments about female pheromones being partly responsible for this success. Hugh Falkus, in his introduction, also cites the willingness to learn and the sheer determination of women when placed in a competitive situation at which they are supposed to be slightly less capable, all of which fits very powerfully with the character of Coco Chanel that builds through this book ... and who knows what perfume she was wearing too.
In the end I emerge with a sense of Coco as a chameleon-like figure, capable of blending to her surroundings whether it be the 1920s and 30s Parisian milieu of Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Picasso, F.Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway or her post-war fashion revival in America, and you too may be as surprised as I was to read of the presence of Chanel couture at a very pivotal moment in twentieth century history. But Coco Chanel could blend whilst never losing sight of her individuality or an unshaken confidence in her own unique, sartorial style and sense of chic. Perhaps these became her defence mechanisms, her unchanging suit of armour, because scratch the surface and beneath I feel sure would be revealed a shaky sense of self-esteem and those self-doubts would become evident, that sense of unworthiness and a precarious dependency, but if Mademoiselle was good at one thing it was maintaining that armour intact.
Few people ever scratched beneath, but those who did later in her life saw her vulnerabilities,

'her emotional scars, her loneliness, her sense of loss and failure at never having her own children.'

Plagued by that loneliness, the end when it came was always going to be heart-rending and like Coco Chanel's life also shrouded in mystery and intrigue and Justine Picardie wisely leaves any speculation to the reader.
So a great read for me, the biographies are certainly winners this year, and any minute now Justine will be answering a few of my questions about the book and the writing of.

 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks ~ Rebecca Skloot

'On October 4th 1951, a young woman from Baltimore died of cancer.
Her death changed medical science for ever.'

Perhaps the first thing I have to do, as someone who works daily with those either battling cancer or caring for those who are, is to issue a health warning. Only you can decide whether you want to read a book that dwells in some part on the virulence of cancer.
Everyone reacts differently to knowledge like this and the first half of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by science writer Rebecca Skloot may make for grueling reading if you, or someone you love, is fighting cancer.

Or perhaps think carefully if reading a book like this is likely to raise your own anxieties.

In January 1951 Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer. A black American woman, born and raised among the tobacco plantations of Virginia, the thirty-one year old wife of David (her first cousin) and mother of their five children, (the eldest born when Henrietta was just fourteen,)  The treatment was surgery followed by local application of a very rudimentary form of radium and before the year was out, fifty-nine years ago today, on October 4th 1951, Henrietta Lacks died.

I will spare the details but again, this makes for very painful reading as does the fate of her children especially little Elsie, sent as a child to a Hospital for the Negro Insane.

During the period of diagnosis and surgery cells were collected from Henrietta's tumour for culture in the lab. Cell growth under laboratory conditions had thus far been a complete failure, no one had been able to replicate the growth of human cells in a test tube, so it was with a resigned air that lab assistant Mary Kubicek set to work when the cells arrived.

Within a week Henrietta's cells had started to multiply with a 'mythological intensity', doubling every twenty four hours, filling as much space as they could be given, growing twenty times faster than Henrietta's normal cells which quickly died, and the 'first immortal human cells' had been discovered.

Hard to imagine that those same cells are still alive today.

HeLa cells (pronounced hee-lah) have been the foundation of a vast amount of medical research and drug development ever since; the 'standard laboratory workhorse' for a wide range of diseases, leukaemia, influenza, haemophilia, Parkinson's disease, the development of the polio vaccine and countless others. Instrumental in advances in in-vitro fertilisation and gene mapping, HeLa cells are still likely to be found in their billions in just about every cell culture laboratory in the world, which makes the story behind the cells even more fascinating and often deeply disturbing.

Not only does this bring ethical issues regarding ownership and consent to the fore, but central to Rebecca Skloot's story are the Lacks family who have lived in near-poverty, and endured years of mental anguish over their misunderstanding surrounding the immortality of the HeLa cells. It is this fascinating human story that has been uncovered with some fairly strenuous and demanding research, much of it conducted with an understandably suspicious, fearful and at times aggressive family. Little had been explained to them about the exact nature of the cell replication thus wild assumptions had been made about cloning and Henrietta still being alive in some form, fears that had led to a great deal of hurt and in some cases serious mental illness as various family members grappled with the impossibility of the science, and all tangled up with ideas of immortality and fundamental religious beliefs.

Alongside this was a sense among family members that they had been duped; the cells were taken from Henrietta without her express knowledge and much seemed to have been done since without the family's permission. Though the now familiar notion of informed consent was unknown in the 1950s, there are some hair-raising episodes concerning breach of confidentiality, and further very dubious research amongst members of the family that was only very 'lightly' explained to them beforehand.

But perhaps even more disturbing than the racism that also emerges, is an issue that has caused the family further devastation. The irony of a situation where they have received no financial benefit from the HeLa cells, and could afford little or no health insurance to cover the cost of any life-saving treatment that Henrietta's cells alone have made possible.Little wonder they were confused and angry over the duplicity of a system, one that has grown from the benevolent deception of the 1950s into a law declaring the possession of human tissue is not a right once it has left the body, but one that allows a vial of HeLa cells to retail at $167 a time. That's very rough justice indeed and Rebecca Skloots outlines the family's distress in their own words throughout the book which makes this a highly compelling read.

Rebecca Skloot's journey with Deborah, to trace details about Deborah's sister Elsie who had died in the Hospital for the Negro Insane at the age of sixteen, is unbearably moving. None of the younger family members had known she was there and Elsie saw no one again after Henrietta's death, it's hard to imagine what she went through.

The research whilst deep and at times highly scientific is essential to the whole and thankfully largely understandable, I think I only got lost once in the clinical depths of cell division, but that all serves to emphasise the complexities and confusion that this held for Henrietta's family. Once Deborah, Henrietta's daughter, had mastered the detail (and mastered it to a very high level) a calmness seemed to descend for the first time in her life, and when someone finally had the courage to apologise for past wrongs the family were largely at peace with themselves, their history and each other, allowing many restless ghosts to finally be laid to rest.
Reparation can sometimes consist of such a simple action.

That those apologies were finally forthcoming seems thanks in large part to Rebecca Skloots's tireless efforts and courage in pursuing this story so tenaciously in the face of frequent setbacks, and over many years, with both the family and the medical authorities.
So as aforementioned, if you can cope with the early part of the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is indeed a brilliant read and yes, as the blurb suggests, it was impossible for this reader to put down. Finally a fitting tribute exists to the contribution that this poor Southern tobacco farmer, buried in an unmarked grave, (though a memorial has recently been placed in the vicinity) has unwittingly made to the quality of all our lives.

May Henrietta Lacks never be forgotten.

People arriving...

I seem to have a growing number of literary people arriving in the post at the moment.
Enticing biographies that feed nicely into that endless fascination about people's lives, often lives I know little or nothing about but I can see vast new reading trails opening alongside these as I browse, so I thought I'd share a few and see if you have any reading suggestions to go with them.

Why This World A Biography of Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser, published by Haus.
I have managed to find and read just one book by Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star, the author who ' looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf ', which, though making no assumptions or judgments, is probably the right way round to be. One of the most popular but least understood of modern Latin American writers, according to the press release and little understood here by me because the books are almost impossible to lay hands on.
Clarice Lispector born in 1920 in post-World War 1 Ukraine and
'driven to Brazil by the pogroms that killed her mother and ruined her father. Despite this, she triumphed over her origins to become, virtually from adolescence. a person whose beauty, genius and eccentricity intrigued all of Brazil's writers and artists.'
What as piqued my interest further is reading Clarice described as the true heir to Kafka.
Now Kafka is one of those writers who strangely terrifies me.
Is he another who has been swept into the upper reading echelons in my sub-conscious and really not for me to meddle with because I wouldn't understand a word?
Except that a lovely set of the new Oxford World's Classics editions of The Castle, Metamorphosis and The Trial arrived a while back and I had marked Kafka up for a foray, just to see if I could cope.
Any thoughts on Kafka reading out there?
Shall I?

Knut Hamsun Dreamer and Dissenter by Ingar Sletten Kolloen published by Yale University Press in late September.
However long have I been meaning to read Knut Hamsun and never quite got there so perhaps now's the moment.
The 150th anniversary of his birth in Jotunheimen in deepest Norway and obviously there are going to be both highs and lows in this book, the Nobel Prize in 1920 and blatant collaboration with the fascists during the German occupation of Norway and a refusal to renounce Nazi sympathies make controversy inevitable. Kolloen traces the roots of those sympathies back to Hamsun's earliest days as he attempts to shine some light on this 'irrational, eccentric, strange and compelling - a man uncomfortable in his own time.'
I also think it might be interesting to read the life before the novels for once, an opportunity to approach a writer's life with no preconceptions.
I shall seek out more of Knut Hamsun's writing but where to start, any suggestions?

The Last Englishman The Double Life of Arthur Ransome by Roland Chambers, published by Faber
Good, someone I do know of, but still not a great deal about and admittedly more Swallows and Amazons than the love affair with Leon Trotsky's private secretary or his life as a controversial English journalist. Apparently Ransome escaped accusations of treason by the merest squeak for his ardent defence of Bolshevism.
'Ransome's triumph was to erase the entire episode from the public consciousness, just as he erased all uncomfortable episodes, including his relationship with his only daughter.'
This makes me think I should elevate Swallows and Amazons into Inner Child reading before I tackle this biography, I may never look on it in the same light again.

This all set me thinking about more people I'd really like to see thudding through the letterbox one day, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Penelope Fitzgerald, I have no idea whether someone somewhere could be writing them but I do hope so.

The Other Elizabeth Taylor by Nicola Beauman

Hermione Lee suggests this in her book Body Parts - Essays on Life-Writing,

'Readers of biography are greedy readers, with an insatiable appetite for detail and story. There are all sorts of ways of satisfying these appetites. Coming at a likeness will always involve a messy, often contradictory, mixture of approaches...but the target of all these approaches is a living person in a body, not a smoothed-over figure...'

I'd slotted in some alternatives to Orange longlist reading in the last week and having just finished East Fortune by James Runcie, I had been struck by one memorable little quote in particular,

'You should always speak the truth, but the truth need not be spoken.'

Let me therefore try and explain something of the moral quandary I have been considering since reading The Other Elizabeth Taylor by Nicola Beauman.
Several years ago I wrote a short piece for newbooks mag on Elizabeth Taylor, a very favourite writer of mine, in which I acknowledged that legendary privacy for which Elizabeth Taylor was famed. Letters and diaries destroyed and very little written about her life since her death in 1975 and somehow the world is very unaccepting of that these days. We feel we have an inalienable right to know every last detail  and though I knew this book was being written, I had also heard that all was not going smoothly in that way that you do, but had decided it was all best ignored until the book emerged.
Being a start-with-the-afterword person for books like this I was therefore surprised, yet on reflection not that surprised to discover that though Elizabeth Taylor's late husband John had originally given permission

'to write this biography and to quote from all published and unpublished copyright material'

on submitting the completed manuscript to John and Elizabeth's children they were 'very angry and distressed' about the book and have asked to be disassociated from it.
In the interests of anonymity only one person is publicly thanked (it will become obvious who) the rest have received personal letters instead and at this point I was but a short step from envisaging the lasting suspicion and mistrust this may have engendered amongst the family and friends of Elizabeth Taylor and what long-term and possibly damaging consequences that may have.
It quickly became obvious as I read what the sources of contention may have been.
In the course of her research Nicola Beauman had located and met up with Elizabeth's wartime lover and writing confidante Raymond Russell who had kept all Elizabeth's personal and intimate letters to him. In the face of such an extraordinary discovery I can only imagine this was like hitting the biographer's mother lode because the startling revelations contained therein form the foundation of much of this book, the contents often seguing into close analysis of Elizabeth Taylor's writing.
John Taylor to whom Elizabeth was married for thirty-nine years and who was doubtless out working earning and supporting both his family and his wife's writing (though Elizabeth eventually earned a substantial amount in her own right) remains the merest shadow in the whole. There are hints of his infidelities but as a husband and father he barely exists and on a personal note I think as a reader I would have felt reassured by further clarification about whether John Taylor knew of and agreed to the inclusion of these letters and subsequent analysis, and would he have cooperated so fully had he known that the final result would be so traumatic for his family?
Having worked on The Other Elizabeth Taylor for fifteen years, Nicola Beauman has waited until John's death (two years ago) to self-publish this book and of course we can only surmise what heart-searching this may have entailed behind the scenes.
I'm reminded of Penelope Fitzgerald's foray into a biography of L.P.Hartley and the years of work abandoned out of respect for the family when she discovered information that would be distressing to them and perhaps all this highlights the dilemmas faced by the biographers. Of necessity they have to set themselves that clear remit to satisfy the 'greedy reader' and marry this with their own moral parameters in telling that truth which needs to be spoken. There's another uncanny Fitzgerald-Knox link too because Elizabeth Taylor was at one time governess to Penelope's cousin, the seven-year old Oliver Knox who was almost certainly the inspiration for Oliver in Elizabeth Taylor's first novel, At Mrs Lippincote's.
Yet none of that should detract from a sympathetic, readable and well-written book, one which gives a careful and close analysis of Elizabeth Taylor's early life, her extraordinary career as a novelist and short story writer, her thin-skinned vulnerability to  excoriating criticism (and some of it was pure evil by all accounts) which eventually caused her to retreat further into quiet village life, whilst no fan of Elizabeth Taylor will be disappointed at the superb resource now at their fingertips. Mine now resembling a pink hedgehog and primed ready for a good re-read of Elizabeth Taylor's novels and particularly her short stories which I have most certainly and woefully neglected.
But I have to say it feels unusual to read a biography that declares open conflict with quite such candour and I remain undecided, perhaps I'm being too sensitive but I feel somehow complicit in the Taylor family's obvious pain and distress, and now wonder whether reading this book has left me feeling slightly voyeuristic and a shade uncomfortable.
Do I feel as if I have been offered a furtive and slightly illicit glimpse behind Elizabeth's own net curtains? As I wrote of Elizabeth Taylor at the time,

'She is at her best when portraying the seemingly ordinary lives of the middle classes, writing about what she knows; however she knows much more than that. In her hands of course in reality those lives are far from mundane or perfect as we are escorted far enough below the surface to gaze at the cracks and then safely left there to explore them for ourselves.'

So how do I now feel about being taken to the less than perfect aspects of Elizabeth's own life in the full and certain knowledge of the distress this is causing?
When exactly does a writer's life become public property and where should those powers of discretion and decision rest?
Can such a thing as confidentiality ever exist for a writer?
In this instance we have the letters but, given the gloss of Raymond Russell's version and Nicola Beauman's interpretation of events, who can possibly know Elizabeth's side of this story and its seeming sadness?
There are certainly moments when I winced on behalf of the feelings of the family who may be reading this book; apart from the revelations there are the assertions that though they may have been proud of Elizabeth they teased her and never took her writing seriously, that she was intellectually lonely and isolated, that the constraints of caring for her children and then grandchildren impinged on her writing and plenty more.
As an attempt at regenerating interest in a much-neglected writer there is no question in my mind that this book succeeds. Without entering into detail about the revelations, which rather than sensationalize I will leave you to read for yourselves and very importantly consider within the context of the whole, yes, I now know a great deal more about Elizabeth Taylor the woman and the writer.
But interestingly I still think the enigma of the real Elizabeth Taylor remains unresolved for me.
I still don't know a great deal about the other Elizabeth Taylor either, perhaps because it was not within the feminist remit of this book to explore that, but the one of whom her daughter said

'We always knew that we were the most important part of her life.'

The Elizabeth Taylor who was known only to her family; the wife, the mother who adored her children, who always put them first, the person whose memory is carved for all time in her childrens' hearts and about whom her daughter Joanna Kingham has also said,

'It was great fun being her daughter - no one else has been able to reduce me to such a weeping state of giggles over the most ordinary, everyday events.'

I can't help but feel that this Elizabeth Taylor contributed as much to that lifetime of writing as the other one.
More importantly I've tried to read this book with real empathy for all concerned and on reflection perhaps my state of Keatsian negative capability is exactly the way things should remain until such time as Elizabeth Taylor's family decide (or not) to tell their own particular truth about this remarkable woman's life.
It felt clear to me that this book may have been published at a cost and only those involved can know how great that cost is, but I suspect there is a good deal more truth out there about Elizabeth Taylor now needed to rebalance the woman portrayed in The Other Elizabeth Taylor and 'greedy readers' though we may be, we may just not have that inalienable right to know it.

and pe

More Jitterbugging...Fred Astaire by Joseph Epstein

Sometimes exactly the right book for the right moment waltzes through the gate in the arms of Jim the Postie, I open the jiffy bag and start reading and that's more or less what happened with Fred Astaire by Joseph Epstein and published by Yale University Press in the Icons of America series.
Fred Astaire about whom I knew very little when I sat and thought about him; sang and danced with Ginger Rogers, made a lot of films...um...um.
So the truth is that Fred Astaire was such a private man that there isn't a great deal more to know.
Working-class roots and an ambitious mother, who having christened him Frederick Austerlitz II then chose wisely with the stage name of Astaire for Fred and his sister Adele when she upped sticks, left husband Frederick Austerlitz I and headed to New York to get her son and daughter on the stage.
Having made his name and fortune Fred did the unusual thing, married happily, had children and led by all accounts a dirt and scandal-free life, thus far nothing but nothing seems to have emerged to stain our image of him as the happy dancing man of the films. The sublime and seemingly effortless dancing acquired through hour upon hour of diligent practice, he was a perfectionist and also a talented singer which is often largely ignored as we focus on his feet.
But we're not supposed to focus on Fred's feet and he discouraged cameramen from doing likewise so there are important facts for non-dancers like me to know.
Whilst Gene Kelly's dancing power derived from his legs and Rudolf Nureyev's from his buttocks (say not a single word...anyone, the spam will be bad enough) Fred's came from his entire body and there is apparently a difference. Fred was short in stature but long in leg and this created exactly the right dancing proportions, which combined with an innate sense of rhythm and a lot more besides made for the perfect package. He was very aware of his lack of height and leading ladies had to be carefully chosen, whilst Fred was always very careful to ensure that, for viewers to appreciate the full impact of his total-body dance technique, he always appeared in full length camera shots when dancing.
The only revelations concern Fred's occasional ambivalence about Ginger Rogers. The partnership was not all it seemed and was mixed with a keen, but oddly misplaced, self-effacing sense of his own talent as 'just a hoofer' which didn't quite come across as true modesty as I read. Fred was acutely aware of his image and maintained strict control over it (would never have been photographed in an ancient old jumper toupee for a start)
Interestingly Fred Astaire was also a man in the right place at the right time as 1930s Depression-hit America looked to the movies for its solace, 90 million out of a population of 150 million went every week. Audiences were in the mood to be transported far from the daily misery and this, coupled with a wealth of fabulous song-writers at their zenith, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern all desperate to write for Fred, thus ensuring his success.
Perhaps a Dancing Fred for our age will emerge this Depression-time round ?
Perhaps he has, that's it, John Sergeant.
Joseph Epstein tackles his subject with a refreshing approach and the result is a book that reads like a series of intelligent and interesting essays as he examines all the many facets of Fred Astaire's success and along the way examines the social impact of this complex and slightly enigmatic man. Discovering then that Joseph Epstein IS an essayist would seem to explain this.
There is an excellent resume and critique of the film oeuvre and apart from the fact I really now want to watch them all again, Joseph Epstein makes a few sound ultra-appealing particularly Easter Parade, the only film made with Judy Garland. Had Judy been able to hold her life together Joseph Epstein suggests that Fred & Judy might have been an even greater partnership than Fred & Ginger.
Now proceed no further if you wish your Fred & Ginger dream to remain intact, we honestly won't hold it against you though it does mean you will miss startling new evidence researched and revealed here for the first time.

Everyone else fast forward 2 mins into this clip from Top Hat if you want to get to the Cheek to Cheek dreamy romantic dancing bit, but do bear in mind that Fred was absolutely livid with Ginger about those ostrich feathers. There had been the most almighty and terrible row, but Ginger had stuck to her plumage and refused to change the dress, Fred was not a happy bunny,

'Feathers started to fly as if a chicken had been attacked by a coyote. It was like a snow-storm. They were floating round like millions of moths. I had feathers in my eyes, my ears, my mouth, all over the front of my suit.'

Personally I think this is no more Mr Nice Guy.
At about 2 mins 51secs, Fred clearly has an idea about that plumage so don't whatever you do miss the moment at 4mins 32secs when I'd swear he holds Ginger just a fraction longer than necessary with half an ostrich up her nose.
At 4mins 46 secs I reckon Ginger has her revenge and whispers something pretty lethal in Fred's ear, and do they hold hands lovingly at the end ?
Well it's all so obvious now we know.

Selective Memory by Katharine Whitehorn

I'm not a huge fan of autobiography given that you know as you read that the content is exactly as Katharine Whitehorn's title suggests, Selective Memory, and the source for her quote from Jim Fiebig is the epigram for the book.

'If you can look back on your life with contentment, you have one of man's most precious gifts - a selective memory.,

It clearly becomes the privilege of the author to tell us as much or as little as they want as honestly or otherwise as they see it and Katharine Whitehorn has done exactly that and in the process has actually told us a great deal.
I think I was part of the post-Whitehorn era or again was so busy trying to sleep after a long shift back in the 1970's or coping with the three-babies-in-four-years in the 1980's that I sort of missed her. I'm beginning to feel a bit of a dullard about the 1970's feminist revolution or was it all being played out on centre court whilst I was involved in a minor match on the outside ?  (Wimbers coming up, time to get tennis-y)
The book is a laugh aloud read as well as offering some serious commentary on the titanic battle being fought on Centre Court and Katharine Whitehorn was most certainly volleying up at the net and sending down those blistering forehand drives as she took on all-comers in Fleet Street, but also embraced a much wider sphere in her quest to get a woman's voice heard and more importantly listened to.
The battle undoubtedly had its casualties and it seems remarkable that through it all Katharine and her husband, the thriller writer Gavin Lyall, sustained a marriage of forty-two years before his death at the age of seventy. This must have been a marriage forged in the maelstrom of change and to their credit they negotiated a path and raised a family which Katharine recounts unflinchingly. Despite a successful writing career, alcohol and the ever-present spectre of failure were Gavin's demons, but Katharine paints layer upon layer, building up a picture of him as a lovely man, not without his faults, but with a wickedly quickfire sense of humour and well able to manage her fiery outbursts. Katharine is no slouch in citing her own faults either and you sense a couple who accepted each other for better for worse and everything else inbetween and honoured it. The book is a tribute to their tenacity and sheer bloody-mindedness and rings true as a consequence because it was most certainly not all a bed of the proverbial roses; on one occasion it was in fact a bed concealing a melon so make of that what you will.
Katharine and I agree about a great deal it would seem. I am of the firm belief, as you know, that canvas is for painting on not sleeping under, Katharine goes a step further pointing out that

'the main point of camping is to remind one why they invented the house.

It could also hardly be imagined that Katharine and I might even vaguely know the same people but a name cropped up in her book, a journalist and editor (and previous girlfriend of Gavin Lyall's) by the name of Suzanne Puddefoot.
Talk about selective memory, I knew this name, it's memorable as were the circumstances.
There followed a fair old rummage around the archives and finally I found it. A very yellowed copy of the Tavistock Times dated February 15th 1980 (told you I never throw anything away) and there it was, me starring in a centre page spread on a day in the life of a health visitor for the local newspaper, and the reporter I took out for the day?
Sue Puddefoot.
Could it be the same one?

More to the point what about that terrible picture of me, twenty six and kneeling by a buggy chooking a baby's chin while a proud mother looks on (I can even remember the baby's name!), I'm looking slightly worrying and even worse I'm wearing, oh good grief, the embarrassment, a tartan-lined duffle coat.
I'm sure there's no way you want to see that picture, but you absolutely do want to read Katharine Whitehorn's book which has much nicer pictures and shares many moments that add up to this poignant one in the final pages,

'What does happen is that the good memories become a source of pleasure and comfort tinged with the same autumnal ache, the same regret one feels about having once been young, of the unreturning years.'

The Time-Torn Specialist Community Public Health Nurse

It had seemed like a really good idea to book for this series of "Great Writers" Talks at Peninsular Arts down in Plymouth. Head off across the edge of Dartmoor after work for a bit of cultural improvement on a Wednesday evening which is when my weekend begins after my three working days.
Except the first talk this week coincided with my last working day before a week's annual leave.
I can't decide which is worse, that day when you rush around doing about three days work in one in order to get out of the office, thus feeling far more in need of a break than you realised, or the day you go back and face it all again and the benefits of the break dissipate by 9.30am. I had visits to do, newborn baby hearing screens to do, records to write up, phone calls to make, letters to write, appointments to make for the week I get back, GP's to catch and speak to, social workers to catch and speak to, the Mother's Union are giving away free holidays so I had to be a travel agent and find people who wanted them by next week's closing date, oh yes and filing, shredding, hand over the caseload to a colleague and so it went on and on and on...this is boring, everyone has their own version of this problem, but at this rate I'd be lucky to stay awake more than five minutes in a comfortable, warm, people-filled lecture theatre.
Suffice it to say I was late leaving but relieved to finally divert my mobile onto the office answerphone and walk to the white board in reception and ceremoniously write up HV A/L BACK 03/03/08. The angels were looking down on me as I threw the car into the luckiest parking space in Plymouth almost opposite the venue, rushed in and there was Claire Tomalin sitting looking calm and serene in readiness for what proved to be a compelling and fascinating talk on her book Thomas Hardy, the Time-Torn Man.
It worked like a dream, the rigours of the day faded and I was transported to Dorset and most specifically to the poetry of Thomas Hardy which I have largely ignored, but which Claire Tomalin presented as Hardy's forte and the foundation for his gifted prose. I sat there picturing my virtually unopened edition of  Thomas Hardy : Selected Poetry and Non-Fictional Prose edited by Peter Widdowson on the shelf and determined to pick it up when I got home. Claire Tomalin's love of Hardy's poetry evident and infectious as she read several to us.
Included in those several, The Voice

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first when our day was fair.

And the whole room as of one was intently focused on the great sadness and guilt that Hardy felt after Emma's death.
There was a detailed and interesting look at Thomas Hardy's early life and that of his family and Claire Tomalin skilfully traced many of Hardy's attributes back to his parents and grandparents. I am enjoying The Mayor of Casterbridge so much that it's impossible to imagine another Hardy to better this one and now I'm wondering if there is a DVD of the old TV series which I may have watched but can barely remember.
A quick trip to Amazon and there it is.
Then I'm thinking perhaps we can squeeze in a trip to Hardy's cottage at Bockhampton  as soon as it opens next month, because actually I'm on annual leave again. Suddenly I want to read, watch and see it all.
Meanwhile it is clear there is a real thirst for these events in Plymouth, the lecture theatre was packed, standing room only and a queue of ticketless people hoping to squeeze in.
Next week Professor Sally Ledger on Dickens and the People. I can hardly wait.

Saturday on a Thursday and my old friend Gwen.

Stream of consciousness is a useful tool when you write a blog.
One bookish thought leads to another and before you know it I'm scurrying to my shelves for a pile of books to share on here and, love them though I do, it really helps if the house is empty and the thoughts flow unhindered
Last Saturday morning and Bookhound is out for the day helping the Gamekeeper do what the Gamekeeper does.The Kayaker, currently between rivers, is in residence but has headed off to Wales for the weekend. West Country rivers are disappointingly low for his liking so a trip in search of white water has guaranteed us a day and a night of torrential rain here.Then he's off to something called The Hurley Rodeo where they ride kayaks instead of horses but probably shout yeeee-haaaaah giddy-up neddy just the same.
In amongst the post was one of those catalogues from a second-hand bookshop, this one Bow Windows in Lewes, Sussex. I'm not a collector of rarities any more, so nothing seems affordable, but one book catches my eye, The Wood Engravings of Gwen Raverat published in 1959, a first edition going for £200.
Still not affordable but I had a quick covet.
Anything by Gwen Raverat now fetching good prices and mention of Frances Spalding earlier this week leads me immediately to her biography, Gwen Raverat, Friends, Family & Affections.
I'm sure I must have mentioned it here before, ( in fact I know I have because idly typing Gwen- Raverat- woodcuts into google images flags up just about every picture I have ever put on this blog, it's on here somewhere ) and many will have read Period Piece, Gwen's own account of her childhood, but if you missed the biography and want a page-turningly readable and informative account of a woman you may know little about this one is not to be missed.
Born in 1885, Gwen was the granddaughter of Charles Darwin and thus part of a well-established and highly respected Cambridge family.What radiates from the pages of Frances Spalding's book is a fascinating character, hugely resilient, devoted to her loved ones and immensely talented. Moving on the edges of the Bloomsbury Group, Gwen enrolled in the Slade School of Painting and Drawing; wood-engraving of little interest when she first sharpened her chisels but her talent soon became apparent.
Much more to it than cutting a few lines in a bit of wood as I first thought, woodcuts follow the grain of the wood, wood-engravings are cut on the end grain.The illustrations are plentiful, page after page of Gwen's work and if you are near Cambridge, and can find the Broughton House Gallery , you can indulge in some reasonably priced books of the engravings as well as browsing The Gwen Raverat Archive.
I never tire of looking at them and would like to think I could now spot a Gwen Raverat at twenty paces but that might be a bit ambitious.However the book opened my eyes to the whole craft and I went through a very dodgy patch of wanting some chisels to have a go until 'someone' tactfully reminded me that it helps if you can draw in the first place, which I can't.
It's probably infringing all copyright rules to add a woodcut here but how can I not share The Land of Storybooks? The photo, of the photo of the copy of the original is mine if that helps and I can only beg forgiveness from Family Raverat, but I'm sorry I just have to do it. I'll go to prison and help in the library, that's fine.

Who on earth is Belle Da Costa Greene?

A reading life is full of strange and unpredictable coincidences not least those connections between two reads which are poles apart in genre and yet somehow merge and overlap into the same territory.
An Illuminated Life, Belle Da Costa Greene's Journey From Prejudice to Privilege by Heidi Ardizzone published by W.W.Norton is one of those biographies that looks sumptuous but who on earth was she?
I bet you all know, but for the minority few like me who don't I'll tell you.
This is the biography of a librarian.
Belle Da Costa Greene was hired by wealthy New York banker J.P.Morgan in 1905 to collate and catalogue his rare book and manuscript collection.If you thought JPM might be on the lookout for a highly qualified librarian then think again because Belle was young and inexperienced in the art of wearing the squeaky shoes and the cardigan but she adored books and knew that was where she wanted to work.

"Belle knew that her chosen work as a librarian hardly fit the image and attitude that her flamboyant mischievous soul demanded "Just because I am a librarian...doesn't mean I have to dress like one""

So now we'll have a little rest while the librarians who visit here take deep breaths and plan their comments, I can't wait because I know they are the wittiest of the lot.
The other drawback could have been that Belle was fractionally on the wrong side of the colour line with black ancestry on her father's side and raised "in a family of colour" in Washington DC. In fact despite being distantly related to the singer, Paul Robeson, Belle effectively crossed the colour line.
Crossing the colour line is a new concept for me and one I have never read about in any depth, so it is this that makes for enlightening reading in the first hundred pages or more that I've covered so far. Belle never actually lied about her background but nor did she fully embrace it and many struggled to describe the strange beauty of a woman who became increasingly powerful as she sat at the right hand of one of the wealthiest men in America. For me this was all new information and all the more engrossing for that, coupled with the fact that Heidi Ardizzone's writing style is eminently readable and absorbing.
I will read this one right through because I am intrigued to see just how the enigmatic Belle becomes what she does, a world-famous celebrity whose New York life was "dazzlingly white, upper-class, upper-crust, high culture". How and why did she make her choices and you have to admire or perhaps feel sorry for a woman who felt compelled to take four to ten years off her age for her entire life.
The book that immediately jumped into my mind was Love Across  Colour Lines, Ottilie Assing & Frederick Douglass by Maria Diedrich, and the story of their twenty-eight-year relationship.That's another 375 pages of unread book sitting here forlornly, but Frederick Douglass and Richard T.Greener, Belle's father worked together so perhaps I have a reading trail opening there.
But the real coincidence was much more ordinary really because simultaneously I'm reading The Collectors by David Baldacci and hey ho it's all about intrigue and mystery in the Library of Congress's Rare Books Division.Librarians both dead and alive stalk or lie amongst the shelves, bibliomaniacs and cardigans abound, the shoes squeak loudly and even the revered JPM gets a mention.
OK librarians, it's all yours.

The Life of Bosie

New and interesting territory for me as I read Alfred Douglas: A Poet's Life and His Finest Work by Caspar Wintermans and published by Peter Owen.This a very readable account of  the infamous but lesser known life of Bosie, the cause of all Oscar Wilde's troubles.Oscar's revenge came in the shape of De Profundis and by this was Bosie judged for ever more.
Much maligned and scorned for a great deal of his life poor Bosie took to litigation for redress more times than was good for him. Bruised and battered after dragging Arthur Ransome unsuccessfully through the courts, Bosie then found himself mixing with the big league.To my complete surprise it was no less than a litigious encounter with Winston Churchill that finally sent Bosie the way of Oscar and a term in prison disentangling some oakum of his own.
Caspar Wintermans sets out to revoke the considered opinion of Bosie as "the most complete cad in history" and to a large extent I think he succeeds.
Two sides to every story and like many I only knew one and that was Stephen Fry's.It's years since I read Richard Ellman's biography.
Tragically Bosie's early life of beauty and privilege as the son of the Marquis of Queensbury did not endow him with many coping mechanisms.It was prison that reformed him by all accounts and he emerged a changed man, though he still aroused a great deal of suspicion and animosity.
When John Betjeman's mother discovered her son's correspondence with Bosie you can only begin to imagine the scene. John was ordered by his father "to concentrate on outdoor athletic activities rather than reading decadent verse".John resumed his friendship with Bosie and his wife Olive some years later and found Bosie to be "a gentleman with beautiful manners"
Which brings me nicely onto Bosie's poetry contained in its entirety in this volume.
It had little impact on me before I'd read the biography but following on afterwards and with an impression and a context now firmly established there are moments of real poignancy to be found.
The poems mirror the events of Bosie's life much as a diary might have done.
It's impossible to read the sonnet Behold, Your House is Left Unto You Desolate without picturing the distraught Bosie sitting in his empty house after his wife has left him and his soul-searching admission in another poem entitled To Olive

"I have been profligate of happiness
And reckless of the world's hostility,
The blessed part has not been given to me
Gladly to suffer fools, I do confess
I have enticed and merited distress,
By this, that I have never bowed the knee
Before the shrine of wise Hypocrisy,
Nor worn self-righteous anger like a dress"

The notes that accompany the poems are something I would usually skip but therein some nuggets of new knowledge for me.
I now know what a St Martin's Summer is and how exactly Edward II may have been tortured and susequently died.
A St Martin's Summer that period around his feast day on November 11th often characterized by a period of mild weather in England apparently.
Regarding the fate of Edward II, well, astounding.No plans to elaborate here, you'll have to research that for yourselves but I recounted it at the dinner table and there were groans all round.
Moving very swiftly on before I'm compelled to talk about the fate of the Plantagenet intrailes...
All a completely enjoyable, unusual and interesting read.Once I'd read the biography and then the poems I found myself in complete agreement with George Bernard Shaw to whom Bosie sent his collected poems in 1936
"For this be all thy sins forgiven thee".

Hardy bulletin

Time for an update from the valley on my progress with Thomas Hardy The Time-Torn Man by Claire Tomalin.
Biographies I find make excellent pre-sleep reading.
I don't mean they send me to sleep especially because all books do that eventually.It's just that the content isn't usually anything so disturbing that it gives you insomnia or nightmares.However fiction will often butt in insistently and refuse to be put down and of course then you face the perils of dreaming accordingly or just lying there with the maelstrom of a plot swirling round in your head.
That's happened recently so I'm only just heading to London with young Thomas in 1862 and his first employment.
He was in good company if he had but known it as a steady stream of eminent writers made their way to the capital with him.Henry James arriving with a credit note for £1000 and thus able to find decidedly comfortable lodgings in Mayfair .
Whilst Henry was busy dining with Leslie (Stephen), John (Ruskin) and William (Morris) and meeting  the pre-Raphaelite painters poor Thomas had to settle for a shared room in the then rural area of Kilburn, 3 Clarence Place still surrounded by farms and fields.Is it still there?
But luck was on his side and he wasn't on job seeker's benefit for long.
Wanted by Blomfield's, London's top architects, someone who could do Gothic ecclesiastical drawing for an annual salary of £110. So young Thomas now had the daily commute into the offices at  9  St Martin's Lane, just off Trafalgar Square.
Do we know what's there now? Could someone from Orion nip round and have a look?
Thomas threw himself into the London tourist scene, went to hear Charles Dickens read, did the galleries, churches, libraries, museums, theatres, heard Palmerston speak in the House and went to his funeral at Westminster Abbey. I can only imagine what a heady sense of pure excitement all this must have meant to the country-bred lad from Dorset. Anyone lucky enough to find themselves living in London for the first time must still go through the same experience, well I did.
My first read in the Hardy-thon will be A Pair of Blue Eyes set in North Cornwall which means we can finally get around to that long promised trip up to Boscastle and see just how things have moved on since the great flash flood of 2004.
Now that was a night to remember down here.
It was actually the Valency Valley where the flood waters rose as I recall and that's were we'll head to find St Juliot's Church and like so many churches around here it's best seen when the snowdrops are out.
Dig out your stout walking shoes and Bookhound will get started on the egg sandwiches.He does a wicked picnic, form an orderly queue and expect cafetieres of fresh coffee to be produced from the back of the Land Rover (once it's parked up that is)