A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, Isabella Bird
Reading about the travels of Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Smith Gibson in The Sisters of Sinai reminded me of Isabella Bird and her travels. Many years ago a friend gave me a copy of A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, saying, "Oh, you have to read this." I never did get around to reading it, but I remembered the author's name when I came across it in a book I've mentioned before, Sue Shepherd's book on food history, Pickled, Potted and Canned. That led me to read Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, and to dig out my copy of A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains.
Born in Yorkshire in 1831, Isabella Bird developed health problems early in her life, including a spinal tumor at age 18 that was successfully but painfully removed. Her doctor advised her to travel for her health. For many Victoria women, this meant a visit to a European spa town, or a winter in Italy. Isabella Bird would travel the world for the next fifty years. Her last trip, at age 70, was to Morocco.
Her first trip abroad was to Canada and the United States in 1854, an account of which was published two years later as The Englishwoman in America (I posted about it back in February). In 1872 she set off on an extended voyage that took her to Australia and New Zealand, across the Pacific to the Hawaiian Islands, and finally to the United States. Landing in San Francisco in September of 1873, she immediately set off for Colorado. She spent four months exploring the Rocky Mountains, primarily in Colorado, before heading east to sail home to England. Like several of her other books, A Lady's Life is a collection of the letters she wrote home to her sister Henrietta. I didn't realize that this book follows directly after the account of her Hawaiian adventure, Six Months in the Sandwich Islands, which I have on the TBR pile. If I had, I might have read it first, since Bird frequently referred to Hawaii.
I can't help but wonder if the title of this book was meant ironically, because Isabella Bird's life in those four months was anything but "ladylike" according to Victorian standards, even for a middle-aged woman of forty-two. She spent those months riding around northern Colorado, covering more than 800 square miles. She sometimes had guides, including an infamous one-eyed outlaw named "Mountain Jim," whom she discovered to be a man of education and culture, ruined by drink and the violence of the frontier, who became a good friend and traveling companion. At other times Bird set off alone, riding astride in trousers under her long skirt, with only the vaguest of directions, trusting to find shelter in scattered settlers' cabins, often caught in the extremes of winter weather, including blizzards. I'm not sure she realized how fortunate she was to come safely through all that she did. Due to a wide-spread financial crisis, she was unable to cash her equivalent of traveler's checks, and when her money ran out she was forced to spend almost a month living in a snow-bound cabin in Estes Park, with two hunters wintering there, with whom she cheerfully shared cooking and cleaning duties, as well as minding the stock.
Bird was completely captivated by the gorgeous scenery of Colorado, devoting many pages of her letters to describing the majesty of the mountains. "Jim" took her with two male tourists on an expedition to Long's Peak, and with the help of the men she climbed (and was dragged) to the top. She was equally interested in the people that she met, though many of them were rough settlers, uncomfortable with tourists. As in her 1854 trip, Bird still met hostility toward England, which I understand better after reading Amanda Foreman's book on Britain and the American Civil War. It seems that wherever she went, Bird met friends and acquaintances, and she also made friends easily. She was a good listener, and she took a share in whatever work there was to be done. She went out of her way to help those in need, including nursing the sick and caring for children. She seems to have taken everything in stride; the difficulties and privations she faced counted for nothing compared with the glorious mountains.
I found the Isabella Bird of 1873 much better company than the 1854 version, and now I'm greatly looking forward to Six Months in the Sandwich Islands.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
An unusual mix of airplanes and religion
Round the Bend, Nevil Shute
This book wasn't part of the Nevil Shute library loot that I posted about last month; it has actually been sitting on the TBR pile for several years now. But adding the new books to the TBR pile reminded me of this one, and when I was at something of a loose end after finishing The Sisters of Sinai, I picked it up.
Round the Bend was originally published in 1951, and the copy I have is a Heinemann reprint from 1969, a hardback. I hadn't noticed that the dust jacket says nothing about the book; there is no blurb or synopsis, only four brief review quotes. I can't think the last time I started a book knowing almost nothing about it.
As I read, though, I began to get the feeling that I had read this before. Perhaps I did, in one of my previous Nevil Shute reading binges. Or perhaps that feeling of déjà lu came from the book's subject matter, because this is one of Shute's mystical books, like In the Wet and An Old Captivity, stories of reincarnation. Round the Bend is a story about religion, and the unlikely Teacher who proclaims it.
Because this is Nevil Shute, it's also a story about airplanes. The narrator is Tom Cutter, who as a boy in Southampton in the 1930s falls in love with airplanes. From a working-class background, he secures an apprenticeship in the industry, training first as an engineer and then as a pilot. When the war comes, his firm sends him to Egypt to run their repair operations, and he spends several years traveling around the Middle East. He returns there, to Bahrain, after the war and the disastrous end of his brief marriage. With a single plane, he establishes an air transport company, serving the booming oil industry.
His company is unique in that he employs native pilots, engineers and ground crews. This is in part because his years in the Middle East have taught him a tolerance unusual for a man of his time and background. He can see beyond stereotypes, and while not entirely free of prejudice himself, he rejects the unthinking racism of his contemporaries. But his inclusiveness has a practical aspect as well: employing Arabs and Asians makes good business sense for someone hoping to do business in the Middle East and Asia, and their salary scales are lower than he would have to pay European recruits.
On a layover in Batavia (present-day Jakarta), Tom meets an old friend from his early flying days, Constantine Shaklin, whom he recruits for his new company. As a teenager, Connie was fascinated by religion, attending services in mosques, temples, and churches. The son of a Chinese father and Russian mother, he has returned to the Far East and continued his study of religion, particularly Buddhism. In Bahrain, Tom is somewhat startled to find Connie preaching in the airplane hangars, as the men work. Many of the group are Muslim, and Connie's teachings are put in Muslim terms, but he is preaching a gospel of work and accountability, a religion of engineering and maintenance:
The faith that Connie is preaching seems to echo the ancient Benedictine spirituality of "work is prayer, and prayer is work." I found the spiritual part of the story less compelling than the business side, which takes Tom's company into Pakistan, India, Siam, Singapore, Indochina, and even to Australia, at a time of rising tension between European colonizers and native peoples seeking autonomy. I was unreasonably irritated by the eventual fates of two major characters, and I found the ending of the story rather unsatisfying. But on the whole this is an interesting and unusual book, reminding me again that there is a variety to Nevil Shute's books that defies easy classification.
This book wasn't part of the Nevil Shute library loot that I posted about last month; it has actually been sitting on the TBR pile for several years now. But adding the new books to the TBR pile reminded me of this one, and when I was at something of a loose end after finishing The Sisters of Sinai, I picked it up.
Round the Bend was originally published in 1951, and the copy I have is a Heinemann reprint from 1969, a hardback. I hadn't noticed that the dust jacket says nothing about the book; there is no blurb or synopsis, only four brief review quotes. I can't think the last time I started a book knowing almost nothing about it.
As I read, though, I began to get the feeling that I had read this before. Perhaps I did, in one of my previous Nevil Shute reading binges. Or perhaps that feeling of déjà lu came from the book's subject matter, because this is one of Shute's mystical books, like In the Wet and An Old Captivity, stories of reincarnation. Round the Bend is a story about religion, and the unlikely Teacher who proclaims it.
Because this is Nevil Shute, it's also a story about airplanes. The narrator is Tom Cutter, who as a boy in Southampton in the 1930s falls in love with airplanes. From a working-class background, he secures an apprenticeship in the industry, training first as an engineer and then as a pilot. When the war comes, his firm sends him to Egypt to run their repair operations, and he spends several years traveling around the Middle East. He returns there, to Bahrain, after the war and the disastrous end of his brief marriage. With a single plane, he establishes an air transport company, serving the booming oil industry.
His company is unique in that he employs native pilots, engineers and ground crews. This is in part because his years in the Middle East have taught him a tolerance unusual for a man of his time and background. He can see beyond stereotypes, and while not entirely free of prejudice himself, he rejects the unthinking racism of his contemporaries. But his inclusiveness has a practical aspect as well: employing Arabs and Asians makes good business sense for someone hoping to do business in the Middle East and Asia, and their salary scales are lower than he would have to pay European recruits.
On a layover in Batavia (present-day Jakarta), Tom meets an old friend from his early flying days, Constantine Shaklin, whom he recruits for his new company. As a teenager, Connie was fascinated by religion, attending services in mosques, temples, and churches. The son of a Chinese father and Russian mother, he has returned to the Far East and continued his study of religion, particularly Buddhism. In Bahrain, Tom is somewhat startled to find Connie preaching in the airplane hangars, as the men work. Many of the group are Muslim, and Connie's teachings are put in Muslim terms, but he is preaching a gospel of work and accountability, a religion of engineering and maintenance:
"With every piece of work you do, with every nut you tighten down, with every filter that you clean or every tappet that you set, pause at each stage and turn to Mecca, and fold your hands, and humbly ask the All-Seeing God to put into your heart the knowledge whether the work that you have done has been good or ill . . . So that if the work is good you may proceed in peace, and if it is ill you may do it over again, or come to me and I will help you to do well before God."Connie's workplace homilies begin to draw large crowds, not just from the company, but men from the neighboring city, and even beyond. When he travels with Tom in the course of business, he is met at the airports by large crowds, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, waiting to hear him speak. While his Chief Engineer is becoming The Teacher, Tom is still trying to build his business, and the story is divided between the growth of this new faith and of the business. In this second aspect, it reminded me of Ruined City and A Town Like Alice. Nevil Shute started his own airplane firm in the 1930s, and he must have drawn on that experience in writing this book. The details of the business, especially the different types of planes that Tom buys and the cargoes they carry, while typical of his books, can be a bit overwhelming.
The faith that Connie is preaching seems to echo the ancient Benedictine spirituality of "work is prayer, and prayer is work." I found the spiritual part of the story less compelling than the business side, which takes Tom's company into Pakistan, India, Siam, Singapore, Indochina, and even to Australia, at a time of rising tension between European colonizers and native peoples seeking autonomy. I was unreasonably irritated by the eventual fates of two major characters, and I found the ending of the story rather unsatisfying. But on the whole this is an interesting and unusual book, reminding me again that there is a variety to Nevil Shute's books that defies easy classification.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
On the track of ancient manuscripts
The Sisters of Sinai, Janet Soskice
I learned about this book from a review by Teresa on Shelf Love, and I immediately went looking for a copy. The subtitle is "How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels." The "lady adventurers" were twin sisters, Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Smith Gibson. The "hidden gospels" that Agnes Smith Lewis discovered in an Egyptian monastery in 1892 are among the earliest known copies in existence, dating from the second century. But the "how" that connects the two is more than just an account of a trip to Egypt in 1892.
Janet Soskice has written a biography of these two women that places their extraordinary discovery in the context of their extraordinary lives, tracing the people and the events that prepared them for that trip. And their story doesn't end with the trip. In part because male scholars tried to downplay the sisters' role and exclude them from editing the manuscript, they immersed themselves in the study of ancient languages and biblical scholarship. Though they lacked formal academic qualifications, Agnes and Margaret published the first edition of the manuscript in 1894, scooping the scholars. As their studies progressed, they became acknowledged experts in ancient manuscripts and "Oriental" studies (a term then encompassing ancient Egypt and Palestine). They went on to track other manuscripts, some of which they edited and published through the Cambridge University press. Among the most stunning finds was a trove of 40,000 documents retrieved from the 10th century Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo, "the richest archive of medieval Jewish materials in existence."
Born in a small town in western Scotland in 1843, the sisters lost their mother when they were two weeks old. They were raised by their father, who gave them an education and an independence that for the time was more suited to boys than girls. They were also born into a Presbyterian faith that strongly influenced every aspect and action of their long lives, including their search for biblical truth in ancient manuscripts. From their father they learned a love of languages and of travel; for each new language they learned, their reward was a trip to that country. When their father died suddenly in 1866, leaving them the fortune he had inherited, the twins sought solace in travel. Their trip would not be to familiar European countries, but to Egypt and Palestine. Agnes and Margaret joined other notable Victorian women travelers like Amelia Edwards and their fellow Scot, Isabella Bird, and like them the sisters would publish accounts of their travels.
In between later trips, the sisters lived first in London and then in Cambridge. Both married in their 40s, but both lost their husbands after only a few years of marriage. As with their father's death, travel proved a distraction from grief. It was after Agnes's husband died that the sisters set out on their momentous trip to the Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai desert, whose famous library had already yielded a stunning 4th century Greek Bible, the oldest and most complete found to date. Agnes and Margaret had become interested in questions of biblical scholarship, as new scientific discoveries led some scholars to question the Bible's authorship, provenance, and authority. Though their Presbyterian faith was rooted in the Bible, unlike many of their contemporaries the sisters could explore these questions in the abstract, with their faith unshaken.
This book works on several different levels, all of them rewarding. One level is the biography of the sisters, and Soskice makes them live for the reader. They were women of such character, though not always easy to live with - or travel with, for that matter. Another level is the scholarship. Soskice places their discovery in the context of 19th century biblical and historical studies. She carefully tracks the different manuscripts of the Scriptures that appeared, and she cogently explains the developments in biblical studies and the arguments that ensued. I found this part of the story very informative and easy to follow.
The book can also be read as a history of travel in the 19th century. I was reminded not just of Isabella Bird, but also of a favorite fictional traveler, Amelia Peabody Emerson, an Egyptologist modeled on the real Amelia Edwards. The six visits the sisters made to the Monastery of St. Catherine also reminded me of Dorothy Dunnett. The monastery plays an important role in The Unicorn Hunt, part of her House of Niccolo series.
I learned about this book from a review by Teresa on Shelf Love, and I immediately went looking for a copy. The subtitle is "How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels." The "lady adventurers" were twin sisters, Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Smith Gibson. The "hidden gospels" that Agnes Smith Lewis discovered in an Egyptian monastery in 1892 are among the earliest known copies in existence, dating from the second century. But the "how" that connects the two is more than just an account of a trip to Egypt in 1892.
Janet Soskice has written a biography of these two women that places their extraordinary discovery in the context of their extraordinary lives, tracing the people and the events that prepared them for that trip. And their story doesn't end with the trip. In part because male scholars tried to downplay the sisters' role and exclude them from editing the manuscript, they immersed themselves in the study of ancient languages and biblical scholarship. Though they lacked formal academic qualifications, Agnes and Margaret published the first edition of the manuscript in 1894, scooping the scholars. As their studies progressed, they became acknowledged experts in ancient manuscripts and "Oriental" studies (a term then encompassing ancient Egypt and Palestine). They went on to track other manuscripts, some of which they edited and published through the Cambridge University press. Among the most stunning finds was a trove of 40,000 documents retrieved from the 10th century Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo, "the richest archive of medieval Jewish materials in existence."
Born in a small town in western Scotland in 1843, the sisters lost their mother when they were two weeks old. They were raised by their father, who gave them an education and an independence that for the time was more suited to boys than girls. They were also born into a Presbyterian faith that strongly influenced every aspect and action of their long lives, including their search for biblical truth in ancient manuscripts. From their father they learned a love of languages and of travel; for each new language they learned, their reward was a trip to that country. When their father died suddenly in 1866, leaving them the fortune he had inherited, the twins sought solace in travel. Their trip would not be to familiar European countries, but to Egypt and Palestine. Agnes and Margaret joined other notable Victorian women travelers like Amelia Edwards and their fellow Scot, Isabella Bird, and like them the sisters would publish accounts of their travels.
In between later trips, the sisters lived first in London and then in Cambridge. Both married in their 40s, but both lost their husbands after only a few years of marriage. As with their father's death, travel proved a distraction from grief. It was after Agnes's husband died that the sisters set out on their momentous trip to the Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai desert, whose famous library had already yielded a stunning 4th century Greek Bible, the oldest and most complete found to date. Agnes and Margaret had become interested in questions of biblical scholarship, as new scientific discoveries led some scholars to question the Bible's authorship, provenance, and authority. Though their Presbyterian faith was rooted in the Bible, unlike many of their contemporaries the sisters could explore these questions in the abstract, with their faith unshaken.
This book works on several different levels, all of them rewarding. One level is the biography of the sisters, and Soskice makes them live for the reader. They were women of such character, though not always easy to live with - or travel with, for that matter. Another level is the scholarship. Soskice places their discovery in the context of 19th century biblical and historical studies. She carefully tracks the different manuscripts of the Scriptures that appeared, and she cogently explains the developments in biblical studies and the arguments that ensued. I found this part of the story very informative and easy to follow.
The book can also be read as a history of travel in the 19th century. I was reminded not just of Isabella Bird, but also of a favorite fictional traveler, Amelia Peabody Emerson, an Egyptologist modeled on the real Amelia Edwards. The six visits the sisters made to the Monastery of St. Catherine also reminded me of Dorothy Dunnett. The monastery plays an important role in The Unicorn Hunt, part of her House of Niccolo series.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Murder in medieval Japan
The Masuda Affair, I.J. Parker
I came across this in the "new book" bins at the library, and the cover caught my eye. Standing there, I opened the book, and from the first paragraph I wanted to know what happened next:
Riding through a stretch of lonely forest at dusk, on the eve of the feast of O-bon, when the spirits of the dead return to their homes, Akitada hears a child weeping. For a moment he thinks the small figure he sees could be his son Yori, but he soon realizes that it is no ghost but a child, lost, hungry, and in rags. Akitada takes the child to a near-by town, feeds him, buys him new clothes and toys, and finds solace in feeling like a father again. He is later devastated when two peasants appear out of nowhere and accuse him of kidnapping their son. He cannot believe the child is really theirs, so in part to defend himself he begins to investigate the child's background. He learns that there may be a connection through a famous courtesan, Peony, to the local lord's family, the Masudas. According to the townsfolk, Peony drowned herself after the young Lord Masuda's death, though there are rumors that his death was not a natural one. Returning to his home in the capital, Akitada discovers other connections to a powerful lord, Fujiwara Sadanori, who was also once Peony's patron.
Though his investigation is completely unofficial, through it he begins to find his way back to life after his son's death. It also helps him break down the barriers that loss has left between his wife Tamako and himself, and with the members of his household. This being the seventh book, clearly there is a lot of history in these relationships, which gives the story an emotional depth. I want to know more about these people, especially Akitada and Tamako, and I'm looking forward to reading the other books in the series.
I know very little about the history of Japan in this period, though when I was a child, one of my favorite books was One Hundred Eight Bells, a story of a girl growing up in Toyko in the post-war period. (I was thrilled to find my own copy a few years ago, though the internet.) The author includes a "Historical Note" at the end, which gives some context and additional information. Though this is a historical novel, the setting is only sketched in, as a framework for the strong characterizations and the twists of the plot. This is not a "ye olde tymes" book, and because of my own lack of knowledge about Japan's past, I would not have known the time-frame of the story, if not for the jacket blurb.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I already have the first book in the series from the library.
I came across this in the "new book" bins at the library, and the cover caught my eye. Standing there, I opened the book, and from the first paragraph I wanted to know what happened next:
"He was on his homeward journey when he found the boy. At the time, caught in the depth of hopelessness and grief, he did not understand the significance of their meeting. Sugawara Akitada, a member of the privileged class and moderately successful in the service of the emperor, was barely in the middle of his life and already sick of it . . . when his young son died during that spring's smallpox epidemic, he found no solace . . . as if the man he once was had departed with the smoke from his son's funeral pyre . . ."I learned from the jacket that the story is set in 11th century Japan, and that it is the seventh book in a series featuring Sugawara Akitada, an official in the Ministry of Justice in the capital of Heian-Kyo (modern Kyoto). Normally I like to start a series in the beginning, but in this case I found the character of Akitada, and the setting, so intriguing, that I wanted to read it immediately. After a week of Victorian England, I was also very much in the mood for something completely different.
Riding through a stretch of lonely forest at dusk, on the eve of the feast of O-bon, when the spirits of the dead return to their homes, Akitada hears a child weeping. For a moment he thinks the small figure he sees could be his son Yori, but he soon realizes that it is no ghost but a child, lost, hungry, and in rags. Akitada takes the child to a near-by town, feeds him, buys him new clothes and toys, and finds solace in feeling like a father again. He is later devastated when two peasants appear out of nowhere and accuse him of kidnapping their son. He cannot believe the child is really theirs, so in part to defend himself he begins to investigate the child's background. He learns that there may be a connection through a famous courtesan, Peony, to the local lord's family, the Masudas. According to the townsfolk, Peony drowned herself after the young Lord Masuda's death, though there are rumors that his death was not a natural one. Returning to his home in the capital, Akitada discovers other connections to a powerful lord, Fujiwara Sadanori, who was also once Peony's patron.
Though his investigation is completely unofficial, through it he begins to find his way back to life after his son's death. It also helps him break down the barriers that loss has left between his wife Tamako and himself, and with the members of his household. This being the seventh book, clearly there is a lot of history in these relationships, which gives the story an emotional depth. I want to know more about these people, especially Akitada and Tamako, and I'm looking forward to reading the other books in the series.
I know very little about the history of Japan in this period, though when I was a child, one of my favorite books was One Hundred Eight Bells, a story of a girl growing up in Toyko in the post-war period. (I was thrilled to find my own copy a few years ago, though the internet.) The author includes a "Historical Note" at the end, which gives some context and additional information. Though this is a historical novel, the setting is only sketched in, as a framework for the strong characterizations and the twists of the plot. This is not a "ye olde tymes" book, and because of my own lack of knowledge about Japan's past, I would not have known the time-frame of the story, if not for the jacket blurb.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I already have the first book in the series from the library.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Mistress of Charlecote
Mistress of Charlecote, The Memoirs of Mary Elizabeth Lucy, Alice Fairfax-Lucy, ed.
I came across this the other night at Half Price Books (I am constantly and happily surprised at the variety of books that turn up there). The cover blurb sold me on this book:
Many years a widow, Mary Elizabeth Lucy began writing her memoirs while recovering from bronchitis, with the "fancy it will amuse me to write, and perhaps one day it will amuse my grandchildren to read, my reminiscences of when I was young." In addition to her memories, she also includes entries from diaries she apparently kept at the time, and the last part of the book consists mostly of journal entries. The memoirs were edited by Alice Fairfax-Lucy, who married Mary Elizabeth Lucy's great-grandson and lived at Charlecote herself for many years. Alice frequently interrupts the narrative with commentary or explanation, or worst of all foreshadowing, which I found distracting and sometimes annoying. Yet there is no explanation of how the memoirs were edited. I would like to know what if any cuts were made, and also what happened to the earlier diaries. They may have been lost when Mary Elizabeth's daughter-in-law ordered the burning of the family archives, "inventories, letters, medieval charters, and title deeds spanning four hundred years." The archival treasures that were lost! Luckily the memoirs escaped the fire because they lay forgotten in Mary Elizabeth's old sitting room.
Despite the looming presence of the editor, Mary Elizabeth's personality comes through so clearly in this account of her life. Reading it, I was reminded of Memoirs of a Highland Lady, by Elizabeth Grant, and also of The Autobiography of Margret Oliphant. Born in 1803, Mary Elizabeth might have been a Jane Austen heroine. She spent an idyllic childhood in Flintshire, in North Wales, with Hester Thrale Piozzi and the Ladies of Llangollen as neighbors. Growing into the beauty of the family, she received offers of marriage before she was officially out, twice from men her older sisters had hoped to marry. She herself fell in love with a younger son, whose father forbid the marriage. Her own father forced her to accept an offer of marriage from George Lucy, fourteen years her senior, despite her tearful pleadings. Overwhelmed by it all, she fainted at the altar after the exchange of vows. But she came to love her husband, and their marriage was happy, despite the loss of two of their children in infancy. Three more children would die as young adults, each loss devastating their mother. Like Margaret Oliphant, she writes with great feeling about a mother's grief over her child's death. Perhaps because of her strong faith and trust in God, her grief feels less searing than Oliphant's, which almost takes your breath away even 150 years later.
Mixed in with the sadness in this story, though, is a great deal of fun. The Lucys moved in high society, both in the country and in London, where they often stayed. Mary Elizabeth describes lavish gowns and jewelry, balls and Drawing Rooms, country-house visits, and frequent encounters with Royalty. She was especially taken with Princess Mary, the Duchess of Teck, who kindly introduced her to the Princess of Wales. At the same time, Mary Elizabeth is often busy at Charlecote, which required a lot of upkeep and expensive renovations. Her biggest project was razing the old Saxon church in Charlecote Park to build a new one. Though she cried over the loss of the church with
Despite my quibbles with the editing, I did enjoy this book and the company of Mary Elizabeth Lucy, in part because she enjoyed her life so much.
I came across this the other night at Half Price Books (I am constantly and happily surprised at the variety of books that turn up there). The cover blurb sold me on this book:
"Mary Elizabeth Williams, an heiress from North Wales, was only twenty when in 1823 she reluctantly married George Lucy and became mistress of Charlecote Old Hall in Warwickshire. Sixty years later she wrote this engaging account of her life for her grandchildren . . . [which] provides an authentic view of life in fashionable 19th-century society."I had never heard of the Lucy family before, or of their home at Charlecote. They came to England with William the Conqueror and acquired the Charlecote property, which is listed in the Domesday Book, in the early 1200s. The great house was built in 1558, just in time to host Queen Elizabeth. Now a National Trust property, it has a literary claim to fame in a legend that a boy from near-by Stratford, William Shakespeare, was caught poaching a deer in the Charlecote grounds. Rather than face the local magistrate, Sir Thomas Lucy, he fled to London. He later took his revenge on Sir Thomas by writing him into The Merry Wives of Windsor as "Justice Shallow."
Many years a widow, Mary Elizabeth Lucy began writing her memoirs while recovering from bronchitis, with the "fancy it will amuse me to write, and perhaps one day it will amuse my grandchildren to read, my reminiscences of when I was young." In addition to her memories, she also includes entries from diaries she apparently kept at the time, and the last part of the book consists mostly of journal entries. The memoirs were edited by Alice Fairfax-Lucy, who married Mary Elizabeth Lucy's great-grandson and lived at Charlecote herself for many years. Alice frequently interrupts the narrative with commentary or explanation, or worst of all foreshadowing, which I found distracting and sometimes annoying. Yet there is no explanation of how the memoirs were edited. I would like to know what if any cuts were made, and also what happened to the earlier diaries. They may have been lost when Mary Elizabeth's daughter-in-law ordered the burning of the family archives, "inventories, letters, medieval charters, and title deeds spanning four hundred years." The archival treasures that were lost! Luckily the memoirs escaped the fire because they lay forgotten in Mary Elizabeth's old sitting room.
Despite the looming presence of the editor, Mary Elizabeth's personality comes through so clearly in this account of her life. Reading it, I was reminded of Memoirs of a Highland Lady, by Elizabeth Grant, and also of The Autobiography of Margret Oliphant. Born in 1803, Mary Elizabeth might have been a Jane Austen heroine. She spent an idyllic childhood in Flintshire, in North Wales, with Hester Thrale Piozzi and the Ladies of Llangollen as neighbors. Growing into the beauty of the family, she received offers of marriage before she was officially out, twice from men her older sisters had hoped to marry. She herself fell in love with a younger son, whose father forbid the marriage. Her own father forced her to accept an offer of marriage from George Lucy, fourteen years her senior, despite her tearful pleadings. Overwhelmed by it all, she fainted at the altar after the exchange of vows. But she came to love her husband, and their marriage was happy, despite the loss of two of their children in infancy. Three more children would die as young adults, each loss devastating their mother. Like Margaret Oliphant, she writes with great feeling about a mother's grief over her child's death. Perhaps because of her strong faith and trust in God, her grief feels less searing than Oliphant's, which almost takes your breath away even 150 years later.
Mixed in with the sadness in this story, though, is a great deal of fun. The Lucys moved in high society, both in the country and in London, where they often stayed. Mary Elizabeth describes lavish gowns and jewelry, balls and Drawing Rooms, country-house visits, and frequent encounters with Royalty. She was especially taken with Princess Mary, the Duchess of Teck, who kindly introduced her to the Princess of Wales. At the same time, Mary Elizabeth is often busy at Charlecote, which required a lot of upkeep and expensive renovations. Her biggest project was razing the old Saxon church in Charlecote Park to build a new one. Though she cried over the loss of the church with
"that old family pew with its large oak desk around which we had all knelt together, then in the plain ancient Norman font all our children had been christened. Before that altar we had together received 'the bread of life,' and the old church bell had rung its remorseless toll four different times . . . for my beloved husband and three beloved sons,"yet at her wish "it fell to the ground and there was not one stone left upon another."
Despite my quibbles with the editing, I did enjoy this book and the company of Mary Elizabeth Lucy, in part because she enjoyed her life so much.
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Girl on the Boat
The Girl on the Boat, P.G. Wodehouse
I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that as wonderful as P.G. Wodehouse is, not all his books are created equal. For me, The Girl on the Boat isn't one of his best. All the Wodehouse elements are there, but they don't quite come together.
The plot - well, it's tough to do justice to a Wodehouse plot! This one revolves around two cousins, Eustace Hignett and Sam Marlowe. Eustace is the son of Mrs Horace Hignett, "the world-famous writer on Theosophy" who has come to America on a lecture tour.
Sailing on the same ship is Eustace's jilted fiancée, Billie. Despite the presence of her second string suitor, Bream Mortimer, she and Sam fall in love. They quickly become engaged, but she dumps Sam after he and Eustace muff an appearance at the ship's concert, because she can only love the strong, noble type, a Lancelot or Galahad. Meanwhile her friend Jane Hubbard, "a splendid specimen of bronzed, strapping womanhood . . . a thoroughly wholesome, manly girl," retiring from life as a big-game hunter, has fallen in love with Eustace. She wants to settle down with "some gentle clinging man who would put his hand in mine and tell me all his poor little troubles and let me pet and comfort him and bring the smiles back to his face."
After the ship docks in England, the story follows Sam as he attempts to win Billie back by various complicated stratagems and ruses, all of which fall apart in typical Wodehouse ways. The story moves between London and the Hignetts' country home, Windles. Eustace has rented the home to Billie's father, with the proviso that he will remain in residence, so that he can be close to Jane. Adding to the crowd, and the complications, Mortimer and his father are also staying there, in hopes of winning Billie back himself.
This book definitely has its moments of Wodehouse joy, and I'm glad to have read it, but to my mind it can't compare with Uncle Dynamite or Big Money or Leave It To Psmith.
I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that as wonderful as P.G. Wodehouse is, not all his books are created equal. For me, The Girl on the Boat isn't one of his best. All the Wodehouse elements are there, but they don't quite come together.
The plot - well, it's tough to do justice to a Wodehouse plot! This one revolves around two cousins, Eustace Hignett and Sam Marlowe. Eustace is the son of Mrs Horace Hignett, "the world-famous writer on Theosophy" who has come to America on a lecture tour.
"About this time there was a good deal of suffering in the United States, for nearly every boat that arrived from England was bringing a fresh swarm of British lecturers to the country. Novelists, poets, scientists, philosophers, and plain, ordinary bores; some herd instinct seemed to affect them all simultaneously . . . on this one point the intellectuals of Great Britain were single-minded, that there was ready money to be picked up on the lecture-platforms of America, and that they might just as well grab it as the next person . . . [Mrs Hignett] was halfway across the Atlantic with a complete itinerary booked, before ninety per cent of the poets and philosophers had finished sorting out their clean collars and getting their photographs taken for the passports."After that marvelous introduction, I had high hopes of Mrs Hignett, but she soon disappears from the story. In the first chapter, learning that Eustace is to be married that afternoon to a young woman of whom she does not approve, she takes steps to stop the wedding. Eustace and Sam then sail for England.
Sailing on the same ship is Eustace's jilted fiancée, Billie. Despite the presence of her second string suitor, Bream Mortimer, she and Sam fall in love. They quickly become engaged, but she dumps Sam after he and Eustace muff an appearance at the ship's concert, because she can only love the strong, noble type, a Lancelot or Galahad. Meanwhile her friend Jane Hubbard, "a splendid specimen of bronzed, strapping womanhood . . . a thoroughly wholesome, manly girl," retiring from life as a big-game hunter, has fallen in love with Eustace. She wants to settle down with "some gentle clinging man who would put his hand in mine and tell me all his poor little troubles and let me pet and comfort him and bring the smiles back to his face."
After the ship docks in England, the story follows Sam as he attempts to win Billie back by various complicated stratagems and ruses, all of which fall apart in typical Wodehouse ways. The story moves between London and the Hignetts' country home, Windles. Eustace has rented the home to Billie's father, with the proviso that he will remain in residence, so that he can be close to Jane. Adding to the crowd, and the complications, Mortimer and his father are also staying there, in hopes of winning Billie back himself.
This book definitely has its moments of Wodehouse joy, and I'm glad to have read it, but to my mind it can't compare with Uncle Dynamite or Big Money or Leave It To Psmith.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
A final volume of royal letters
Beloved Mama: Private Correspondence of Queen Victoria and the German Crown Princess, 1878-1885, Roger Fulford, ed.
This completes my self-imposed challenge of reading through the five volumes of published letters between Queen Victoria and her eldest daughter. I am wondering now, though, why this is the last volume of letters published, when both women lived until 1901, presumably writing to the end. Beloved Mama was published in 1981, and Roger Fulford, the editor, died in 1983. Perhaps no one else wanted to take on the tremendous effort of deciphering and transcribing the letters? Apparently Queen Victoria's handwriting was a particular challenge, as was her habit of slipping in German words. I do see, though, that the Folio Society has a new one-volume compilation of this correspondence, including letters up to 1901. I may look for a copy of their book at some point, because I feel like I've been left hanging in 1885.
I said in my post about the fourth volume (covering 1871-1878) that I thought it was a very sad book, with many disagreements between mother and daughter, leading to snappy responses and hurt silences. This final volume feels much less sad, though it chronicles many tragic events, including the deaths of two of the Queen's children. Her second daughter Alice died in 1878, on the anniversary of Prince Albert's death and shortly after the death of her own daughter Marie. The Queen's youngest son Leopold died in in 1884, leaving an infant daughter and an expectant wife. At the time of his death, the Queen was still mourning the loss of her beloved servant John Brown in 1883, and though her children sympathized, they did not share or even understand her devotion to him. The younger Victoria lost her favorite son, Waldemar, in 1879, and she found herself increasingly alienated from her oldest son, Prince William (the future Kaiser Wilhelm), and from her other children. It is difficult to understand why from these letters, which are in many cases only excerpts and of course present her side of the story, but the Crown Princess freely expresses her hurt and confusion to her mother. At the same time she remains alienated from the Prussian court, with strongly liberal ideas that are unwelcome in Berlin. I feel that I need a biography of the Crown Princess to fully understand her life, especially in the years after 1885.
After spending so much time reading these very frank letters, written over so many years, I do feel that in a small way I have gotten to know these two women, behind the public facades of Queen and Princess, as well as having an eye-witness view of some of the major events of English and Prussian history in the 1800s.
This completes my self-imposed challenge of reading through the five volumes of published letters between Queen Victoria and her eldest daughter. I am wondering now, though, why this is the last volume of letters published, when both women lived until 1901, presumably writing to the end. Beloved Mama was published in 1981, and Roger Fulford, the editor, died in 1983. Perhaps no one else wanted to take on the tremendous effort of deciphering and transcribing the letters? Apparently Queen Victoria's handwriting was a particular challenge, as was her habit of slipping in German words. I do see, though, that the Folio Society has a new one-volume compilation of this correspondence, including letters up to 1901. I may look for a copy of their book at some point, because I feel like I've been left hanging in 1885.
I said in my post about the fourth volume (covering 1871-1878) that I thought it was a very sad book, with many disagreements between mother and daughter, leading to snappy responses and hurt silences. This final volume feels much less sad, though it chronicles many tragic events, including the deaths of two of the Queen's children. Her second daughter Alice died in 1878, on the anniversary of Prince Albert's death and shortly after the death of her own daughter Marie. The Queen's youngest son Leopold died in in 1884, leaving an infant daughter and an expectant wife. At the time of his death, the Queen was still mourning the loss of her beloved servant John Brown in 1883, and though her children sympathized, they did not share or even understand her devotion to him. The younger Victoria lost her favorite son, Waldemar, in 1879, and she found herself increasingly alienated from her oldest son, Prince William (the future Kaiser Wilhelm), and from her other children. It is difficult to understand why from these letters, which are in many cases only excerpts and of course present her side of the story, but the Crown Princess freely expresses her hurt and confusion to her mother. At the same time she remains alienated from the Prussian court, with strongly liberal ideas that are unwelcome in Berlin. I feel that I need a biography of the Crown Princess to fully understand her life, especially in the years after 1885.
After spending so much time reading these very frank letters, written over so many years, I do feel that in a small way I have gotten to know these two women, behind the public facades of Queen and Princess, as well as having an eye-witness view of some of the major events of English and Prussian history in the 1800s.
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