Harriet Devine's Blog

Persephone Book of Short Stories

I spent such a long time refusing to read short stories! I would always say I needed something to get my teeth into, and only a novel would fit the bill. But then I was converted, by the wonderful Virago edition of Elizabeth Taylor's stories, and hot on the heels of that, what should pop through the door (or rather land in the mailbox outside the door) but Persephone's new collection of stories by lots and lots of writers, some well known others completely unheard of, by me at least. 

Being a frightful stickler for chronology, I was very happy to find that the stories here are arranged in order of writing or publication. In case you're wondering why this is such a good thing -- well, for one thing it lets you see how -- or if -- women's lives and expectations have changed over the past hundred or so years. Because yes, all the stories are by, and about, women. And of course, though lives and opportunities have changed, feelings, needs and desires remain constant. So, in Susan Glaspell's 1909 story, little Edna Willard, fresh out of college and working at a disappointingly menial job in a publishing company, experiences love and loss quite as intensely as Penelope Fitzgerald's 1983 Hester, a single mother drawn in spite of herself to the silent Polish lodger who has been 'got' through Hester'spart-time job at the Red Cross. 

There are some big names in here -- as well as Fitzgerald there's Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Parker, Edith Wharton, Irene Nemirovsky, and those perennial Persephone favourites Mollie Panter Downes and Dorothy Whipple, to name but a few. Several of the reviews I've read have singled out Wharton's 'Roman Fever' (1934) which is indeed a beautifully handled story about two middle-aged friends, revisting Rome together after more than twenty years. The subtle shifts in the reader's perception of their relationship, and the gradual revelations of the past, leading to a wonderfully shocking and understated ending, all done in less than twenty pages, are really superb. But I was almost equally intrigued by 'Nine Years is a Long Time' (1938) by the much less well known (to me, anyway) Irish writer Norah Hoult. Here's how it starts:

It wasn't until October was well under way that she began to wonder that she had had no word from him. Even then she didn't actually worry. He had probably gone on some business trip. Men in a good position, like he certainly was, often went away on business looking after their affairs. He might have gone to London: he was a member of some swell club there. That she did know, for he'd let out one day something about an important call being put through to his club in town, and he had had to return to Rotherfield sooner than he had expected.

That is such an excellent first paragraph! The first couple of sentences could really take you anywhere, but by the end you have some sense of what kind of relationship this must have been. But just as you think you've got the hang of it, in the third paragraph there's a sudden surprise: Her husband thought it was funny too. And gradually, over the space of eighteen pages, you get a picture of this marriage, of Mrs Scott who worries she is getting old and fat, of Mr Scott, equally concerned at his wife's anxiety about the continued absence and silence of the man who has been in her life for nine years, of their daughter Irene who thinks her mother wears too much lipstick and who hates men: Once she had told her straight: Well, if it hadn't been for my men friends, you'd have had a thin time when you were a kid, I can tell you. Unusual, understated -- I loved this one. 

I could go on -- there's a gothic-ish tale by Shirley Jackson, the story of a disastrous new marriage by Dorothy Parker, an account of a teenager's coming-of-age by Diana Athill, Betty Miller's story about the effect on a conventionally dull marriage of the appearance of an exotic foreign domestic.... Well, why not buy this yourself and make your own discoveries? 

Woman Reading

The German artist Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) painted this sometime in the 1880s.

Gielgoodies

Anyone who knows about the history of the British theatre will know about John Gielgud, perhaps the greatest actor of the last century. And anyone who knows about Gielgud will probably be aware that he was celebrated -- if that's the right word -- for his gaffes. I mentioned this in passing last year, when I reviewed Jonathan Croall's impressive biography of Gielgud, and this year a slim volume has appeared which is partly dedicated to some of these terrible, hilarious faux-pas, and also includes some of his witty perceptive comments on the people and events of his day. 

This is not in any way an academic book, but it's very entertaining. My parents knew Gielgud so I was more or less brought up on the famous Eddie Knoblock story "He's the most frightful bore, just like old Eddie Knoblock -- oh, Eddie, I'm most terribly sorry". Evidently this was not the only occasion as he seems to have done much the same to Edith Evans, Athene Seyler, Clive Morton and several others. Most people seem to have dealt with this sort of thing very well, like Elizabeth Taylor, whose ex-husband Michael Wilding Gielgud had recently met:

'Such a charming man', he said. 'I can't imagine how he got mixed up with all those dreadful tarts'. Elizabeth said, 'John, I was one of them'. 

He was evidently completely unable to see how insulting some of his comments could be: 'We have two very beautiful men playing Bushy and Bagot. You might make a good contrast' (to Peter Sallis); 'Get someone to teach you to act. Try Martita Hunt -- she'll be glad of the money' (to Alec Guiness); 'You girl, move to the right. No, no, not you. The ugly one with the big nose' (to Jill Bennett); 'Have you ever known an American who could play Shakespeare? Oh, sorry, Orson. I thought you were Irish. Or something'. But most people took this kind of thing extremely well, perhaps because, as Alec Guiness remarked, his gaffes were 'entirely forgiveable, because they sprang spontaneously from the heart without a glimmer of malice'. His private observations about his friends and acquaintances were equally perceptive, iconoclastic,  and funny, and often summed people up remarkably well: 'Dear Ingrid [Bergman], she speaks five languages and can't act in any of them'; Lindsay Anderson was 'quite a pleasant little man. Rather short, wore a funny cap. I think gay, but not quite up to it'; Edward Albee 'looked like a surly pirate with his drooping moustache'; 'Isabel Jeans' walk splays outwards with a strange totter that suggests the cab horse about to slip on an icy paving stone saving itself by a valiant effort'. Laurence Olivier played Malvolio 'like a Jewish hairdresser, with a great lisp. He would fall off a bench in the garden scene, which I begged him not to do'; John Barrymore's acting was 'like a monstrous old make impersonator jumping through a hoop'. 

I suppose what I liked the most about this slim volume -- it's less than 150 pages -- is the way it shows Gielgud's absolutely genuine innocence, sweetness and honesty. It must have been particularly hard for him to have to disguise his homosexuality in public, but he clearly made up for it in his private letters and comments to his closest friends. He loved silly puns, and often brought rehearsals to a halt by causing his fellow actors to collapse in giggles. He lived, of course, to be 96, rather regretting, as he said on his 90th birthday, that 'most of my friends seem either to be dead, or deaf, or living in the wrong part of Kent'. But he never lost his sense of humour, or his ability to keep dropping bricks -- as he said to Giles Brandreth when invited lunch at the House of Commons: 'I'm delighted to have been asked. You see, all my real friends are dead'.

This little book would make a great Christmas present -- highly recommended for anyone who enjoys a giggle, particularly when laced with a good swig of theatre history.

Woman with Book

This is Marguerite Countess of Blessington. I've no information about who engraved this portrait, which was done sometime in the 1830s. She wrote a number of novels and poems, and edited several monthly journals, for one of which this picture was done. She was a famous beauty -- her best known portrait, by Thomas Lawrence, is in the Wallace Collection on London and can be seen on Wikipedia -- and was clever, witty and charming. But though she married a wealthy earl, her early years as a kept mistress had ruined her reputation, which suffered even more in later years owing to her long relationship with her handsome son-in-law, Count Alfred d'Orsay.

 

Le Meurtre de Roger Ackroyd

I am very fond of Agatha Christie and have read many of her novels over the years. But amazingly enough I had never read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, despite its being one of her most admired novels. I've read it now -- just finished it -- and have moreover read it in French. I thought -- rightly as it turned out -- that the rather old-fashioned and conventional style might make it easier to read than a more contemporary French novel. And yes, I managed it pretty well, only looking up the odd word every couple of pages.

I don't tell you this to show off, though I think it probably sounds that way. I'm living in France and my French, which has always been fairly good because I learned it from a very early age, is gradually improving but can always do with a boost. Anyway, it was fascinating to read an Agatha Christie in a foreign language and made even more so because this novel features Hercule Poirot, whose comic command of the English language is such a vital part of his character, and one that is completely missing when everyone else in the novel speaks French anyway. I learned a lot of possibly not terribly useful words -- did you know, for example, that maitre d'hotel is the French for butler?or that chantage, which sounds as if it must be something to do with singing, is the word for blackmail?

Both of these things pop up fairly early in the novel, because the butler -- the rather creepy Parker -- is suspected of blackmailing his master, the eponymous Roger Ackroyd, who has been found dead in his study, a silver dagger in his heart (there they both are in the delightful cover picture above). Needless to say everyone in the house is immediately a potential suspect, and indeed everyone turns out to have something to hide, though not necessarily directly connected with the murder. Poirot, who is missing his dear friend Captain Hastings, allows the local doctor, Dr Sheppard, to help him with his investigations. It is Sheppard who narrates the story, and who indeed turns out in the end to have been a wholly unreliable narrator. We could start bandying around terms like modernism and metafiction, but don't let's. If you've read it you will know what I mean and of course this is the reason why this is such a famous novel. 

Published in 1926, this is a really historic work in many ways, and I enjoyed it tremendously. I'm not sure if I'd have picked it up if it had been in English, but for 50 centimes it was a bargain and an excellent way of learning a bit more French, so I'm glad I did. I shall be on the lookout for more Christie -- I wonder how Miss Marple and St Mary Mead will survive the Channel crossing?

 

Young Woman Writing

 

Painted in 1908 by the great French artist Pierre Bonnard. I'm guessing she's trying to write a really difficult letter. What do you think?

Odd Girl Out

So -- I went to Guernsey for the day last week -- it's a beautiful little island, and not that hard to reach from St Malo, near where I live. I'd never been to any of the Channel Islands before and was completely won over by the amazing mixture of French and English culture there -- most of the street and house names are French and so are many of the surnames of the inhabitants, but the language is English (though a few people -- about 2 per cent -- still remember the old language of the islands, Guernesiais). The shops, though, are English, and thus it was that I was able to go to an Oxfam shop and root through the books, a rare treat for me these days. In fact I only bought two, and now I wish I'd got a few more, but this was one of them and it's been a great pleasure to read it.

Published in 1972, this is the story of Anne and Edmund Cornhill. They have been married for ten years, and are idyllically happy. Their house on the river near London is beautiful and full of lovely things. Every morning -- after a night of delicious eroticism, equally satisfying for them both -- Edmund makes Anne breakfast in bed and goes to his work as an estate agent in the city, while Anne stays at home cooking delightful dinners ready for his return home. Utterly absorbed in each other, they are slightly put out to receive a call from Edmund's esrtwhile stepmother Clara to say that her daughter Arabella (no relation to Edmund -- her father being a different one of Clara's many husbands) will be coming to stay for a few days. But they are good, polite people, and make everything ready to receive this girl who neither of them has ever met.

And enter Arabella. Edmund goes to meet her at the station, and finds her, a tall fair girl with spindly legs, who looked half asleep. Arabella is not feeling very well -- she's just had an abortion in London, after a most unsatisfactory affair with an out-of-work actor. In fact she has never had an affair that was not unsatisfactory and this is hardly surprising given her upbringing, which is soon revealed to Edmund and Anne. Dragged around Europe by her mother, molested by the succession of ageing and unpleasant men to whom her mother has been briefly married, given as much money as she wants but no love at all, apart from that of her old Scottish nanny, long dead. The other thing that is soon revealed to Edmund and Anne is that Arabella is not only extremely beautiful -- she looks like a Botticelli painting -- but has an extraordinarily sweet and helpful nature.  Soon she is helping Anne, to the best of her untrained ability, with the house and garden, and enjoying quiet evenings listening to records. Then she goes to London for the day, and ends up having lunch with Edmund. Afterwards he has to visit a large empty country house, takes her with him, and finds himself making love to her beside the lake. Never having in his life done anything like this before, he is immediately completely besotted.  Not so Arabella, for whom it's just another episode. Soon afterwards, Edmund is sent to Greece on business, Anne develops glandular fever, and Arabella becomes first her nurse and soon her lover. All three secretly fantasise about a perfect future, but when Edmund comes back and the truth comes out, everything has to change.

This is a truly delicate and perceptive novel. I was quite often reminded of Elizabeth Taylor, whose novel The Wedding Group Anne is reading in the garden when Arabella arrives. Yes, the subject is essentially serious, but there is wry wit here too, usually at the expense of the married couple, so sure of their eternal, unchanging love, so easily overthrown by unexpected experience. Edmund in particular easily slips into the thought processes of every cliche about the menage a trois that every menage a trois has been through:

the caring about the third person, the anxiety for them, the private unspoken determination to do what they wanted to do while of course wishing very much not to hurt them: the mounting amazement that the third person did not see what was so patently and violently felt: the conclusion that they were of different clay, the snatched moments of lust that simply could not be foregone: the guilt that they had occurred, the resentment that they had to be snatched, the paralysis of being driven into a situation where there was no going back and no way out except through action - violence and guilt, and decision of one awful kind or another...

Although each of the three people here is beautifully observed, it is Arabella who is perhaps the most interesting character. She is full of love, though entirely unable to know exactly where to direct it or how to express it. Bullied all her life by her mother, kept in ignorance of her own financial status, she longs for freedom but has no idea how to gain it. However, although the blurb on the back of my Penguin edition says 'it is Arabella who finally loses out', I totally disagree. I can't say more because you might want to read this and I don't want to spoil it for you. But I will say that I felt very hopeful for her future, more so than for either Anne or Edmund, whose options seemed limited. In the end, though, this is essentially a novel about love and about sexuality and about how hard it is to distinguish between them, and very thought-provoking it is too. 

Have you ever read Elizabeth Jane Howard? I've read a few of her novels, some years ago now, and I think I'd better see if I can get any more. Excellent stuff -- highly recommended. 

 

 

Reading

The book I'm reading

is Elizabeth Jane Howard's Odd Girl Out. I read and loved her Cazalet Chronicles in pre-blogging days but had never encountered this novel, which I'm about half way through at the moment. I don't see her popping up on the blogs I read and this is a pity as she's a really excellent writer. I'll be reviewing this story of a happy marriage and the effect on it of a beautiful, troubled, amoral girl soon. 

 The last book I read

was Fault Line, Robert Goddard's latest. I was introduced to his highly intelligent mystery novels a few years ago and have probably read almost all of them by now. He specialises in plots which blend recent history with the present day -- this one switches between the 1960s, the 1980s and the now. I've heard people say he is formulaic, but apart from one or two I've liked a bit less, I usually find them enthralling, and I very much enjoyed this one.

 The book I'll read next

just might be Winifred Holtby's Anderby Wold, which I spotted yesterday on the bookshelf. I'm having a real problem choosing books to read at the moment. I just don't know what I fancy at all, and end up reading a lot of crime novels. I do enjoy them but I'm hoping that before long I'll get back to something a bit more...what? If I could complete that sentence I'd probaby be able to find the book to fit it. 

The last book I bought

was Laura Wilson's Hello Bunny Alice, which I found in an Oxfam shop on a recent visit to Guernsey. I've read several of Laura's novels this year and find them fascinating and often rather disturbing -- this one promises to be equally so. 

 The last book I was given

was The Persephone Book of Short Stories, which landed in my mailbox recently, much to my surprise and pleasure. I've had a sort of embargo on short stories for years but I broke through whatever was blocking me when I read Virago's brilliant Elizabeth Taylor collection, so I'm quite excited about plunging into this. 

Thanks to Victoria of Tales from the Reading Room, who reminded me of this useful meme.

 

 

Woman Playing Lute

Actually Lady with a Lute, painted in 1886 by the American artist Thomas Wilmer Dewing (1851-1938). According to Wikipedia, " Dewing's preferred vehicle of artistic expression is the female figure situated in a moody and dreamlike surrounding". Plenty more examples can be seen here.