Herself by Hortense Calisher (1972)

Perhaps the clearest way to explain my response to this book is to imagine myself on one ridge in the landscape of life, and Calisher on another close by. There is an essential and telling distance between, made of our genders, experiences, cultures, and so on. But she's intent on explaining and delineating her time and times, both personally and politically. Sometimes she veers off her ridge in my direction and speaks especially convincingly, and I can look into her eyes and get soul-messages from them (that would be WAY too airy-fairy a notion for her!). Sometimes she veers off the other side of her ridge and I can barely hear her, or she disappears from view pretty completely. Just to complicate it a bit more, sometimes she comes my way, but says things I don't feel sympathy with. Sometimes I'm pretty sure I do, but something in the way she says them puts me out of range. That's the nitty-gritty of the way this book functions for me. But the amazing thing is that it is still a great experience - somehow her intelligence and depth of response, mixed though they are sympathetically, are still arresting, original and fascinating. I've been quite deeply in her presence, and I like that. This book covers her life, her responses to literature and the making of it, and some smaller occasional pieces she had written previously that fit into its "autobiographic" context - she called it life-talk, which is a good summation. She was always a maverick in what she called the 'litry' world of her times, always not quite on key, doing things which were not canonically correct, not guaranteed the usual plaudits. For this reason her reputation has naturally suffered. Her writing can be challenging, but, oddly, once you're attuned to her style and modes, it's nowhere near as daunting as it first appears. It can only be hoped that such originality will soon find its audience, albeit a necessarily smallish, discerning one.

A Legend of Montrose by Sir Walter Scott (1819)

This was the last of Scott's early series entitled Tales of My Landlord, detailing episodes in Scottish history in fictional form. This one covers the response among the Scots to the revolutionary actions which precipitated the English Civil War. Some Scots lairds were for, some against, and very much not exclusively for the same reasons as the English; their own affairs, rivalries and vying for power took up a lot of their motivation. The really fun thing about this one is the mixedness of our main character. We are led through these affairs by Dugald Dalgetty, a soldier for hire, who is full of wind. He has no compunction about rattling on endlessly to his superiors about tactics they're ignoring, or precedents they're not taking into consideration, driving them sourly spare in the process. At the same time, he is an excellent soldier, so we are invited not only to laugh at him, but admire him a little too. This lends the piece a warm geniality which is great. For a shorter piece, it has much derring-do, with criss-crossing of the Highlands, family hatreds, imprisonment in castles, political explication and a big battle. It also has a truncated love story - I'm thinking that this is the thing which Scott may have expanded had his enthusiasm kept up, as it is a little threadbare. But this was the last, and in an epilogue he admits that his relish has subsided. He also does something else that I'd like to see authors of the modern era try: he recommends in the last line a novel published anonymously a year previously. The title is Marriage and he hints as to the gender of the author. Of course we now know that to be Susan Ferrier, and that she went on to become one of the finest of her era. What a great idea for those 'in the know', not critics, but authors themselves, to recommend the books of fellows which they think their readers may enjoy next.

Commonplace Book

'For a brief interval of three years the regular course of his life was interrupted by marriage. It soon resumed its normal trend when, true to his reputation as a gallant man, he allowed himself to be divorced. Much sympathy was felt for Arthur. On the one side was to be considered a certain financial gain, on the other his reputation as a man of the world, a modern censor of morals (for such he had now become), his profession of the true faith, which does not allow of divorce, and his role of gentleman. It was a struggle for him; but in the end Arthur was relieved of his religious scruples, and Mrs Bertram of a share of her small fortune and her husband's bullying manner. Let it be understood, however, that his wife regarded it as a bargain.'

from His Ship Comes Home, a piece in Triple Fugue by Osbert Sitwell

Commonplace Book

'One of the advantages of the writer as alien - of the disinherited, disenfranchised or dispossessed - is that whether or not they themselves are great, they can write from some nearness to the open-ended world to which all serious artists aspire. They write from an intellectual and emotional diaspora, from a past which transcends the nostalgias of childhood, and toward a future which apprehends something better than they have. Satire - the worm's eye turning - comes to them naturally, as it does to those without full passport privileges, or else they have the kind of neutral perspective that attaches to small borderland nations. At the same time, they have the furious energy of the repressed.'

from Herself by Hortense Calisher (Part IV)

Commonplace Book

'"Spoken like an oracle," said Montrose. "Were there an academy for the education of horses to be annexed to the Marischal College of Aberdeen, Sir Dugald Dalgetty alone should fill the chair."

"Because, being an ass," said Menteith, aside to the General, "there would be some distant relation between the professor and the students."'

from A Legend of Montrose by Sir Walter Scott (Chapter XX)

Commonplace Book

'Alone in her bed she lay, and between waking and sleeping thought of Caesar. There had been little enjoyment is his arms, save during those days on the Nile; and yet she longed for him, no one else. Slowly the lotus of sleep closed petals about her, closed on her limbs the flower-cosmetics of her fine breeding, her glistening will. Is it the man, or the power in the man? But how separate them?

The lotus-body opened petals, restlessly dreaming the coming of Caesar.'

from Caesar is Dead by Jack Lindsay (First Part, Chapter I)

Commonplace Book

'...Much of their time, when not occupied in praising one another or laughing in a hollow Homeric manner, was spent in contemplation of suicide. Only after death - they felt - would their genius be fully recognised, while the more sudden and violent their end, the more effective for their posthumous glory. Cups of poison, a fall to the crowd below from the Nelson Monument, the lily-green death-look of Chatterton, the decline of Keats, a cloaked figure found floating on the Thames, a revolver-shot in Piccadilly followed by a dramatic collapse, or the quieter, less sensational, but sudden "Strange death of a Literary Recluse" - all these passed through their minds, were mentioned in low tones or lay hidden, for all to read, in the intentionally gloomy fire of their eyes. But the chorus of sandal-footed and golden-crowned young ladies implored them constantly to remember their families - not to do anything rash - though perhaps these same young women found that the thought of it gave them too, no less than the three protagonists, a little tremor of wonder, excitement, and importance. In their less exalted moments, however, the chance of their getting this thrill in real life seemed ever so remote - merely a dream of fair women.'

from Friendship's Due, a piece in Triple Fugue by Osbert Sitwell

Commonplace Book

'When an epigram becomes a platitude (the Hell to which all epigrams are eventually condemned) the truth is no longer in it; and that critics are but disappointed poets has long been a platitude. In these days, on the contrary, they are the only satisfied ones, able both to confer the cake and then, subsequently, eat it themselves...'

from Friendship's Due, a piece in Triple Fugue by Osbert Sitwell

Peter's Mother by Mrs Henry de la Pasture (1905)

This novel differs from her four previous adult ones in two respects - it did a great deal better than them, and also it was quite a bit simpler. This is probably the novel of hers which was reprinted most, though there are a couple of other contenders. Certainly the second and fourth novels, which most show her trademark clarity running in tandem with a big cast of characters and really ready wit, show her at her best, and are sadly barely known by comparison. That is not to say that this one is not highly entertaining. The story centres around Mary Setoun, now become Mary Crewys, who is squashed under the weight of her domineering husband's conservatism. She barely leaves their home, Barracombe House, set near the top of one side of a river valley in Devon, Pasture's favourite locale, and does everything she is asked to by her husband, without question. Her son, Peter, is very much a follower in his father's footsteps, but still beloved by his mother, even though his thoughtlessness hurts her. Mary is surrounded by not only these two, but her husband's two sisters, Pasture's reduced comic chorus of snobbery, crotchetiness, and veiled disapproval. On the same day, Mary's husband dies in a risky operation and Peter leaves secretly for the Boer War. Her husband's cousin, the charming John Crewys, is entrusted with running the estate. Mary finds in him something she has missed most of her life - empathy. Peter returns from the war having lost his arm, but not his inherited domineering manner. He falls for Mary's protege, Sarah Hewel, the daughter of the great house opposite their own, who has grown from a tomboy carrot-top to gorgeous young woman in the time Peter has been away. The fact that Sarah is also determined that Mary will be happy, and that Peter will wake up and not just repeat his father's errors by keeping his mother locked up at home, is the crucial one. A tough conversation is had, and freedom of all kinds ensues. So, though it feels 'basic' compared to others in her bibliography, this one still has a lot of spirit.

The Art of War by Niccolo Machiavelli (1521)

This book is very foursquare to the floor in comparison to his famous The Prince. It eschews in the main the high-falutin' of the philosophy of control, and plumps instead for the down-home how-to. This is a blessing and a curse. It reads as much more thorough somehow, much more wedded to detail as it is. It's less of a wandering piece. But it also gets bogged down in that detail, passing from strong general discussion down into the nitty-gritty, and repeating the versions of it over and over and over. It's about how to construct, discipline and formulate an army with reference to the ancients, those being the Greeks and Romans. And it's also about how poor those elements are in the Italy of the time of this book, and how these lessons in the past will serve as a blueprint for a future military renaissance, to follow on from the current artistic and philosophical one. He takes us into this by means of a discussion/symposium between young enthusiasts and the author, where the author hands down all his accumulated military wisdom in the hope that Italy's future leaders will emulate it. The topics covered range across how to withstand a siege, or how to win out as a sieger; how to march your army into various types of territories and how the terrain will affect performance and strategy; how to discipline various types of insurrection and disaffection as well as maintain firm and positive standards across your force; and how to meet an enemy in many different circumstances and all the sorts of fighters and formations that might possibly arise (this is where he can get incredibly bogged down), among others. It's not an exciting book, like its more famous predecessor. But it can occasionally quietly inspire.