Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Commonplace Book

'...I have been here for 10 days having my back massaged by a singularly unpleasant young woman with peroxide hair and the beauty of Phyllis Dare. She is terribly sadistic and hurts me very much. However I conceal my real character and lead her on to tell me all her innermost feelings. "Don't you love Surrey, Mrs. P. I was down at Hindhead on Sunday giving my dog a run." "Don't you think dogs", violent slaps, "much more", slaps, "intelligent", bangs, "and more capable of love", bangs, "and affection than human beings", bangs. "I think", slaps, "something has been left out of human beings they are such miserable", bangs, "mean", harder bangs, "creatures", terrific bangs, "compared to intelligent dogs." Today being the last day shall I reveal my true character and shatter her? But that is probably impossible. She is made of iron...'

from a letter to Julia Strachey, dated [March 1927], in Carrington: Letters and Extracts from her Diaries

Monday, December 22, 2014

Before the Bombardment by Osbert Sitwell (1926)

Sitwell's intention here is, I think, to bury the Edwardian era - using, thankfully, humour, urged on with a reasonable quotient of rancour! This story of a slightly shy, slightly mysterious aged gentlewoman with an urge to become more popular, fantastically named Miss Collier-Floodgaye, and her newly acquired aged companion, Miss Bramley, who has been used in previous positions to being dominated and put upon, and now in Miss Collier-Floodgaye finds instead a victim of her own, is a magnificent indictment. Or at least it would be, if one subscribed to Sitwell's prejudices. I don't quite, but I cannot deny the brilliance of his effort. The relatively slender plot revolves around Miss Collier-Floodgaye being taken up by 'scheming types' in the seaside town of Newborough, famously modelled on Scarborough. Miss Bramley, having previously astounded herself by establishing very effective control over her employer's life, is disgusted with this new interest being shown in Miss Collier-Floodgaye by a putative group of 'relatives'; this connection is only maintained by the fact that their surname is Floodgay. Miss Collier-Floodgaye goes along with the story very willingly, finding popularity for the first time in her life, being the centre of attention, wearing herself out. Miss Bramley, of course, suspects that her fortune may be the target, but is powerless to completely deflect their inroads. All this takes place while Sitwell methodically sets about destroying the illusion of comfortable Edwardian respectability in a provincial outpost in 1907. He does this by means of superb setpieces of satiric explosion, character after character in the background standing in for one or another fatuous garrulity, veiled sadistic impulse, hopeless euphemism, wicked prejudice or doddering incapacity. The consistency of the wit cannot be denied, and is splendidly enjoyable. Then Miss Collier-Floodgaye passes away, and Miss Bramley realises that all of these befuddled reminders to see the lawyer she has been given, degenerating into intense stares when Miss Collier-Floodgaye becomes helpless and wordless in her last days, were in order to write her into the will, not the Floodgays! Her jealousy in angling to deflect her employer from the legal visit has undone her. Finally there is an effective epilogue in which Sitwell pushes forward a few years and posits the bombardment of the title occurring in Newborough, a skirmish of the 'Great' War. He seems to relish the obliteration of this world he has built up, writing of characters being 'atomised' in bomb-drops. So, a visceral expunging of long built-up frustration? I think so.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Commonplace Book

'...Golf, again, acts in the same way as does a grouse-moor - interns all those addicted to it. A golf course outside a big town serves an excellent purpose in that it segregates, as though in a concentration camp, all the idle and idiot well-to-do, while the over-exertion of the game itself causes them to die some ten or fifteen years earlier than they would by nature, thus acting as a sort of fifteen per cent. life-tax on stupidity. While alive, it not only removes them for the whole day from the sight of those who have work to do, or leisure which they know how to spend profitably, but causes them to don voluntarily a baggy and chequered uniform, which proclaims them for what they are, at half a mile or so off, and thus enables the sane man to escape them...'

from Before the Bombardment by Osbert Sitwell (Chapter XX)

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Shirley by Charlotte Bronte (1849)

This book is an experience. OK, so every book is, of course. But this one is markedly. The author was clearly casting around for future modes in part, fulfilling wishes for which she hadn't yet had the opportunity in part, travelling deeper in her original vein as well. The first impression, through the dark and more harshly humorous early chapters, is of Thackeray-echo. This is not surprising, given her respect for the man. This sounding remains present throughout, but is very much backgrounded for long periods. The novel is set in the Napoleonic era, 1811 into 1812 to be exact, in the wilds of Yorkshire. The setting is near moorland, but a tad more civilised: there's a mill in a hollow, a local great house, a few respectable abodes of clergy etc, as well as a local populace mainly employed at the mill spread over the green landscape in cottages. The impression often given of this book as being one of 'dark, satanic mills' is pretty misleading. The mill-owner, Anglo-Belgian Robert Moore, is certainly in a lot of bother when the story opens, with a justly incensed population thrust out of work by some new machines he's installing. Luddite rebellion ensues in waves, his single-minded resourcefulness battling it successfully. Bronte is careful to elucidate both sides of this story, but of course is hamstrung by the fact that Moore is one of her heroes. As soon as Moore's love life takes centre stage in the latter part of this early melee, the die is cast for a contrasting progression. Hampered by the blockaded ports and trade embargoes, his business looks likely to fail. So his attention goes from young penniless Caroline Helstone, niece of one of the local vicars, to young wealthy Shirley Keeldar, inheritress of the great house, who has just returned to the neighbourhood. Shirley is wild-spirited, forthright, searchingly intelligent - apparently she was Bronte's idealisation of her sister Emily, as she believed she might have been. Caroline, her friend, is more tender, retiring, less impulsive. The two are friends, and go through a dance around one another because Caroline had been in love with Moore, and Shirley likes the idea of his new attention. All of this part of the book is pure Bronte, and is where I think she is exploring her true centre in terms of style-development. It is punctuated by some magnificently poetic stretches - the highest mood of the book is here, the most profound colour: it is an unusual colour though, a misty green and an intense grass-green with threads of gold and white; it's almost a careful semi-arcadia she creates, a careworn place of wind and silence. Contrasts to this are often in the background and form occasional points of heavy brightness - little sparks of scarlet, smoky blue and orange with a skeleton of tree-browns, furniture-browns and silvered moonlight. These settings and emotional hues linger in the memory with a strangeness and intensity bolstered by the poetry. There is, in the introduction of Moore's brother Louis, Shirley's old tutor, later in the piece, a catalyst brought to bear on the tangle of relationships at the novel's centre. Robert Moore is shot by a disgruntled ex-employee, and spends quite some time recovering, as does Caroline of a fever, but it is not this which moves their story forward to its final conclusion, though it helps him particularly to understand and value his love. Only in the last chapter, after Wellington's (another of Bronte's personal heroes) victory at Salamanca, are the ports reopened, trade freed up, and Moore's troubled finances set onto calmer waters. This fiscal freedom means that they can marry, as will Shirley and Louis. Very telling that: Bronte, for all her supposed romanticism, was practical and grounded when push came to shove.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Commonplace Book

'"Still, I know I shall be strangely placed with that mountain nymph, Liberty. She is, I suspect, akin to that Solitude which I once wooed, and from which I now seek a divorce. These Oreads are peculiar: they come upon you with an unearthly charm, like some starlight evening; they inspire a wild but not warm delight; their beauty is the beauty of spirits: their grace is not the grace of life, but of seasons or scenes in Nature: theirs is the dewy bloom of morning - the languid flush of evening - the peace of the moon - the changefulness of clouds. I want and will have something different. This elfish splendour looks chill to my vision, and feels frozen to my touch. I am not a poet: I cannot live with abstractions..."'

from Shirley by Charlotte Bronte (Chapter Thirty-Six)

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Commonplace Book

'The notes flickered up into the warm orange air, and struck little rattling vibrations out of every ornament on the piano, or beyond on the small, littered tables that impeded movement, so that one waded rather than walked through the room. Now every object spoke and danced with its own accent: and the marble clock on the mantelpiece punctuated this sub-human chatter with a suggestion of mockery, hooting out the time in a clear, owlish voice. All these voices could be detected through the tones of the singer, tones which, though they veiled them, yet called them into being, as they flitted hither and thither, caressing the ears of the two elder ladies as if they were not notes, but tittilating items of gossip.'

from Before the Bombardment by Osbert Sitwell (Chapter XVII)