Commonplace Book

'...Was it too extravagant to wonder whether these rubiginous and crumbling walls - on which the cactus's pale jade spikes and angles, the light showing flatly through them, stood set for protection like the equivalent dazzling panes of glass on an English wall - these robust but ancient towers, these turbanned arches, and still more the golden soil itself, the stones, over which the lizards darted like green flames, did not perhaps resent the imposition of a heavy and alien hand; whether the place was not, even now, African and infidel at heart; and if an inborn and clandestine hatred did not still run - just as the old religion, it was said, had persisted, hidden away under the new for several centuries - beneath the astonishing beauty of this surface?'

from The Man Who Lost Himself by Osbert Sitwell

Commonplace Book

'"...He has got your journalistic style, wherein words of six syllables form the relief to words of eight, and hardly one dares to stand by itself. They are like huge boulders across a brook. The meaning, do you see, would run of itself, but you give us these impedimenting big stones to help us over it, while we profess to understand you by implication. For my part, I own, that to me, your parliamentary, illegitimate academic, modern crocodile phraseology, which is formidable in the jaws, impenetrable on the back, can't circumvent a corner, and is enabled to enter a common understanding solely by having a special highway prepared for it, - in short, the writing in your journals is too much for me..."'

from Vittoria by George Meredith (Chapter V)

Commonplace Book

'...a gift for over-sharp sayings in any man is usually the sign that it has been forced upon him, a token of nervous exacerbation caused by constant, wilful and vituperative misunderstanding.'

from The Man Who Lost Himself by Osbert Sitwell

The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell (1945)

I've read a Maxwell back in the mists of time, but now have no recollection of it, so this was like a first discovery. The experience was an intriguing one. The thing that most distinguishes his work is its emphasis on the reader as distanced observer. This happens, though, within a framework which feels quite close to the bone. These things are perhaps contradictory, but the fact that they work is undoubtable. The best way to illustrate this is to say that Maxwell allows the reader to see what happens before knowing why it does in most cases. Moments come when one says "Ah! That's how he was feeling..." in light of such and such an eventuation. At the same time one is kept quite close to a feeling of tension in the air, or some sort of sense of joy or conflict - so much so that the book feels imbued with unspecified emotion. There is much less psychological explication. This is a fascinating technique which mirrors, of course, life itself, where we often only find out what has been happening on an emotional level after events have attained their full pitch. Reverse explication might be a good term for it. I wonder if creative writing schools teach it? I fear it may be beyond their pale. Here, Lymie Peters and Spud Latham (who feel somehow very much modelled from real life, Maxwell himself possibly being Lymie) meet at school in the 1920s and connect. Spud is just moved to Chicago from country Wisconsin, has a pretty independent mind, is a little different. But he is also a good example of an alpha male; into boxing, not obviously communicative and not that self-aware. He is given to bouts of depression and anger, going out into the streets at night to pick fights, not at all clear as to why. Lymie is also different, but because he is skinny, bad at sports, and good at schoolwork in a kind of dreamy way. These two, who both seem slightly damaged, hit it off. But they are not ostracised or too separate, and share a lot of experiences with their more 'usual' classmates. As they move through school and then on into college, we follow as they have influences on each other's families and friends, and each other, coming to a place of easy relation where Lymie is Spud's helper. But there are always some things that would be awkward - and Lymie is quietly very devoted. So when Spud needs money to join a fraternity, Lymie borrows it and gets it to him anonymously, even though it will take Spud away from the rooming house where they board together. Slowly they draw apart. A mutual friend becomes Spud's girlfriend, but maintains her close connection to Lymie, which causes some frowning tension in Spud's cloudy mind. Spud begins to feel jealousy, and their growing apart widens until Spud confides in one of their friends that he has started to "hate" Lymie. The friend, Reinhart, who has often felt that Lymie ought to get out from under Spud's influence, and under this knowledge this becomes critical, finally decides to tell Lymie what Spud has said. Lymie's reaction is a classic example of Maxwell's technique. He looks a little glassy, and shrugs it off. The next thing we find out is that Lymie has tried to commit suicide. The book ends in hospital with Lymie's slow recovery, and a distressing contretemps with his father, who is a distant man who has never really tried to connect on a deeper level with his son. Mr Peters clumsily attempts a connection; Lymie, unused to reading him in any other way than the basic, misunderstands, and hurts him profoundly. There is also a moment where Spud comes to visit him, now aware of Lymie's borrowing the money to help, and, in a singular moment of revelation, kisses him. Whether this is meant as a signification of acknowledged homosexuality, or something quite a bit less sure, I myself am not sure. It feels readable either way, and as usual we don't really know. Another element which graces this book is atmosphere. The fact that all of this uncertainty and mirrored life happens within a context of limpidly depicted houses and flats and a compellingly directed quiet vision of the everyday 20s and 30s means that we have a brilliant combination of touchable reality and ineffable human spirit. A disarmingly potent book.

The Lonely Lady of Grosvenor Square by Mrs de la Pasture (1906)

Elizabeth de la Pasture is the Edwardian storyteller-novelist par excellence. Her conservative schematics are illuminated by extraordinarily clear plots and primary-coloured writing. This one has a young woman who has grown up with an uncle on a farm in Wales sent to a wealthy aunt in London as late-life companion. The aunt is dying, so Jeanne sees her very irregularly, and spends most of her time on her own rattling around the aunt's very quiet Grosvenor Square house, filled to the brim with intimidating servants, gilded furniture, Romney portraits and dated decoration. Jeanne is a timid type in most company but has a mind of her own with which to dream, particularly about how life will be when her beloved twin brother Louis arrives back from the post-Boer African campaigns. Their names are French because the family is the de Coursets, but their orphaned status has meant that details about their supposedly aristocratic origins are thin on the ground. After her aunt's death it is revealed to Jeanne that her brother has inherited her huge fortune. Louis writes from Africa that he will share the funds with her equally, so Jeanne will be a wealthy woman once the estate is arranged and the legalities settled. He is supposedly on his way back, until Jeanne receives a letter saying he has been deployed to British Somaliland to quell a disturbance there. More waiting, as nothing can be advanced on a legal level until he returns. In the meantime, Jeanne has tried to cure her loneliness by visiting in the immediate locale, but things don't run in smart London quite the way they do in country middle-class Wales. She is hopelessly out of her depth. Thankfully the family's purported distant connection to the aristocratic Monaghans saves the day. Her possible far cousin, the duke, who is in his twenties and a gentle soul, lame from a childhood accident, is enchanted by her simplicity and takes her up very quietly. His mother, the frighteningly intense duchess, seeing his preference, and discovering the story of Jeanne's coming wealth, is keen to see her son attached, given his lack of other obvious charms, and the fact that his portion of the family's wealth is tiny indeed. Their connection blossoms, through their sensitivity and quietness, whilst all around them tend to the banal. Then disaster strikes. Louis is killed in Somaliland. Jeanne is devastated. And then a further bombshell: Louis has married a few years ago an older French woman who had come to Africa to search out her father who was supposed to be gravely ill in a military hospital. Anne-Marie and her father are also de Coursets, which is how Louis has got to know them, fascinated by the idea of finding out what his heritage might be. Anne-Marie's father does die, but she and Louis grow mad for each other. She reveals their minor aristocracy and that there is a Chateau de Courset which she would love to purchase back for the family, but the funds are beyond her. After their hasty marriage she returns to France. Louis, knowing Jeanne's devotion and proprietary feeling about him, has put off telling her of all this until he got home. Now, in a huge shock, Anne-Marie turns up at Grosvenor Square to meet the still devastated Jeanne, and, in a further wrench, she has with her a little boy who is the image of Louis. After the shock fades, they become fast friends in their mutual love for Louis. Anne-Marie, much more worldly and commanding than Jeanne, sees the duke's devotion, and makes sure that the match is confirmed. Jeanne slowly comes back to her former self and marries him. Anne-Marie returns to France with Louis' share of the funds and buys back her beloved family chateau. All of this is confirmedly traditional, and nothing about it sets the brain cells stirring. But there is a kind of visceral enjoyment in how balanced and limpid the construction is. Pasture leaves one with the feeling of being in an extraordinarily safe pair of hands.