Commonplace Book

'"Well, Nance," said Mrs. Bode, "I remember you the heroine of a like occasion, as if it were yesterday."

"People who remember things, always remember them as if they were yesterday," said Cassie. "I remember it as if it were twenty-six years ago."

"Miss Jekyll's simple unflinchingness!" said Beatrice, with a smile.'

from A House and Its Head by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter XI)

Wonderful Sphinx by Julie Speedie (1993)

Through no fault of her own, Speedie is on theoretically dangerous ground with me here. This is because Ada Leverson, the subject of this biography, is a particular favourite of mine. However, I am happy to report that this is a seriously illuminating book, at least in one sense. It has two main streams, the first of which is a standard biography of the late 20th century type made famous by Victoria Glendinning, Michael Holroyd, Claire Harman, Winifred Gerin and many others. The second is an element of literary criticism - more about which later. In neither of these elements is this book astounding, but its biographic part is full of fantastic detail. Speedie has clearly had access to a great deal of correspondence, and done a large swathe of original research, so we get all sorts of insights into her subject, and those illuminati with whom she corresponded - basically the entire world of 1890s wit. Oscar Wilde, whom she helped significantly after his trial, figures strongly in the early part; Robert Hichens comes out surprisingly well, and not as dismissably as has sometimes been made out; one can also re-enter the worlds of lesser lights at this distance, but those who, at the time, were central to the operation of the scene, like Franks Richardson and Harris, and Francis Burnand too, crucial editor of Punch. One gets an idea of Ada at this period of the height of her influence as being confidante, inspiration, social centre, muse and virtual collaborator, existing as a writer in her own right only in journals and magazines. But the thing about her of course is that, after Wilde's demise, she entered an entirely new phase, publishing her six extraordinary novels after her husband left her and emigrated to Canada in 1902. That husband, Ernest Leverson, is still such an enigmatic figure, so tied into the whole of the scene in the 1890s, and suddenly so far out of it so soon after - some work still needs doing to establish him clearly in his place in affairs of the time. As soon as Ada publishes her first novel in 1907, the second stream of this book pushes to the forefront, and, for me, not for the better. I can only say that Speedie takes a great deal of time over each of the novels, as though she wasn't sure if she wanted to write her projected full biography to promote Ada, or conversely her big literary critical reassessment in order to promote Ada. I find her a better biographer than literary critic - talking about personages in the novels as 'unnecessary characters' is not very perspicacious, for example. If Ada's many lesser characters needed to be there, the whole sense of jeu d'esprit disappears, the delight in her bursts of inconsequent invention lessens significantly. So, in the period of 1907-1916, there is far too much explication of plots and characters, and nowhere near enough of life lived. It almost feels like we lose sight of Ada a little, becalmed in her works, wonderful things though they are. After this, we are treated to another enigma - her illness at the end of the Great War, and the strong sense of her retreating, lost a little in deafness, a little repetitive and islanded in quaintness as modernity swept 'her' era into history. Speedie handles this well, giving a confirmed picture of a woman dressed entirely in black with a very veiling large-brimmed hat, hanging on to her old ways, and yet still intrigued with writers and writing, including the young up-and-coming ones like Osbert Sitwell, about whom she was liable to become a bore. This is a good portrait, with lots of delicious detail, marred a little by lit crit.

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (1826)

This is a story of the time when Britain and France were skirmishing over North America, and had zones of influence in the north-east; France further north in the Canadas under the leadership of Montcalm, and Britain centring in New England. The world it inhabits is one of seemingly endless forest, cut through with lakes (including the great lakes), hills, rivers and streams. Occasional forts dot the landscape, isolated and endangered, fought over. The first half of the book is a journey to a fort on the shores of a lake by a white scout, the originally English but long local Hawkeye, and two Mohicans - father and son Chingachgook and Uncas - as they shepherd two young women to the protection of their father at the fort. Accompanying them is a young English colonel, Heyward, who stands as protector to the women, Cora and Alice Munro, and as well a very strange character, David Gamut, a mis-shapen, religion-obsessed, completely unpractical hymn-singer and choral master, whose musical obsession governs his life. Cooper quickly establishes the mood of the piece: a sense of constant danger, readiness to fight, dappled shade and dense forest in the enormous green landscape. He also quickly develops a bloody side-angle on proceedings when the presaged danger comes to pass, scalpings and all. The women and their companions reach the fort at the same time as contesting French forces, and an extraordinary bloodbath ensues, with civilian and military bodies littered across the landscape as the superior numbers of the French and their loyal Native American tribes win out. There is a sense of veracity in this - the constant dangers of 'pioneer' life taken as read, death around every corner seen as natural. Cooper has built up by this time a very strong sense of Native American presence and customs alongside those of the whites. Our women are captured by the French-loyal tribes and carried off into the wilderness. The second half of the book then has us follow Heyward, Hawkeye, Gamut, the two Mohicans and the women's heartbroken and unseated father off into the big green again to try to rescue them. Here the colour intensifies even further as we concentrate on Native American matters more closely. Attempts are made by the white men and the Mohicans to discover and rescue Cora and Alice which involve some very odd gambits: dressing up in a bearskin as a faked medicine man for one, and impersonating 'holy fools' for another. One can feel Cooper using Gamut in some of these instances almost as a berserker - he's such an odd half-comic character that he can erupt into the story at the weirdest angles, providing a completely new line of texture, a contrast to the earthy groundedness of much of the rest of the piece. Nearing the end, it seems that Cora and Alice are both rescued, but in the last twist a renegade captor takes Cora back in a period of bargaining. The Mohicans, with Uncas now revealed as the lost king of his kind, and assisted by their allies of another tribe, chase him down. Unfortunately, but in good contrast to happy-ever-afterness, both Uncas and Cora are killed in the final fight, which nevertheless sees the end of their foes. The predominant memory of this book is the living landscape - that great green wilderness takes on a force and energy of its own, and provides a suitably unusual setting for these blood-soaked, finepoint, revealing encounters between players in the great games of power changing their world.

Commonplace Book

'...Some He made with faces paler than the ermine of the forests; and these He ordered to be traders; dogs to their women, and wolves to their slaves. He gave this people the nature of the pigeon; wings that never tire; young, more plentiful than the leaves on the trees, and appetites to devour the earth. He gave them tongues like the false call of the wildcat; hearts like rabbits; the cunning of the hog (but none of the fox), and arms longer than the legs of the moose. With his tongue he stops the ears of the Indians; his heart teaches him to pay warriors to fight his battles; his cunning tells him how to get together the goods of the earth; and his arms enclose the land from the shores of the salt-water to the islands of the great lake. His gluttony makes him sick. God gave him enough, and yet he wants all. Such are the palefaces.'

from The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (Chapter 29)

Fort Comme La Mort or, The Ruling Passion by Guy de Maupassant (1889)

The tussle in my mind about Maupassant streams between two main impressions: a usually splendid style, even in translation, and dubiety of subject matter, or 'attitude'. Here, the balance lies in favour of his style. There are quiet thrills in beautifully modulated moments rippling through this. And the subject matter is not his worst, but it's still where the problem ultimately lies. Olivier Bertin and Any de Guilleroy, an artist and a society countess, have been in love for years. Her husband doesn't know how far their relationship has gone, though he's aware of their intense friendship. They are both beginning to age and wear down, but they have a remarkably youthful connection still, often swinging time together alone in the afternoons, or at night when her husband is out pursuing his political life. Any's daughter, Annette, comes back home to Paris, having been away at a convent school, in order to come out and hopefully catch a husband. Olivier is shocked by the change in her when he sees her again. She's extraordinarily beautiful in a way which almost carbon copies her mother's beauty when he first knew her all those years ago. As she stands under her mother's famous early portrait in their home, Olivier cannot divide them. From this moment things begin to change, and the key failings of both Olivier's and Any's personality come home to roost. Olivier is an artist, a slave to beauty, but he is convinced that that's all it is. Any sees the writing on the wall much earlier, and starts to feel profound jealousy of her daughter and terrible slow panic about her ageing. By the time that Olivier finally comes to realise that he feels something more for Annette she is engaged to be married. Any, while she stoically sympathises with her lover's anguish, doesn't want Annette's chances disturbed, so she tells Olivier straight out that he must make himself scarce until her marriage has occurred. Knocked weak by the realisation of his feelings for Annette, his letdown of Any, and his jealousy of Annette's betrothed, Olivier can't sleep and walks the Paris streets. He steps off a curb without proper attention and is run down by a passing cab. Maupassant figures his subsequent death in Any's arms as a merciful release from torment. It's not a huge objection, but I do have a feeling that Olivier and Any are almost too childlike in their egotism and immaturity. The key in which those failings play changes over time I think. But I guess that there is also a large range of response in matters of jealousy - and they are pampered types, quite clearly. This edition also includes two stories, Duchoux about a wealthy father of an illegitimate boy who meets his son for the first time in middle age and is deeply disappointed by his vulgarity, and Old Amable, a fine moral tale of a cranky peasant who, as he ages, finds it very hard to relinquish control over first his son and then his widowed daughter-in-law.

Commonplace Book

'The world would be appreciably less unbearable if men and women could travel abroad without describing their travels on their return.'

from Sonia by Stephen McKenna (Chapter III, Part II)

Commonplace Book

'"...The enormous majority of M.P.s go into politics for what they can get out of them - legal jobs, office, local honour and glory - and it gets worse every time another poor man is elected. They can't afford to wait, these poor men; therefore they can hold no independent view; therefore they'll accept any dam', dirty, dishonest, shift their leaders may suggest. And so public life gets more sordid every day."'

from Sonia by Stephen McKenna (Chapter III, Part I)