A Triumph of Defiance

I've just finished reading The Salt Path, Raynor Winn's memoir of the courage that she and her husband Moth displayed in walking the South West Coast Path. I cried when I reached the final page, because her writing had so invested me in their journey, caused as it was by a series of unforeseen events. Moth was diagnosed with probable corticobasal degeneration, CBD; a few painful years to live. He had invested trustingly in a childhood friend's business venture, which failed; Moth liable for a debt which exceeded the value of their Welsh farm home/business. It was about to be taken away.

No home, no jobs, no money, no hope.

They decided to spend the next months walking the path. 630 miles from Minehead to Poole via Land's End.

Obviously, as a Cornwall (although not Cornish) resident, I was attracted by the idea of recognising familiar locations along their journey. Other than that, though, it's not the kind of book to which I would normally be attracted. I lack empathy for strangers; they're not my thing. But from start to finish, the brilliant exposition of their story pulls me in and I am with Ray and Moth all the way, feeling their worries, pain, fears and sheer hardships. Multiple setbacks about money (lack of), food (shortage), wild camping locations (fear of discovery) and above all Moth's health, simply lead to their being even more determined to do what they've set out to do. They frequently feel close to giving up but they have no home, no jobs, no life to go back to.

The writing captures dramatic moments, beautifully described scenery, hardships, humour and above all Ray's inner thoughts. We are not just observers but participants in the drama. Sometimes you read about people who you feel are simply better than you and I'm not ashamed to say that's my take on this tale.

I don't want to go into details in case readers haven't read it yet. If you haven't, you would not regret doing so. It's been made into a film of the same name, in cinemas now. I'm not a fan of watching a film adaptation after reading the book - often a disappointment in my view although OK the other way round - but with Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs starring and the book often having a visual feeling, I may overcome my aversion. I'll let you know if I do.

We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet

When invited to join hands and sing Auld Lang Syne, I generally hummed the tune and mumbled some vaguely Scottish sounding words. Which is I guess what most (English at least) people do, since the actual words are incomprehensible and ... well, foreign (And we'll tak a right gude-willy waught). However, it for some reason represents the dawning of the new year and, in an earlier post, I promised to publish my New Year resolutions. So here I go. Not necessarily in order of importance, imminence or achievability.

1. Lose 20 kg
2. Finish the Star Wars jigsaw puzzle
3. Finish reading David Copperfield and publish my Charles Dickens blog post
4. Locate the source(s) of the St Austell River and publish the blog post
5. Watch The Blair Witch Project
6. Not to forget my sons' wedding anniversaries

Anyway, have a happy and safe 2022 everyone. I'll keep working on blog posts to hopefully entertain you. And even maybe provide progress reports on my resolutions.

Finally, two New Year Resolutions I request from you, dear readers:

1. Continue to comment on my posts (I read them all)
2. Encourage a member of your family or friend to read my blog and write their comments
3. If you find an interesting post on my blog, share it on your Twitter or Facebook feed and in a WhatsApp group

Thank you!

The Dickens Boy

Thomas Keneally is a prolific writer. A Booker Prize winner for Schindler's Ark, he has published more than 40 books to date. Still writing at the age of 83, he talked to the Guardian two years ago and, when asked to name "the last book that made me cry", he nominated ClaireTomalin’s Charles Dickens: A Life:

She managed to convey the extent to which the genius and silly man was, in lacerating his wife and pursuing a new love, so unwittingly dedicated to his own destruction.

I was recently recommended Keneally's The Dickens Boy and borrowed the book. I thought that the story of a child of Charles Dickens emigrating to Australia was a fictional device but I soon realised that it actually happened. The book is nevertheless a novel but Edward Bulwer Lyttton Dickens, the youngest of Dickens' ten children, did in fact travel to Australia in 1868 at the age of 16 to begin a new life in the country he thought of as "the land of opportunity".

I soon came to the conclusion that I knew next to nothing about the life of Charles Dickens and that The Dickens Boy would make more sense if I read Tomalin's biography first. Which I have now started. More news in due course on both books.

Charlie Watts or Abba?

More Asda Radio trivia. Calmly and quietly eating my breakfast today, reading the paper, minding my own business, I was assaulted by the Rolling Stones shouting at me. Maybe the compiler of today's playlist was celebrating the life of Charlie Watts, the Stones' drummer who died yesterday at the age of 80. Is it disrespectful to question that he died 'peacefully'? That seems very un-Stones. Respect intended.

Later I was cheered up by Abba. I tapped my feet and cheered up.

None of this stopped me trawling some book ideas from various articles and comment pieces in today's Times. I share with Son #2 a love of books and, to an extent, the same kinds of books. We often jointly purchase books that we can share in hard copy, which is cheaper than each of us buying a Kindle edition. It's probably not very good for climate change but excellent for our minds. Today I found these, which may be purchased in the near future:

Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World by Ashraf Ghani [this is the Afghan President who fled the country last week but I'm not holding that against him; he could be someone who has an informed view of these issues]

Red Knight: The Unauthorised Biography of Sir Keir Starmer by Michael Ashcroft [Conservative party donor and ex Deputy Chairman, tax exile who previously invested in Watford Football Club, saving them from going into administration; I'm not holding any of that against him because he researches and writes well]

Friday is the New Saturday: How a Four-day Working Week Will Save the Economy by Pedro Gomes [never heard of him but I'm not holding that against him]

Sharing options available for any who wish to join Dan and me!

Anyway, today is a big day for three friends. All of us active or retired croquet players

who used to meet once a month for a pub lunch. Our aim was to visit a different pub each month, particularly those none of us had previously frequented. Not always possible but we did it for 108 months from June 2009. Tony is 90, new hip, still occasional croquet player; Ian I think 75, heart implant of some kind, possibly retired player (I'll ask him today); I am Nigel, 77, sore knees, definitely retired player. We haven't met for almost exactly a year for obvious reasons but today will patronise the Britannia Inn in St Austell, which has lots of outdoor tables and decent food and drink.

Why is a Raven like a Writing-desk?

Riddles: impossible to dislike. In Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter poses the riddle to Alice: Why is a raven like a writing-desk?

Lewis Carroll doesn't provide an answer in the book and it was never his intention that there should be an answer. However, he later wrote that the answer is, "Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!" Carroll also wrote never as "nevar," which is raven spelled backwards but the clever pun was erased by a proofreader. Frankly it's a pretty weak answer anyway. In my opinion, he should have let it remain unanswered, like the writers responding to "what happened to Tony Soprano at the end?" with "It’s for people to decide for themselves."

Want some more riddles?

I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind. What am I?

You see a boat filled with people. It has not sunk, but when you look again you don’t see a single person on the boat. Why?

An 18th century classic:

As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits:

Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were there going to St. Ives? 

In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Oedipus must answer to the Sphinx to save his own life and continue his journey to Thebes. The Sphinx asks: "What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night?" If Oedipus answers incorrectly, she eats him. Fortunately he gets it: “Man: as an infant, he crawls on all fours; as an adult, he walks on two legs and; in old age, he uses a 'walking' stick.” Honestly, that's an unsatisfactory literary trick.

I'm re-reading Alice, as a contrast to some heavy stuff I've been ploughing through recently, such as Mao's Great Famine. A bit like relaxing to a Beatles song after listening to Mahler's 2nd Symphony.

Wait, you want answers? OK:

An Echo.

All the people were married.

One.

Salò

Salò is an Italian town which was for a short while Mussolini's capital in exile. Situated on the banks of Lake Garda, it is 142 km from Venice and has a population of around 52,000. So Folkestone-by-the-lake. For reference.

If the town is famous for anything reputable - which is debatable - it could be for the musical instrument maker Gasparo da Salò, one of the first violin makers. Here's Katha Zinn telling you about that:

I came across Salò in a book by Martin Cruz Smith, The Girl From Venice. It's my kind of book with my kind of hero: a fisherman, a peasant I guess you'd say, giving the appearance of being uneducated but smart as a whip, a shrewd observer. An outsider who relishes that status, not a materialistic bone in his body, flawed but comfortable in his singularity.

It's a novel set in 1945 as the Second World War comes to a conclusion and Mussolini's Italian Social Republic, a German puppet state, is crumbling before our eyes. It begins in Venice, where the descriptions of the Lagoon and the life of the fishermen are vivid. Our hero Cenzo rescues a young Jewish girl from the waters of the lagoon and learns her story of escape from the Germans. Cenzo sets out to find a way to get her out of Italy and the story moves to Salò, where his brother Giorgio is a film star and a Nazi collaborator.

The characters we meet include a Swiss film director, an Argentinian consul's wife and a friend of Mussolini's mistress. They are well painted and the writing is good.

The Germans are leaving town, Mussolini is disappearing, various groups of partisans are ready to battle each other for the soul of Italy...will Cenko be able to find a safe way out for Giulia?

I often read trashy spy and crimes novels but this is a league above that. Easy to read, difficult to put down. And an introduction to Salò.

The Mist

In Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant the central characters are husband and wife Axl and Beatrice. They are on a journey to find, and be reconciled with, their long-lost son. Who is thought to live in a not too distant village. But enveloping everyone and everything is ... a mist. Which appears to cause forgetfulness in everybody. And may or may not itself be caused by Querig the she-dragon. It's a tale of Britons and Saxons, orcs and pixies, all of which may or may not be real - or figments of mist-addled illusion.

There are warriors and Authurian knights but it seems that it is down to simple peasants Axl and Beatrice to slay the she-dragon and release the mist. But they are ambivalent about whether this would be universally beneficial or would cause them to bring back memories which they might regret.

The tale proceeds at Ishiguro's usual pace: slow. Axl and Beatrice link up with Wistan, a warrior claiming to be on a mission for his King from a kingdom in the west, who is himself attached to a young boy Edwin, who exhibits strange behaviours but seems to be training with Wistan for warriorship. Then there is Sir Gawain (of course), an aged devotee of the long-dead Arthur, who clomps about in full but rusting armour, astride his trusty steed Horace.

This motley crew somehow find themselves joining together to try to kill Querig. Possibly by persuading her to eat a goat that has been infected with some kind of poison. By three children, living without their parents. It's clear that each of them has a back story which they may or may not be happy to be revealed and much of the story telling includes hints as to what those histories might be. Beatrice nervously reveals "I'm thinking I'm the one to fear most the mist's clearing ... it came to me there were dark things I did to you once, husband." And Axl muses "What became of our son, princess? Does he really wait for us in his village? Or will we search this country for a year and still not find him?"

They climb a steep mountainside towards the giant's cairn, where they tie the goat to a stake. It's not clear to me at this point whether the giant is the same entity as the she-dragon or exists just in the book's title. We'll see. Horace, by the way, has been left behind, being as old and lacking in mobility as his master. For some reason, Edwin has also been left behind, tied to the same stake as the goat.

Finally they reach the dragon's pit. And she is a sorry sight, "so emaciated she looked more some worm-like reptile accustomed to water that had mistakenly come aground and was in the process of dehydrating." "'Can this really be her, Axl?' Beatrice said quietly. 'This poor creature no more than a fleshy thread?'"

Now Wistan and Gawain prepare to battle each other, for the former wishes to complete his mission whilst the knight wants the dragon to be allowed to live out her remaining months in peace. And Wistan sees Gawain as "a kin of the hated Arthur".

Wistan kills Gawain and then Querig. He reveals a prediction that the death of the dragon and the clearing of the mist will result in Saxons and Britons, long at peace and living alongside one another, will recall their violent histories, rise up and fight a dreadful war. "The giant, once well buried, now stirs."

Very early in the book, at the beginning of their journey, Beatrice and Axl come across a sad couple, apart by virtue of their wish to be transported to a nearby island by a boatman who will only take one of them. The island only allows individuals to live separately rather than as a couple, other than in exceptional cases of extreme love and devotion, proven by each answering a question out of the hearing of the other in the same way. As they now descend Querig's mountain to the valley, helped by Horace, they again come across the boatman. He can take them to the nearby island, on which Beatrice hopes to find their son, but - purely as a formality - he must ask them each questions, out of earshot of the other.

As he does so, their back stories are revealed by their answers. Long ago, Beatrice was unfaithful to Axl. As a result, their young son left home, soon to be taken by the plague. Axl forbade her to go to his grave. Many years later, as old age mellowed them, he relented and they agreed to go on a journey to visit the grave. The boatman now carries Beatrice, too weak to walk, and places her in the boat. As Axl tries to board the boatman says "this is but a small vessel. I daren't carry more than one passenger at a time." Arguments ensue between Axl and the boatman but it is Beatrice who insists that she trusts the man and being  transported separately is the only way they can be together for ever more. They say farewells.

The boatman has the final word: "I hear him coming through the water. Does he intend a word for me? He spoke of mending our friendship. Yet when I turn he does not look my way, only to the land and the low sun on the cove. And neither do I search for his eye. He wades on past me, not glancing back. Wait for me on the shore, my friend, I say quietly, but he does not hear and he wades on."

For me, this is a 3½ out of 5 book because, despite the supreme story telling and wonderfully detailed descriptions, the subject matter simply doesn't interest me enough. Nor am I attracted to any of the characters. Nevertheless, I am glad I read this book. If you haven't read it and, as a result of my endeavours, are thinking of doing so, you might easily come to different conclusions.

Never Let Me Go

After enjoying Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Klara and the Sun, I thought I'd try another of his works. I chose Never Let Me Go.

Like Klara, it is a first person narrative, the narrator being Kathy. Kathy is a young woman who tells the story of her life at Hailsham, a boarding school, and in particular her friendship there, and subsequently, with Tommy and Ruth.

From the beginning there are hints of something different. Kathy is a carer and her 'patients' are referred to as 'donors'. What they donate and why they need care unfolds gradually. At the time of telling the tale, Kathy is 31 years old and it is her reminiscences of Ruth and Tommy that take her - and us - back to the  beginning at Hailsham.

The beginning, because there is no reference to what came before.

The students at Hailsham were taught by Guardians. Once a month or so, a mysterious female whom the students and guardians called Madame appeared at the school and took away works of art which had been created by the students. They are led to believe that there is a 'Gallery' to which these paintings and drawings are taken, with no knowledge why, or of what happens to them. 

"I keep thinking about all these things. Like why Madame comes and takes away our best pictures. What's that for exactly?"

"It's for the Gallery."

"But what is her gallery? She keeps coming here and taking away our best work. She must have stacks of it by now."

Thus the author creates an air of mystery, perhaps even darkness, which he subjects to a process of slow reveal throughout the book.

At this point in my story, if I have tempted you to read the book, you should stop reading this, because spoilers follow.

About a quarter of the way through the book, Kathy finds a cassette tape of a song Never Let Me Go by Judy Bridgewater. Later she reflects:

"There's a bit which keeps coming round when Judy sings 'Never let me go ... Oh baby, baby ... Never let me go'. By then, of course we all knew something I hadn't known back then, which was that none of us could have babies."

And there it is, a casual remark that is the first shock for the reader. It's a technique I noticed in Klara and the Sun; you are reading at your normal speed - which is perhaps a bit too fast - and you are jolted into "Wait! Did I just read they can't have babies? There's been no mention of that before."

Shortly after this episode, Miss Lucy, the most open of the Guardians, responds in class to a discussion about the future for the students.

"If no one else will talk to you, then I will. The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. None of you will go to America, none of you will be film stars. And none of you will be working in supermarkets as I heard some of you planning the other day. Your lives are set out for you. You'll become adults, then before you're old, before you're even middle-aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs. That's what each of you was created to do."

Looking back on this some years later, Kathy says that Ruth said Miss Lucy "told us a lot more; how before donations we'd all spend some time as carers, about the usual sequence of the donations, the recovery centres and so on - but I'm pretty sure she didn't."

Just before halfway in the book, when Kathy, Ruth and Tommy are at a new place, the Cottages - which feels like a hippy commune: a bit of gardening, some general mooning about - Ruth tells Kathy about two of the 'inmates' taking a trip to Cromer and claiming "they saw this ... person. Working in an open-plan office. They reckon this person's a possible. For me."

Kathy muses "since each of us was copied at some point from a normal person, there must be, for each of us, a model getting on with his or her life."

And that's it; Kathy, Ruth, Tommy and the others are clones. We don't hear anything of their pre-Hailsham life because they didn't have one. They are part of an organ farming factory process. It's the genius of Ishiguro that, despite it being a dark, dark context, he invests it with a sense of normality. The actors - not in the drama, because there is no drama, just events - slowly awaken to the realities of their 'lives', but not with any emotion, just acceptance.

Years later, Kathy and Tommy seek out Madame, who tells them "we challenged the entire way the donations programme was being run ... we demonstrated to the world that if clones - or students, as we preferred to call you - were reared in humane, cultivated environments, it was possible for them to grow to be as sensitive and intelligent as any ordinary human being ... that was why we collected your art. We selected the best of it and put on special exhibitions ... 'There, look!' we could say. How dare you claim these children are anything less than fully human?'"

By this time, Kathy has become carer to Ruth, who gives her four donations and 'completes'.

Now Tommy is her donor and, after three donations, he muses "You know why it is, Kath, why everyone worries so much about the fourth? It's because they're not sure they'll really complete."

"I'd been wondering for a while if this would come up ... You'll have heard the same talk. How maybe, after the fourth donation, even if you've technically completed, you're still conscious in some sort of way; how then you find there are more donations, plenty of them, on the other side of that line; how there are no more recovery centres, no carers, no friends; how's there's nothing to do except watch your remaining donations until they switch you off."

At the end Kathy, after many years as a wonderful carer, opts to begin the transition to become a donor. The cycle nears completion. There are no tears; no regrets. Perhaps a sense of inevitability rather than duty. It's written in such a calming way that the reader doesn't feel extremes of emotion, rather reflecting on the beauty of three young lives lived well. The author warns us of where we as the human race might go, but with a poignancy that helped this reader at least to see through the darkness into the light.

Standing Our Ground

I've been reading an excellent book. Standing Our Ground; A Mother's Story is written by Lucy McBath, who is a Democratic Congresswoman for the 6th Congressional District of the state of Georgia. It's a tale of hardship and adversity, leading to a determination to be an agent of change. As Hillary Clinton said, "Lucy, in the face of tragedy, turned her sorrow into a strategy, and her mourning into a movement".

The author's early life is charted through the lenses of family, race and religion. As a devout black woman, brought up in Illinois by parents who were active in the civil rights movement, she describes seeing the ransacking of Mr. K's Grocery Store while, alongside, Mr. Dunn's Record Store was untouched.

"Did Mr. K's store get firebombed and Mr. Dunn's didn't because Mr. K was a white in the black part of town, while Mr. Dunn was African American and lived right there in the neighborhood with the rest of us?" At the age of seven, "I was still years away from grasping just how betrayed black America was feeling that day."

It was the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis.

"I knew who Dr. King was. He was our prince of peace; a relentless advocate for nonviolent resistance to racial and economic injustice...I find it curious now that my first vivid childhood memory is of a black man cut down in an unspeakable act of gun violence. The tentative connections I began to make on that day would foreshadow my future, both the tragedy that awaited me, and the activism it would provoke."

34 years later, McBath relates "my 17 year old son was gunned down in Florida on Black Friday 2012." Jordan had been driven by a friend, with another boy, to a gas station to get some gum. They were playing music loud on the car stereo. A middle aged white man took exception to the volume and, after a verbal altercation, shot the boys, killing Jordan.

There was a witness to the shooting and the perpetrator - Michael Dunn - was soon arrested. He claimed he was acting in self-defence; his lawyer would use Stand Your Ground as the centrepiece of his defence.

In 2005 the state of Florida adopted the Stand Your Ground law. It is based on 17th century English common law and the concept of "an Englishman's home is his castle". Florida’s Stand Your Ground” law states, “A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat [my formatting] and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself."

In other words, Michael Dunn had only to demonstrate that he believed he was in danger in order to justify his use of force.

At trial in 2014, the jury convicted Dunn on four charges, including attempted murder but, with the jury deadlocked on the first degree murder charge, the judge declared a mistrial on that count. In a second trial a few months later, Dunn was found guilty of first degree murder.

At the sentencing hearing after the second trial, Lucy McBath gave the following statement:

"I choose to forgive you, Mr. Dunn, for taking my son's life. I choose to release the seed of bitterness and anger that would not honor my son's life. I choose to walk in the freedom of knowing God's justice has been served...I pray that God has mercy on your soul."

Thus began Lucy McBath's advocacy on the issue of what she calls "our nation's perilously lenient gun laws". Working with reform groups and in the media spotlight, she becomes an important campaigner for gun law reform, eventually leading her to Congress.

This is a profound, enlightening and moving story. Written simply but with an attention to detail, particularly in regard to gun law history and charting subsequent massacres. To a non-American, it is frankly shocking; how can a nation live like this?

********************************************

Postscripts:

"Looking back now, I'm shocked at my naiveté. Growing up in the civil rights movement, travelling to marches and protest rallies with my parents, I should have known better....it is why I feel such a charge now to help save lives, and why I will never allow the hope for a more equitable future to grow cold in my heart." [Congresswoman Lucy McBath]

37 of the 50 states of the USA have Stand Your Ground laws or case law/precedent.

********************************************

Notes:

3½ minutes, 10 Bullets. A documentary film made following the author through the two jury trials. It won a Special Jury Prize for Social Impact at the Sundance Festival. Also an Academy Award nomination. You can watch it on Amazon Prime Video.

The Armor Of Light. Emmy award winning film which follows an Evangelical minister, Rev. Scheck, as he meets Lucy McBath and they form an unexpected alliance on gun control issues as "they bravely attempt to make others consider America’s gun culture through a moral lens." Also on Amazon Prime Video, I believe. armoroflightfilm.com

UPDATE: I may have misled you; it seems these films are not available on any UK streaming service. Not sure why that is; maybe licensing issues, I don't know. Sorry. Read the book!

It is a truth universally acknowledged

After "Jane Austen: A Life" came "Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self". One title bland, the other pithy. Titles matter; would you, dear reader, have bothered with this post were it entitled "Some idle thoughts" or worse, "Drunken footballer starts new season with a wonder goal"? I'm guessing No.

But do these two titles say anything about Claire Tomalin's empathy with her subjects? The country girl saunters through life, observing it; the urban diarist rages through it, enjoying it to the full. Tomalin moved on to "Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man" then back to "A Life" for Charles Dickens. I find these distinctions fascinating. If it means that the author finds Samuel Pepys a more rewarding personality to explore than Jane Austen, I'm with her there.

Even Mary Wollstonecraft, in 1974 Tomalin's first subject, gets "The Life and Death of".

I should confess at this point that I have never, as far as I can recall, read a Jane Austen novel. Does this disqualify me from commenting on a book of her life? I do come to the author's descriptions of Austen's life with an unfettered eye where others, lovers of Jane's writing, might be less dispassionate.

So just "A Life". I struggled with the early chapters. I wanted to move quickly to the adult Jane Austen writing her iconic novels. Instead there are pages of family bonhomie, James and his writing, flirtatious Eliza, questionable Warren Hastings and Christmas plays. The only one of them that I find interesting is Jane's father. Tomalin calls him "an exceptional father for an exceptional daughter", in particular for his allowing, even encouraging her to read from his library books which most parents of the time would have regarded as "not proper" for a young lady, such as Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, "full of discussions about the place and condition of women, and of love, marriage and eroticism". Austen's character Isabella Thorpe, in Northanger Abbey, calls it "an amazing horrid book". Jane's "father's bookshelves were of primary importance in fostering her talent".

The second half of Jane's teenage years are the subject of many pages. However, Jane herself is a bit of an absentee, as tales of the Hampshire gentry dominate. The Boltons, the Portsmouths, the Terrys, the Portals, more and more. Occasionally a quote from one of Jane's letters shows she is closely observing everybody  and everything, and Tomalin relates many of these observations to characters in her novels. "The Austens' neighbours, shifting, diverse, eccentric and sometimes outrageous in their behaviour, look like a great rich slab of raw material for a novelist to work on."

Jane's brief "romance" with Tom Lefroy is given short shrift. It isn't even clear how much of a romance it was. In due course he decided it wasn't for him - or, more likely, his family so decided. There is no record of Jane being distraught or, contrarily, relieved. Tomalin quotes from her letters as though she, in her early twenties, was still hopeful of a husband but there seems to have been little effort involved and a number of possibilities are given the cold shoulder. In a letter to sister Cassandra reporting on a ball: "There was one Gentleman, an officer of the Cheshire, a very good looking young Man, who I was told wanted very much to be introduced to me; but as he did not want it quite enough to take much trouble in effecting it, we never could bring it about." This attitude might well have put admirers off. Perhaps Jane didn't really know what she wanted from a marriage.

Chapter 15: Three Books. At last, something other than country tittle tattle that I can get my teeth into. As someone more or less ignorant of the early books - Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey - I am intrigued to know whether I am led to read them and, if so, would I have been better reading them first, before reading this biography? And what is it about Jane and her books that make her such an object of fascination, even reverence, for 20th (and maybe even 21st) century readers?

According to Tomalin, Sense and Sensibility sees Jane developing her own values; after all, she was only 21 when she wrote the first draft. At first sympathetic to Elinor and her 'discretion, polite lies and carefully preserved privacy', she appears to grow closer to 'the transparency, truth-telling and freely expressed emotion' of Marianne. Sense of duty vs personal integrity. Is it too much to postulate that Jane had lived in a small, enclosed world and gradually felt a need to explore a greater universe? There is nothing to suggest that she ever went as far as Marianne's reproach to Sir John Middleton: "I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended; and 'setting one's cap at a man', or 'making a conquest', are the most odious of all."

From Tomalin's description, Pride and Prejudice would make the ideal Mozart comic opera. Various ensembles for the Bennet girls, a trio for Darcy, Bingley and Wickham and a tasty duet for the Bennet parents. It sounds like Jane would have been a great librettist. Sadly Mozart wasn't available, having died a few years earlier but we can drool over what might have been - a Dream Team. Had Jane been more worldly-wise, she might have sought out someone like Salieri and suggested a collaboration.

I did discover that there have been some musicals of the book. That sounds frankly awful.

Tomalin treats Northanger Abbey summarily, just a page and a half. I couldn't discern why that is.

In these three early novels Jane displays an ability to work in different styles - the dichotomy of Sense and Sensibility, the comedy of Pride and Prejudice and the author as narrator in Northanger Abbey. Tomalin clearly admires her as a [my words] 'master craftsman' (I know, that should be craftswoman but that's such an ugly word).

Then for a period of ten years, Jane wrote - or at least completed - nothing. It was a traumatic time; an unwelcome move to Bath, followed by unsettling peripatetic living arrangements, the death of her father and later that of her sister in law. Tomalin suggests that Jane was very discomforted by all this, perhaps extremely so ("Cassandra...was the closest witness of Jane's depression, seeing...how the lack of a settled home kept her from writing"). She was perpetually poor ("Jane's entire spending money for 1807...was something like £50") and had to rely on others for travels to stay with friends and family. The author refers to her becoming familiar with her status as a ‘maiden aunt’, at the grand old age of 33.

There was even a proposal of marriage which she accepted then, the following morning, told her suitor that she had changed her mind.

A mid life crisis in her late 20s and early 30s!

Finally in 1809, the crisis eased. Tomalin notes “By 7 July they were in the cottage at Chawton, joined soon afterwards by Cassandra and Martha. The effect on Jane of this move to a permanent home in which she was able to re-establish her own rhythm of work was dramatic. It was as though she were restored to herself, to her imagination, to all her powers: a black cloud had lifted”. She returned to writing.

The extent of Tomalin’s fascination with Mansfield Park can be judged by the amount of analysis of the characters in which she indulges. Page after page, quite unlike anything of the earlier works. Clearly she finds it baffling and morally challenging, as did Jane's mother, sister and brother Henry; the characters strong and ethically equivocal (including "a group of worldly, highly cultivated, entertaining and well-to-do young people who pursue pleasure without regard for religious or moral principles" [a reference to the Prince Regent's court, perhaps]). The mature Jane clearly felt comfortable exploring such attitudes and their counterparts with "strongly held religious and moral principles" . Tomalin questions the extent to which the characters reflect Austen's own values. In the mid twentieth century Kingsley Amis "concluded that Jane Austen's own judgement and moral sense had gone seriously astray".

By now her works were being published (at first not in Jane's own name) and hence scrutinised. Although given that over half of the population were illiterate and printed books were very expensive to buy, the readership was probably a limited circle of literati. Mansfield Park had a print run of 1,250 and made her £320, the most in her lifetime.

"Emma begun Jany 21st 1814, finished March 29th 1815" wrote Jane's sister Cassandra. This is the only book with which I have at least a passing acquaintance. I find Jane's eponymous heroine simply annoying. I'm not the only one; Austen herself wrote "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." So a bold move. But one that worked, according to Tomalin: "Emma, with its far from faultless heroine, is generally hailed as Austen's most perfect book, flawlessly carried out from conception to finish", "an indication of Austen's power to imagine experience outside her own". Jane collected the 'opinions' of others about the book - 43 of them, of which "only six gave unreserved praise". Seventeen said they preferred Pride and Prejudice.

[A survey by the Jane Austen Society of North America in 2008 showed Pride and Prejudice as the most popular (53%) of Austen's novels; 28% went for Persuasion, 7% for Emma, 5% for Sense and Sensibility and 4% each for Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park]

Early in 1816 Jane began to feel unwell but "She kept busy, working on 'The Elliots' - her working title for Persuasion". She finished it on 18 July, although she continued to do some re-writes. Tomalin sees it as " a present to....all women who had lost their chance in life and would never enjoy a second spring. "At once the warmest and coldest of Jane Austen's works, the softest and the hardest" wrote Reginald Farrer in 1917. "Years later Cassandra wrote wrote beside it in the margin of her copy of Persuasion the words 'Dear, dear Jane! This deserves to be written in letters of gold'". Tomalin's description of the novel moved me as no other part of this biography did.

In January 1817, increasingly sick and frail, Jane started work on a new novel. When the unfinished work was published in 1925 it was entitled Sanditon. Jane passed away, apparently well prepared in her mind for the end of her short life, in July.

This is a magnificent biography, all the more so since there is so little source material from or about Jane Austen. I cannot deny I struggled much of the time, largely due to Tomalin having to include a great deal of contextual material about family, friends, neighbours and country life of the time. Did it achieve my goal of finding the real Jane? Probably not; she remains a mystery to me in many ways; she herself did not court fame and seems to have been immune to (even nervous of at first) any sense of popularity.

Nevertheless, I did enjoy reading it and also doing this - writing about it. I found that process gave me more insight. I don't pretend this is any more than a series of impressions; certainly not a review. I will leave the final words to two far better judges of Jane Austen than I:

Claire Tomalin: "I must return to...the person...who kept notes on what people said about her work, to read over to herself. This is my favourite image of Jane Austen, laughing at the opinions of the world".

Cassandra: "She was the sun of my life, the gilder of my pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a thought concealed from her".

I think Jane would have been happy to have either of those as an epitaph.

Biography

I have never read much in the way of biography - the occasional footballer, maybe. But historical figures, almost none. Until now. I have spent the last few weeks reading Claire Tomalin's "Samuel Pepys: the Unequalled Self". Oh my, what I have been missing. This is spellbinding stuff, beautifully written and opening  up new vistas for me of the English Civil War, the Stuarts and their failings and the sheer wantonness of 17th century life.

It is an enormous read and reading a couple of dozen pages in bed each night means I have spaced this endeavour out over several weeks. Which I can only imagine matches in some way the incredible amount of research which must have gone into writing this book. So I feel I am honouring the spirit of the author; I hope she would be proud of me.

Obviously the primary source material for the book is Pepys' diary. Excerpts from the diary in the book make me realise how much I need an interlocutor if I am to understand his words. 17th century English, interspersed with words in foreign tongues and encased in a florid and expressive vernacular render much of the language impenetrable to the non scholar that I am. Pepys' education clearly doesn't match mine; his is classical in style and mine is scientific modernist, hence my difficulties. What am I to make of "the mistresse of the shop took us into the kitchen and there talked and used us very prettily, and took her for my wife, which I owned and her big belly, and there very merry, till my thing done, and then took coach and home, in the way tomando su mano and putting it where I used to do; which ella did suffer, but not avec tant de freedom as heretofore, I perceiving plainly she had alguns apprehensions de me but I did offer natha more then what I had often done. "? (Best not explained to the children)

In his diary Pepys gives a vivid picture of life in the second half of the 17th century. The Great Plague of 1665 and the Fire of London in the following year are extensively chronicled in the book and resonated strongly with me at our pandemic time.

Pepys is a man of many parts. We read extensively of him as a naval administrator, as a loyal courtier to, in turn, Cromwell,  Charles II and James II, as a "mover and shaker" in society and as a husband (sadly not a father).

The navy was a hugely important part of English power and Pepys worked his way up through the civil service ranks to eventually become Secretary to the Admiralty. There were 23 years of war with the Dutch and later conflicts with the French who were supporting James II and his return to the English throne. Pepys signed supply contracts, administered the fleet and the dockyards and was a persistent advocate for more funding for the navy. He also spoke out against pressing, but not to the same effect. His work in this regard allowed him to generate considerable personal wealth, it being the norm to act as a paid agent and to extract payments from contractors for services rendered.

It seems that Pepys was a parliamentarian and republican. Freshly out of school he became an Exchequer clerk and attended meetings chaired by Cromwell. He worked in Cromwell's service until the Restoration, at which point it seemed apposite to serve Charles II. Pepys is clearly no great lover of the dissolute life that the monarch lived but did his job and from time to time was called to advise the King. Tomalin tells us "Pepys's position at the Navy Board meant he owed direct duty and loyalty to the King" but "he was shocked by what he heard of the swearing, drinking and whoring at court". He continued to serve the new King James II during his short reign.

Pepys' parliamentarianism came back to haunt him in later life, suffering trial and imprisonment in the blood letting that seems to be have been a feature of both the (Catholic) Restoration and the subsequent (Protestant) monarchy of William and Mary.. He had always been agnostic in religious matters and had friends and family who were Catholics and his support and friendship never wavered and later led to his being accused of being a secret Papist. It can't have been a pleasant time for him. In this respect Tomalin gives a clear picture of a hard working and loyal servant of whomever his leader was at the time.

Pepys clearly loved mixing with powerful and important people, not only in the civil service but in the arts and sciences. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and enjoyed its discourse for many years, eventually serving as President for a two year term. He became familiar with such as Isaac Newton, Christopher Wren, the chemist Robert Boyle, the economist William Petty and the polymath Robert Hooke. He read widely, made and listened to music and collected art. I think he would have had a season ticket to the Royal Opera today. Maybe even Bayreuth.

As for his personal life, he made many friends, both male and female, and enjoyed discourse and intimacy with them. He was a loving husband. I can't recall any sense of regret at being childless but it's possible that his behaviour with other women was partly a result of that.

Overall, Samuel Pepys is a complex and alluring character. He comes across as an often frustrated administrator and courtier - never quite in the top echelon of society - who lived the most amazingly busy life and made the most of his abilities. He was loyal to his friends and constant in his derision of his enemies. A likeable man? Probably not. But a formidable one.

I now know that Tomalin has written biographies of Dickens, Hardy and Jane Austen amongst others. I shall definitely be working my way through these in my nightly vigils, Claire. Thank you for bringing light into my life.

The Machine Stops

A world in which all humans live underground. Each person in their own bubble. a small room where everything happens for them.The central character of the story gives lectures to remotely located students and "attends" lectures herself. Remotely communicating with her son and others.

A prescient parable of our pandemically-challenged times? Perhaps but, astonishingly, The Machine Stops is a short story by E. M. Forster, written in...1909.

As well as communication, feeding, sleeping, air conditioning and other necessary aspects of daily life are controlled by the Machine. A world-wide inter-connected, all-embracing functional controller.

Technology innovation in 1909 consisted of bakelite, cellophane, lipstick and disposable razor blades. Although Alexander Graham Bell had developed the telephone 30 years earlier it wasn't until the 1930s that phones in homes became a thing; Forster may have had some awareness of the device in 1909 but probably no experience. So how could he have imagined the world of Skype, the Internet, Zoom and WhatsApp? Amazing.

This is not the fantasy fiction of The Time Machine or The Invisible Man (no offence Herbert George Wells; I have enjoyed your books immensely) but rather science/technology/sociology fiction.

Nor is this Orwell's 1984 control freakery; citizens of this story are allowed, but not encouraged, to do certain things such as travel. So it's not about fascism or demagoguery. It is essentially about the dangers of technological development and the inexorable trend towards machine control. The Machine is clearly a benign object to the world's citizens; some of them even begin to worship it:

"The Machine", they exclaimed, "feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being. The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition; the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine."

The Machine is doing a great job for the citizens of Earth. It supplies all their bodily and spiritual needs.

Until. It. Breaks. Down.

The. Machine Stops.

In my never-satisfied search for more knowledge, I came across a 2016 album of the same name by the space-rock band Hawkwind. There is an introductory narrative track All hail The Machine, with a background of weird machiney and spacey sounds:

The Machine feeds us & clothes us & houses us

Through the Machine, we speak to one another, in it we have our being

The Machine is the friend of ideas & the enemy of superstition

The Machine is omnipotent, eternal

Blessed is The Machine

Blessed is The Machine

All this talk is as if a god made the machine

But you must remember that men made The Machine

Great men but men all the same

The Machine is much but it is not everything

There is something like you on the screen but you are not seen

There is something that sounds like you but you are not heard

In time, because of The Machine, there will come a generation that has got beyond facts

Beyond impressions

A generation absolutely colourless

A generation seraphically free from the taint of personality

All hail The Machine!

All hail The Machine!

At last on track 2 (The Machine) we get music!

Oh to reach the surface once again

And feel the sun

I thought a later track Living on Earth might give some of E. M. Forster enlightenment but sadly the lyrics - and the music - typify the album's deterioration into the mundane (Maybe that's a metaphor for The Machine Stops).

I didn't know, no one told me of this

That living on Earth is no life of bliss

Those halcyon days when time slips away

Our love won't exist

I'm sorry Hawkwind, you don't make it onto my Spotify favourites list but it was good to know you.

Low boredom threshold and previous transitory enthusiasms

I told you recently about my brief reunion with the pleasure of bird watching. That set me thinking about what my bookshelves remind me of previous short-term enthusiasms.

As I sit here writing this, I can see a large , picturesque book "The Tropical Marine Aquarium". I had one once but the guppies, angelfish, mollies and the like didn't live very long, and some fish enjoyed (too much, in my opinion) eating the others. BTW (for those, like me, over 70, that means By The Way) whilst researching this post (yes I do research for these meaningless ramblings) I discovered guppyexpert.com, which has a page "20 Best Guppy Fish Tank Mates". Wow, the things people know!

If you are thinking of having an aquarium, you should know that they require a lot of effort - cleaning, checking temperature and oxygenation, etc. - and all the fish do is swim about aimlessly and ungratefully. Occasionally a mummy fish (temporary, as female guppies can apparently change sex - very woke) will have babies, which the other fish in the tank immediately treat as a new source of food. Ugh.

Next to that book is "50 walks to country pubs". Well thumbed but no use at the moment, obviously. If there was a book "50 aimless walks within 100 metres of your house", that might be relevant.

Then there's a whole shelf of cookery books. What are they for? Did some previous owner of this house leave them? I shouldn't mock, as I think one or other of my sons (maybe both) gave me some when I moved to Cornwall, in the forlorn expectation that I would be spending my retirement in my kitchen. Thanks, guys.

"Supper won't take long" is one book, by Lindsey Bareham. Too true, I gobble my food like a Trojan (i.e. inside a horse). An obviously second hand "Pakistan Cookery Book" is next to it. Opening it for the first time ever, I discover 185 recipes for such treats as Dahi Baras, Suji Cake and Kachories. Mm, delicious. And a print of an internet page "How to Cook Beetroot". Wait, you COOK beetroot? You mean it doesn't come out of a jar?

A book on Mentoring sits alongside Samuel Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape". Diversity.

Then there is a huge "Chronicle of the 20th Century". A relic of my early Cornwall days when  I used to go to auctions. And brought home piles of tat and ancient books, to adorn my house. Ugh again.

And get this - this jigsaw...

...has been on that table for three years! You can see the picture has lots of (similar) blues and prolonged exposure to the sun, by a south facing window, has faded many of the pieces so the whole thing is a puzzle - er, yes Nigel, a puzzle duh!

Will I ever finish it? I'm probably not THAT bored.

I'm a dabbler - I try something, get tired of it, move on to something else. Like yoga. And croquet. Spotify. Netflix. Probably - at some time in the distant future - blogging.

Not to worry, there's a new computer game coming out tomorrow which I have pre-ordered. That should keep me going for a .... month?