I, János Bátky, Hungarian citizen, come face to face with Englishness, Welshness and Irishness

The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb. 1933 French title: La légende de Pendragon; translated into French by Natalia Zaremba-Huszvai and Charles Zaremba. 

Antal Szerb is a Hungarian writer of Jewish origin. He was born in 1901 in Budapest and died in 1945 in a camp, killed by Hungarian fascists. I discovered The Pendragon Legend when Max reviewed it here.

János Bátky is a Hungarian scholar who lives in London and he’s the Narrator of this novel. It’s 1933, our Narrator attends a party and is introduced to the eccentric Lord Owen Pendragon, Earl of Gwynedd. They have a common interest in esoteric and occult books. The count invites him to Gwynedd, his castle in Wales. It’s a rare opportunity, the castle’s library is filled with rare and ancient books and Bátky is excited to put his hands on original rarities. Before going, a mysterious phone-call warns him not to go. If curiosity doesn’t kill the cat, it threatens our Narrator’s life as he becomes involved with a strange family, drawn to legends and mysticism. The novel is an odd mix of detective story, gothic tale and social autopsy. A dangerous cocktail for a writer but the barman Szerb is a master and it’s excellent.

More than the plot of the novel, I loved Bátky’s subtle sense of humour and Szerb’s deciphering of Britishness. Max wrote a spot-on entry about János Bátky’s guide to romance and indeed the novel points out several times the difference between continental and British attitude toward love and sex. The book is full of ironic notes, aphorisms, little remarks about the UK. Here is Bátky sleeping in the family castle in Wales and feeling uncomfortable in his room:

En tout cas, j’allumai la lumière. La chambre était encore de deux cents ans plus historique que lorsque je m’étais couché. J’avais déjà vu de telles chambres dans des musées londoniens ou des châteaux français, mais toujours avec des étiquettes et des guides pour suggérer ce qu’il faut imaginer, Napoléon faisant les cent pas les mains croisées dans le dos ou une dame maigrichonne à côté de son rouet.

Anyway, I switched on the light. The bedroom was two-hundred years more historical than when I went to bed. I had already seen that kind of room in London museums or French castles but they always had tags and guides to prompt what to imagine. Napoléon pacing across the room with his hands behind his back; a skinny woman beside her spinning wheel.

Part of the book’s charm comes from this and I really appreciated that the translators scattered the text with English words such as Well, All Right, Dear Me, or I say. It enforced the feeling of being in Great Britain and reminded me all the time that Bátky was a foreigner there. Remember how I had problems saying Anthony Trollope? That was piece of cake compared to Gwynedd, Llianvygan, Abersych or Pierce Gwyn Mawr because I can’t even imagine how it’s supposed to sound. Some words seem bound to be photographed rather than said aloud. That said, I downloaded a sample of the English translation and I wonder if the French version isn’t even wittier than the English one:

Ses yeux étaient plus vifs que l’Angleterre disciplinée ne le permet d’habitude. Le sujet devait être pour lui le sujet des sujets.

The fervour in his eyes was certainly un-English. The subject was clearly close to his heart. (Translated by Len Rix.)

The literal French would be His eyes were brighter than usually allowed by disciplined England. The subject must have been THE subject.

Apart from the exquisite irony, Szerb is a wonderful writer when it comes to nature and lanscapes. His descriptions of the Welsh wilderness are beautiful, lots of greenery very few sheep, he mustn’t have visited the same places as me. Here is an example, if you can, read the French, the English is my translation.

Quand nous montâmes en voiture, il faisait déjà nuit. Le vent furetait impatiemment entre les arbres de la forêt que nous traversions et, de temps en temps, la pleine lune montrait son grand visage rougeoyant. A ces moments, on pouvait voir la fuite sauvage, exaltée mais néanmoins silencieuse, des nuages vers l’est.

It was already dark when we got into the car. The wind was impatiently snooping between the trees of the forest we were driving through and from time to time, the full moon showed up her big red- glowing face. In these moments, one could see clouds wildly but yet silently fleeing towards the East.

Picturesque, isn’t it?

For who reads this blog regularly, the novel will sound out of my usual path. That’s true. But that’s precisely the joy of blogging, being tempted by books I would never have picked on the shelf by myself. Thanks Max!

Cornegibouille! Ubu is a slave now.

Ubu Enchainé by Alfred Jarry. 1899. Ubu Bound.

In case you’ve missed the first episode, here is my chronicle of Ubu Roi. Ubu Enchainé is the sequel of Ubu Roi. The first scene sums up what happened in the previous play. Now that Ubu is back to France, he doesn’t want to be king anymore; he wants to be a slave now. Follow a series of events, and it goes crazier and crazier. The language is as imaginative as in Ubu roi and under the apparent lunacy, there are some serious themes.

First, Jarry makes fun of the army, in French, l’armée, in Ubu-language, l’Armerdre, literally, the armshrit.) He makes fun of the dogma of liberty (Remember the slogan of the French Republic: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité) and also mocks fraternity. This must have been quite shocking at the time. The army was respected, in the idea of revenge over the Germans. And remember it was the Dreyfus Affair back then.

Second, I heard a criticism of anarchism in this play. The soldiers refuse to obey, they say it’s their freedom to do so. But they’re not free to obey and the rule is to act freely and obey wouldn’t be acting freely. They prone liberty at any cost up to stupidity.

Nous sommes libres de faire ce que nous voulons, même d’obéir ; d’aller partout où il nous plaît, même en prison! La liberté, c’est l’esclavage !

We are free to do as we please, even free to obey, free to go everywhere we want, even to prison! True freedom lays in slavery!

The reasoning is pushed so far that it becomes ridiculous. (Is is a syllogism?)

I wrote an entry about character names in Trollope. Jarry has a lot of fun with them too. Here we have Pissembock (Pee-in-a -beer-glass), Pissedoux (Pee-softly), Granpré (High Prairie) or Grandair (Grandair, like in Trollope, btw). I have no idea how the English translator dealt with these names. Lord Catoblépas, the English character speaks French like a Spanish cow –this is literally what we say when a foreigner speaks awful French– mixing English and French, I could hear his accent:

Oh ! Vous faites à moi beaucoup de pleasure. Voici pour vous bonne pourboire.

Oh! You’re making me many plaisir. Here a good tip to you.

I tried to translate the grammar mistakes into some a French could make in English. Again, I wonder how the English translator did.

The play was incredible. I saw a version directed by British director Dan Jemmet. Eric Cantona impersonated a formidable Père Ubu, Valérie Crouzet a vulgar and yelling Mère Ubu and an incredible actor, Giovanno Calo played a Narrator. When I read the play, I wondered how the director would do with all the characters and locations indicated in the book. He had a fantastic idea: the Narrator was in a kitchen and played all the other characters using eggs, toasts, a tea pot, a flower, a bottle. I understand that Jarry meant to use puppets. This was a crazy version of the puppets, perfectly in the atmosphere of Jarry’s text. Calo moved like a mime sometimes, funny and at the same time really telling what was happening. Marvellous.

I recommend that your rational mind takes a French leave when you read the Ubu plays. It’s the only way to enjoy them.

Photo: Eric Cantona by Patrick Swirc for “Télérama”.

Strangers On A Train by Patricia Highsmith

Stranger On A Train by Patricia Highsmith. 1950. French title: L’inconnu du Nord Express.

Strangers On a Train is one of the books Guy gave me for our virtual Christmas gifts. Hitchcock made this novel into a film in 1951, shortly after the novel was published. The film is very famous, so I suspect you already know the plot. Let me refresh your memory. 

Guy Haines is a young architect in his late twenties. He made a mistake when he was younger, marrying the vulgar and clinging Miriam, back there in his home town of Metcalf, Texas. Their marriage is a failure and they’ve been living apart for two years now, he in New York, she still in Metcalf.  

At the beginning of the book, Guy is on his way to Metcalf, to get a divorce. Miriam is pregnant with another man’s child and she intends to marry him. She’s eventually ready to agree on the divorce. Guy is impatient to get away with it, both because he loathes Miriam and wants her out of his life and because he’s in love with Anne and needs his freedom to marry her.  

He meets Charles Bruno on a train carriage to Metcalf. Bruno starts talking to him and Guy is too polite to object and get rid of him. Against his better judgement, he accepts to dine with him in his private carriage. Bruno is on his way to Santa Fe to meet his mother. He hates his father and wants him dead, mostly to put his hands on his fortune and have his mother to himself. Bruno adores his mother. Although he’s usually rather private, Guy confides in Bruno who quickly understands how convenient it would be if Miriam were dead. The craziest idea occurs to him and he suggests Guy that they plan the perfect murder. He would kill Miriam and Guy would kill Bruno Senior. Guy refuses and turns his back on him, appalled. They part.  

When Miriam is murdered a few weeks later, Guy suspects that Bruno did it. Bruno confirms his suspicion and now claims that Guy must pay him back and do his part of the bargain.  

From then on, Guy’s life turns into hell.  

The confrontation between the two men is uneven as Bruno is unbalanced and fights dirty. I found the two characters complex and perfectly drawn. Patricia Highsmith excels in pealing of layers after layers of thoughts and feelings, exploring the minds of our two murderers.  

Bruno is a crazy man and his motives are based on muddy feelings. We are in an Oedipal story: he wants his father killed to have his mother. He loathes women in general and yet can’t stay away from Guy, even if it’s imprudent to contact him as the basis of their perfect murder is the impossibility for the police to make a connection between the two of them. The following quote is typical of Bruno’s behaviour and attitude towards life:  

I mean you’re serious and you choose a profession. Like architect. Me, I don’t feel like working. I don’t have to work, see? I’m not a writer or a painter or a musician. Is there any reason a person should work if they don’t have to? I’ll get my ulcers the easy way. My father has ulcers. Hah! He still has hopes I’ll enter his hardware business. I tell him his business, all business, is legalized throat-cutting, like marriage is legalized fornication.

I think Bruno is in love with Guy. We are in 1950 and Patricia Highsmith doesn’t write it openly but there are enough hints. Perhaps it’s such a taboo that Bruno can’t admit it to himself either. Bruno coaxes Guy into killing Bruno Senior. He appears out of thin air, crashes at Guy’s wedding with Anne, telephones at home, at the office, writes letters. He threatens to tell the truth to Anne or to the police, follows Guy at work. He pushes Guy over the edge.

The novel shows how Bruno slowly but surely breaks up Guy.  

Guy is an honest man, deep inside. He’s a quiet, serious man, climbing the social ladder thanks to his gift for architecture and his wedding with Anne. He’s deeply in love with her, a requited love by the way. She’s his anchor in real life when things get out of control with Bruno. Guy’s leading a double life. On the one hand, he’s a promising architect, his career is taking off and he’s busy building a life with Anne and designing creative buildings. On the other hand, he’s consumed with guilt and always on edge because of Bruno’s looming presence.  

Bruno tortures him, not physically of course, but mentally. Guy’s an fascinating character, serious, shy, professional and creative. His creativity relies on his ability to imagine the people who will use the building he’s drawing and to design an artistic line without neglecting the practicalities. It’s an interesting side of his character, it reveals his concern for other people and explains his anguish and his guilt. He’s split into two.  

Patricia Highsmith explores an intriguing idea: do we all have a murdered lurking in ourselves, ready to come out were our public self threatened enough. We all live with a dark side and here’s Guy thinking about it:  

But love and hate, he thought now, good and evil, lived side by side in the human heart, and not merely in differing proportions in one man and the next, but all good and all evil. One had merely to look for a little of either to find it all, one had merely to scratch the surface. All things had opposites close by, every decision a reason against it, every animal an animal that destroys it, the male the female, the positive the negative. The slitting of the atom was the only true destruction, the breaking of the universal law of oneness. Nothing could be without its opposite that was bound up with it. Could space exist in a building without objects that stopped it? Could energy exist without matter, or matter without energy? Matter and energy, the inert and the active, once considered opposites, were now to be one. 

Highsmith’s style is amazing. Precise. Imaginative. Literary. She builds the tension in the story, adding one detail to the other, slowly driving the characters to the inevitable. I loved the Trollope Guy chose for me, this one is also excellent. Thanks Guy, now I’m looking forward to reading An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge.

Merdre or Shrit! Ubu Roi is a lot more sensible than expected

Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry. 1896. Written circa 1888. English Title: Ubu Rex.

I’m going to watch the play Ubu Enchaîné (Ubu Bound) by Alfred Jarry in a couple of days. So I thought I might as well read it before watching it. Then I realized that Ubu Roi and Ubu Cocu (Ubu Cuckolded) came before Ubu Enchaîné, and that there was also Ubu sur la butte (1906) I downloaded the four plays, so you can expect more about Ubu.

In Ubu Roi, Père Ubu and Mère Ubu murder the current king of Poland so that Père Ubu can be powerful and rich. Follow the inevitable massacres of opponents, wars, spoliations and battles.

In French, ubuesque means totally absurd. Hmm, I’m not sure about Ubu being totally absurd. It is a parody of classic theatre, Shakespeare, Corneille and Racine in particular. It’s clear in the introduction:

Adonc le Père Ubu hoscha la poire, dont fut depuis nommé par les Anglois Shakespeare, et avez de lui sous ce nom maintes belles tragœdies par escript.

Thereatte Lord Ubu shooke his peare-head, whence he is by the Englysshe yclept Shakespeare, and you have from him under thatte name many goodlie tragedies in his own hande. translated by C. Connolly and S. Watson Taylor.

And indeed, Ubu is a funny pot-pourri of the conventions of tragedy and of allusions to the history of France. In the first scene, Mère Ubu talks Père Ubu into killing the king of Poland to dethrone him then become rich. There are already several allusions in that scene. The most obvious one is the reference to Macbeth, especially since Ubu kills the king just after he rewarded him for his courage at war. The second one would be a historical reference to the 16thC, when Henri II, son of Catherine de Médicis became king of Poland.

Later, during the war, Ubu loses his horse. Although he’s not ready to give up his kingdom for a horse, he’s pretty upset by the loss. Ubu also wants to kill his assailants by sticking a wood pick in their ears, which reminded me of Hamlet’s father being killed with poison in his ear. By the way, after the war, Ubu sails near Elsinore on his way back to France.

Other allusions to Shakespeare are scattered throughout the text: Family Ghosts talk to Bougrelas, the son of the former king, during his sleep. He’s on the run, thinking about revenge.

O mon Dieu ! Qu’il est triste de se voir seul à quatorze ans avec une vengeance terrible à poursuivre !

O my God! How sad it is to be alone at fourteen with a terrible vengeance to pursue

The Ghosts give him a sword that won’t rest in peace until the usurper is dethroned. The idea of vengeance at any cost is also present in Le Cid by Corneille, which takes place in Spain and there are allusions to Spain in Ubu Roi too. One sentence is an open reference to Horace, also by Corneille:

Combat des voraces contre les coriaces, mais les voraces ont complètement mangé et dévoré les coriaces, comme vous le verrez quand il fera jour

Fight of the voracious against the tough but the voracious totally ate and devoured the tough, as you’ll see it when it is dawn.

Here you need to read the French. Horace relates the fight between the Horatii (Horaces) and the Curatii (Curiaces), an episode of Ancient Rome history. In Jarry’s phrase, Horace becomes vorace (voracious) and Curiace becomes coriace (tough).

Jarry plays with the conventions of theatre. Somewhere in the play, Mère Ubu has her monologue, a tradition in classic plays. I also caught allusions to Molière: Ubu’s passion for money reminded me of L’Avare. Some devices come from Molière and the Comedia dell’Arte: streams of insults, tricks, beat-ups. Sometime, Ubu is convinced that he saved his crowd from a bear thanks to a prayer. What a Tartuffe!

Several episodes of our history are mentioned in the play. After ridiculous trials, Ubu executes the nobility of his country to take their properties. It’s not the guillotine, but it’s close; I thought of the Terror. Ubu visits the previous king’s son in his jail and says it would make a fuss of he escaped. I saw a mix between Louis XVII in the prison du Temple after the Revolution and their attempt to flee the country. Later, Ubu is stuck in Russia, in the snow, during a war with his enemies. Doesn’t that ring a bell?

I suspect that there were also allusions to contemporary politics. Ubu wants to create all kinds of taxes, and taxes on propriety and on revenues were actually discussed during the Third Republic in France. I also find strange that a peasant is named Stanislas Leczinski, which is the name of the last Duke of Lorraine, just at a time when reconquering Lorraine to the Germans was a major issue in the country.

In a way, I even found Jarry premonitory. Ubu calls himself Maître des Financiers (Master of Finance Men), he sees his political role as a taking good care of the finance. With the Euro crisis these days, I wonder if our politicians don’t feel the same.

That was the substance. Now the form. The language is extraordinary, literally. It’s full of play-on-words, allusions, slang, swear words and inventions. I’m not surprised his contemporaries were shocked. It mixes old French with argot, accents and onomatopoeias. It’s funny, terribly funny and very witty, like here:

Pile.— Hon ! Monsieuye Ubu, êtes-vous remis de votre terreur et de votre fuite ? Père Ubu.— Oui! Je n’ai plus peur, mais j’ai encore la fuite.

Pile – Hon! Sir Ubu, have you recovered from your fright and your flight? Père Ubu: Yes! I’m not frightened any more but I’m still flightened.

I couldn’t find a free translation online, so you’ll have to bear my translations. Be forgiving, it’s not easy to translate. The dialogues are totally whacked, surrealist we would say now. (and indeed Jarry was a precursor of the Surrealists)

Un Capitaine (arrivant). — Sire Ubu, les Russes attaquent. Père Ubu. — Eh bien, après, que veux tu que j’y fasse ? Ce n’est pas moi qui le leur ai dit.

A Captain, coming. - Sir Ubu, the Russian attack. - Well, what do you want from me? I’m not the one who asked them to.

 Sometimes, it’s also very sharp. Before Ubu, the finance men are spelled Les Financiers. After the coup, they are spelled Phynanciers, a way to show that after a revolution, the people remain but with another tag.

I had a lot of fun reading this. Under the apparent craziness, I found many perfectly sensible themes and attacks to politicians. Ubu is horrible. He kills in cold blood, only lusts for money, treats his people with contempt. He has the madness of a Nero. The parody of serious tragedies is hilarious. It’s a short play, about 60 pages and it’s a real gem. I’m sure I missed many other allusions, I’m not a specialist of classic tragedies, they rather bore me. (I prefer Shakespeare to Corneille and Racine anyway). It must have been a challenge to translate this play and keep the creativity of the language. Give it a try.

I found other reviews: one by Mel U at The Reading Life and Tom at Wuthering Expectations also wrote several entries about Ubu, (here about the use of merdre  , here  and here)

PS: I guess I know why the director chose Eric Cantona to play Ubu in the version of Ubu Bound I’ll see.

The end of innocence

Le blé en herbe by Colette. 1923 English title: The Ripening Seed.

This month, our selection for our Book Club Les Copines d’Abord was Le blé en herbe by Colette, a brilliant novella picturing the delicate time between childhood and adulthood. Colette doesn’t mention adolescence, I’m not sure that word was commonly used at the time.

Early 1920s. Philippe and Vinca spend all their summers in Brittany with their parents, who are used to renting the same house together every summer. Phil and Vinca have known each other since childhood. They are close friends, sharing their activities. But this year, things have changed as they are leaving childhood behind and starting the difficult path of adulthood.

Mais le plus beau matin rajeunissait jusqu’à ces enfants égarés et qui se tournaient parfois, plaintivement, vers la porte invisible par où ils étaient sortis de l’enfance.

But the brightest morning made these distraught children look younger. Sometimes, they turned back plaintively towards the invisible door through which they had come out of childhood.

The tender feelings between them are shifting from a carefree camaraderie into love. So they think. They grope around, hesitate to name their growing feeling, knowing deep inside it is changing. Each of them experiences the turmoil of adolescence, questions about identity, love, sex, the future.

Philippe envisions school, diplomas, work. He knows Vinca mentally prepares to get married and be a housewife. He tries to act as a man. She has womanly curves but still behaves like a tomboy, fishing crabs and shrimps, walking by the sea, throwing stones in the ocean. This summer, their sensuality awakens. They try to understand what happens, do their best to cope with it. They become self-conscious, walls build up between them. Philippe realizes he doesn’t know her as much as he thought. She loves him unconditionally but seems more mature than him sometimes. She has to face his weaknesses. They misunderstand each other, quarrel sometimes. The external element who will unbalance their casualness and force them to face their feeling will be Mme Dalleray, a 30 years old woman who meets Philippe and seduces him.

Philippe and Vinca call their parents les Ombres, the Shadows. They are so caught up in their little drama, their internal tempest that they behave on automatic pilot when they are among their families. They have this silent understanding between them, their own unspoken language. They are oblivious to their parents and they perceive them as distant puppets moving around them, Shadows gesticulating in the background. I can relate to that. I remember that feeling and I still do that sometimes, partially withdraw from my environment when something bothers me. Teenagers sometimes seem selfish but their energy is turned inward trying to understand the hurricane of questions and feelings they discover. (Please remind me of that in a few years when my children are teenagers.)

In Le blé en herbe, it is August, the summer is ending, so is Philippe and Vinca’s childhood. The descriptions of the landscape go along with the change in their attitude towards one another. Colette is an excellent writer, giving a vivid picture of the scenery, the wilderness and the sense of an ending.

L’odeur de l’automne, depuis quelques jours, se glissait, le matin, jusqu’à la mer.De l’aube à l’heure où la terre, échauffée, permet que le souffle frais de la mer repousse l’arôme, moins dense, des sillons ouverts, du blé battu, des engrais fumants, ces matins d’août sentaient l’automne.

Since a few days, the scent of autumn drifted to the sea in the morning. From dawn to the hour when the warm earth allows the fresh breath from the sea to push aside the less dense aroma of the open furrows, of the beaten wheat, of the steaming manure, these August mornings smelled like autumn.

Colette perfectly unfolds their tormented relationship and remarkably describes the impact of sensuality on what they think is a couple. The characters aren’t what you could expect. Philippe is more hesitant and troubled than Vinca. Does it matter that this novel was written by a woman? I think it does. Colette had a free lifestyle and it resonates in her work. I feel that no male writer managed to describe the fragility of an adolescent boy the way Colette did. At least not before the 1970s and men’s acceptance of their soft side. Here the characters aren’t what you expect. Philippe cries, overwhelmed by emotions. Vinca is more practical, able to repress her feelings and act rationally. In a way, she’s stronger than him.

I am sorry I couldn’t find an online version of The Ripening Seed, I had to translate the quotes and it wasn’t easy. Colette is gifted, subtle, managing to mirror Phil and Vinca’s feelings into the lanscape. It’s a faithful portrait of adolescence, the end of innocence, the end of certainties and the mistaken impression nobody ever experienced what we feel. Danielle reviewed it too (spoilers there) but the quote by a professional translator will give you a better idea of Colette’s talent.

Trollope plays with character names

Miss Mackenzie by Anthony Trollope. 1865.

I already wrote the main piece about Miss Mackenzie but I’d like to pay a tribute to Trollope’s sense of humour when it comes to character names. In Proust, names have a special place in the Narrator’s mind. He fantasizes about the Guermantes names, he explores etymology of places. It’s part of his imagination, his way to decipher the essence and the history of the Guermantes.

Nothing so romantic or intellectual in Trollope. I started to pay attention to characters names when I first encountered Mr Frigidy and Mr Startup at Mr Stumfold’s tea party. Remember, Mr Stumfold is the evangelist clergyman that Miss Mackenzie meets in Littlebath. Mr Frigidy and Mr Startup are his disciples. Can you imagine a funnier name than Frigidy for a Calvinist clergyman? The name in itself bears the image of a dark tooth-pick man dressed in black, with no sense of humour and who considers that dancing and playing cards are devilish.

He [Mr Frigidy] was a good young man, at peace with all the world—except Mr Startup. With Mr Startup the veracious chronicler does not dare to assert that Mr Frigidy was at peace.

And Mr Startup! I imagined him in the wilderness in the colonies trying to settle a Christian community among natives, certain to bring Truth to poor people living in sin.

Startup, though he was younger than Frigidy, could talk to seven ladies at once with ease, but Frigidy could not talk to one without much assistance from that lady herself.

I had a feeling of Thomson and Thompson (Dupont and Dupond for French readers) about these two ones, and their choice of names made me laugh.

Their names are connected to their profession. In the same spirit, Tom Mackenzie works in the oilcloth industry and thus his associate is conveniently named Mr Rubb, mid-way between rub and rubber. And doesn’t Mr Rubb thoroughly tell rubbish to Miss Mackenzie to get her money? Doesn’t he mentally rub her feelings to have her on his side?

On another tone, the attorney who’s in charge of the Mackenzies’ legal affairs is named Mr Slow and Trollope describes him as follow:

He was a stout, thickset man, very leisurely in all his motions, who walked slowly, talked slowly, read slowly, wrote slowly, and thought slowly; but who, nevertheless, had the reputation of doing a great deal of business, and doing it very well. He had a partner in the business, almost as old as himself, named Bideawhile; and they who knew them both used to speculate which of the two was the most leisurely. It was, however, generally felt that, though Mr Slow was the slowest in his speech, Mr Bideawhile was the longest in getting anything said.

According to Daniel Pool’s book, justice was rather slow in the Victorian era. Shall we see a little attack at the institution through the name of that lawyer? In any case, the description of the attorney’s office is appalling; I doubt anyone would have considered being a lawyer under these conditions.

In addition to the clergymen and the attorney, the doctor’s called Mr Slumpy, the haughty butler at the Tom Mackenzie’s is purposely named Grandairs. A rather stupid old lady with her oh-so-English reply ‘I’m sure I don’t know’ answers the sweet name of Mrs Fuzzybell. The goodhearted but rather nosy and vulgar lodger in London is a Mrs Buggins. Unsurprisinggly, she gets on Miss Mackenzie’s nerves.

I’m sure I missed some and I didn’t catch all the innuendos. I wonder if there are footnotes in the French translation or if the names have been translated. It spiced my reading, enforcing the idea of the writer as a playful narrator. I want to hear more of Mr Trollope’s literary voice.

PS: For other Trollope readers, Lady Glencora Palliser makes an appearance in the end of the novel, like a guest star in a sitcom.

Women have plenty of lovers when they have plenty of money

Miss Mackenzieby Anthony Trollope. 1865. An eponymous French translation has been available since 2010. (!!)

Anthony Trollope. I try to say it aloud. A tricky th too soon followed by a treacherous Tr and my French tongue is in a twist, properly tied. Well, no one said I have to say it aloud.

Miss Margaret Mackenzie is 19 when her father dies after an illness and she then spends 15 years nursing her brother Walter. Walter is a civil servant, a gentleman. Her other brother Tom dropped any claim to gentlemanliness when he started a business with Mr Rubb. He doesn’t pay much attention to Walter and Margaret. When Margaret was younger, Mr Handcock courted her but her brother selfishly refused his consent to her marriage. He would have needed to find a new nurse, how could he spare her? She spends her best years at the service of selfish man who has no consideration for her. She doesn’t even run Walter’s house, he keeps control over everything.

Margaret is 34 when Walter dies and she inherits his fortune. That was unexpected and she decides it’s time for her to live a little. There’s also a sudden change in the attitude of others towards her.

First, Mr Handcock proposes again. Then, her family who never visited her before is now curiously interested in her. Her brother Tom presses her to come and live with them, although he resents Walter’s choice of an heiress. Her cousins Balls, the aristocratic but poor branch of the family invites her to their house. John, the eldest son is about fifty; he’s a widower with several children to support and needs the extra money. He proposes to her too.

But Margaret is clever and if she’s unconscious of her own worth as a person, she’s perfectly aware of her worth as a rich old-maid. She is very lucid and far less weak than her acquaintances and family expect. She refuses Mr Handcock because she doesn’t like him anymore and because he proposed only after he heard of her money. She refuses John Ball because she doesn’t want to abandon her newly found freedom to a life of duty.

She decides to leave London and settle down in Littlebath. To appease his brother’s claims and to have company, she takes her niece Susanna with her. In Littlebath, she meets the Stumfolds:

But Mr Stumfold at Littlebath had very special views, and was very specially known for them. His friends said that he was evangelical, and his enemies said that he was Low Church. He himself was wont to laugh at these names—for he was a man who could laugh—and to declare that his only ambition was to fight the devil under whatever name he might be allowed to carry on that battle. And he was always fighting the devil by opposing those pursuits which are the life and mainstay of such places as Littlebath. His chief enemies were card-playing and dancing as regarded the weaker sex, and hunting and horse-racing—to which, indeed, might be added everything under the name of sport—as regarded the stronger.

Not exactly a funny place, the Stumfold’s salon and Margaret is rather skeptical and find them a little too zealous for her. There she meets Mr Maguire, Mr Stumfold’s second in command. He soon realizes that Margaret would be a good match for him; he’ll be a respectable clergyman, she’ll bring the money. He proposes.

In Littlebath, she also meets Mr Rubb Junior, who comes to her to borrow money for the Mackenzie & Rubb business. She enjoys his company but alas, he’s not a gentleman. The business is far from booming, Mr Rubb would like to catch her money too and starts courting her.

That makes four lovers in less than a year for our Miss Mackenzie.

As to getting away from all her suitors that was impossible. Had she gone to Littlebath there was one there; had she remained with her sister-in-law, she would have been always near another; and, on going to the Cedars, she would meet the third. But she could not on that account absolutely isolate herself from everybody that she knew in the world.

What will she do?

I loved Margaret Mackenzie as a character. She’s torn between belonging to the Stumbfoldian circle – to any circle actually because she craves for company— and her desire to live and have fun. Trollope points out what the society expects from her:

Would it not have been easier for her—easier and more comfortable—to have abandoned all ideas of the world, and have put herself at once under the tutelage and protection of some clergyman who would have told her how to give away her money, and prepare herself in the right way for a comfortable death-bed?

And later, he also shows that her situation would have been different if she were a man and that the society leads her into thinking that she doesn’t deserve better than the quiet life of an old maid:

A man situated in outer matters as she was situated, possessed of good means, hampered by no outer demands, would have declared to himself clearly that it would be well for him to marry. But he would probably be content to wait a while and would, unless in love, feel the delay to be a luxury. But Miss Mackenzie could not confess as much, even to herself,—could not let herself know that she thought as much; but yet she desired to be married, and dreaded delay. She desired to be married, although she was troubled by some half-formed idea that it would be wicked. Who was she, that she should be allowed to be in love? Was she not an old maid by prescription, and, as it were, by the force of ordained circumstances? Had it not been made very clear to her when she was young that she had no right to fall in love, even with Harry Handcock? And although in certain moments of ecstasy, as when she kissed herself in the glass, she almost taught herself to think that feminine charms and feminine privileges had not been all denied to her, such was not her permanent opinion of herself. She despised herself. Why, she knew not; and probably did not know that she did so. But, in truth, she despised herself, thinking herself to be too mean for a man’s love.

I loved Margaret for her goodness and her cleverness. Margaret has the healthiest relationship with money:

What is the use of money if people cannot be happy together with it? I don’t care a bit for money, Miss Todd; that is, not for itself. I shouldn’t like to be dependent on a stranger; I don’t know that I would like to be dependent again even on a brother; but I should take no shame to be dependent on a husband if he was good to me.”

She has a sure way to assess someone’s character and decipher ulterior motives. She’s able to stand for herself; actually, her money gives her the power to stand for herself, it opens up possibilities. In that sense, Miss Mackenzie is a feminist novel. It shows that a woman can be as sensible as a man, that someone can hardly be free without money. Trollope didn’t give her any of the clichéd traits of a female heroin: she’s strong, she doesn’t wallow into romance, she isn’t shallow or hit by a buying spree when she becomes rich. She’s Emma Bovary’s perfect opposite regarding romance and Ondine Spragg’s perfect opposite regarding money.

I loved this novel. Trollope is so funny; I caught myself chuckling all along the book because of his witty look upon his characters. The pages are filled with irony:

Available hypocrisy is a quality very difficult of attainment and of all hypocrisies, epistolatory hypocrisy is perhaps the most difficult. A man or woman must have studied the matter very thoroughly, or be possessed of great natural advantages in that direction, who can so fill a letter with false expressions of affection, as to make any reader believe them to be true.

But I think he was very fond of Miss Mackenzie himself. He sends little daggers at the Victorian society: he makes fun of the evangelist current in the Church of England, mocks the new dining habits à la russe, questions the central issue of gentlemanliness, exposes the ridiculous snobbery of the aristocrats and silently criticizes the enormous place money holds in his world.

Miss Mackenzie is the first book I read from Guy’s Christmas gifts. He knew I wanted to try Trollope and helped me start with an excellent and short one. Thanks Guy. Miss Mackenzie is translated into French but sadly most of Trollope’s novels are translated at all. It puzzles me, I have to say. Which one should I read next?

The Enchantment of Lily Dahl by Siri Hustvedt

The Enchantment of Lily Dahl by Siri Hustvedt 1996. French title: L’envoûtement de Lily Dahl.

The truth is, Miss Dahl, you can’t know nothin’ about nobody now, can you? Seems to me you yourself could hurt somebody if the time and place was right. That’s so ain’t it? Even them that’s closest to you, you can’t really know ‘bout them. One day you wake up and find out. Folks say ‘It ain’t possible, it can’t happen.’ You live a little longer, and it happens.

This month, our book club had chosen The Enchantment of Lily Dahl. How am I going to review it? Everything I could write will be pale compared to the hypnotic and eerie rhythm of the book. *sigh*

Webster, Minnesota. Lily Dahl, 19, works the morning shift at the Ideal Café. She waitresses the early birds who come for breakfast every day. There are Pete Lund who never speaks, the filthy Bodlers brothers, the unbalanced Martin Petersen and other weirdos or lonely people of Webster.

Well, there’s no law against weirdos, Lil’. This is America. We grow ‘em fast and furious.

Lily lives in a small apartment next to the café. Her parents moved away to Florida, she has no family left in Webster. Her neighbour is Mabel, a 78 years-old widow, former English teacher, currently writing her memoirs. The walls are thin as cigarette paper; Lily can hear Mabel move in her bed. The two women befriend despite the difference in age and culture. But as Lily once says to Mabel “You don’t act that old, you know” and the older woman retorts “Well, my inside never caught up with my outside”. Isn’t that a marvelous definition of old age?

Lily’s an aspiring actress; she admires Marilyn Monroe and has her poster on her wall. She plays in the local theater; she got the role of Hermia in A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream. The play and the rehearsal will follow us along the book, enforcing the dreamlike atmosphere.

Although she’s dating Hank, Lily is obsessed with Edward Shapiro, a painter from New York, settled in the rotten Stuart Hotel across the street. Lily watches him at night, spying on him, trying to know him. One evening, she strips in front of her window with the light on, knowing he’ll be watching her. She sets their relationship into motion and starts an affair with Ed.

This novel puts the reader into a trance, diving them into the atmosphere of this small rural American town. Everybody knows everything about everybody. Gossip is unavoidable, anonymity impossible. Old stories from the past are never quite forgotten and remain with the people. As Lily thinks:

Stupid town, she said to herself, full of long noses sniffing for dirt and those lips yakking about it once they’ve found it.

I couldn’t help hearing the song Marylin & John by Vanessa Paradis. Not that I’m a fan but some way I couldn’t put it out of my mind. It’s about the love affair between Marilyn Monroe and John Kennedy. Lily has something of Marilyn Monroe, the same mix of boldness and innocence, of sensuality and youth. In the book, Lily has dark hair (isn’t that strange for someone of Norwegian origin?) but I couldn’t help imagining her with blond hair and a full mouth.

I can’t explain exactly the heavy atmosphere, the feeling that a drama is looming. I felt like reading an old movie, with that peculiar light I can’t describe right. The desert street at night, the shabby hotel and the Ideal Café, far from being ideal contrast with the natural setting of that Minnesota summer, its wild flowers, its heat. Siri Hustdvedt has a thing for inventing tortured and unusual characters. Who is really Ed with his peculiar paintings and his curious way to reach the soul of his models? What does he want from Lily? And what goes through the mind of the strange Martin Petersen with his abnormal intelligence and his bizarre attraction to Lily? Lily isn’t quite herself during that summer, enchanted, she acts out of character. It’s like a LA atmosphere from a Noir crime fiction novel misplaced in the setting of The Little House on the Prairie.

I loved this novel but I can’t review it properly, so I’m very frustrated. I can’t put my impressions into words, except that it’s well worth reading for the story and the style, that Siri Hustdvedt is a talented writer and that it would make an excellent film.

My real life will take over my virtual life.

I’m starting a new job tomorrow and I’m very happy with it. However, I expect it to be time consuming. It will probably demand studying, take a lot of energy and impair my free time. So handling work, family life and bookish life will be kind of a challenge.

Let’s hope I’ll be a good acrobat.

So, don’t be surprised if I take a long time to answer comments or if I don’t visit your blog as often as I used to. I won’t be able to read as many blog posts as I do now and I regret it. Just be patient!

  Cheers,

  Emma

Noir Désir

Un homme accidentel by Philippe Besson. 2007. Not translated into English, very sadly.

Jack m’entraînait là où aucune rémission n’était possible, où aucun pardon ne serait accordé, où la survie n’était envisageable qu’à condition de mentir, de se cacher, où les jours toute façon seraient comptés puisque la vérité finit toujours par nous rattraper. Et j’acceptais ce sort. Mieux, j’allais à sa rencontre.

Jack was dragging me to a place where no remission was possible, where no forgiveness would be granted, where survival was possible provided that we lied and hid, where days were numbered because truth always catches up with us. And I surrendered to that fate. Better, I was heading toward it.

Our Narrator has no name and relates the events that blew his life away. One year ago, he was married to Laura. They were expecting a baby. They were in love. He was a lieutenant at LAPD, in Beverly Hills, a quiet job according to him. Life was good until June 15^th 1990, the day Billy Greenfield got murdered and dumped down on the manicured lawn of a rich man’s house. Billy was a prostitute. Searching his apartment for clues, the Narrator finds a notebook with the names of Billy’s clients. Among them, Jack Bell, a famous young actor. On June 17^th, the Narrator pays a visit to Jack, to investigate the murder.

Then things get out of control when Jack and our Narrator fall in love.

Love at first sight, you say in English. It conveys a sweet image of a romantic encounter between a starry-eyed young girl and her righteous beau. Only the French can describe what happens here. Coup de foudre, lightening stroke. It has everything in it: the suddenness, the blinding quality, the violence, the fire, the storm and the destruction it brings in their lives. Coup de foudre.

Besson excels in describing the whirlwind love between the two men. Our Narrator discovers his homosexuality; he recounts his fatal attraction to Jack and their summer of love. The Narrator doesn’t hide or doesn’t try to find excuses. He doesn’t want pity. He takes full responsibilities of his actions and accepts their consequences. With a little hindsight, he deciphers the key moments, the tiny seconds of hesitation, of flawed decision-making. A hand that lingers too long, a look a little too insistent and the wrong words at the wrong moment. Still he doesn’t complain. No should-haves or would-haves here. He quietly unravels the events, not concealing that he had a choice and purposely headed to disaster, blown away by his relationship with Jack.

The LA setting is well-described but you can tell it’s not written by an American author, that he knows the city as a foreigner. Sometimes his comparisons betray his nationality. I can’t imagine an American novelist writing this:

C’étaient des paroles ordinaires, des choses de presque rien, comme en disent les couples qui s’arrêtent sur des aires d’autoroute, le jour des départs en vacances.

These were ordinary words, small talk couples make when they stop on a motorway rest area when they go on holiday.

When I read this in French, I see the flow of tourists on the French motorways on August 15^th. I see families pick-nicking on wooden benches between the gas station and the children playground, not a couple in California.

Despite this minor flaw, I couldn’t put this book down, Besson is a sensitive writer. He builds his style around short and forceful sentences, creating a plausible flow for a confession. There’s a music behind the words, a gift for little observations.

Je l’ai observée quelques instants avant de me signaler. J’ai toujours aimé observer Laura sans qu’elle s’en rende compte. C’est beau, une femme qui ne fait pas attention, qui se coupe du monde, qui n’est concentrée que sur son geste.

I observed her for some time before showing up. I’ve always loved watching Laura, unnoticed. It’s beautiful, a woman who doesn’t pay attention, who shuts the world out, who only concentrates on her movements.

Or

Dans les étreintes, il y a tout ce qu’on abandonne.

In our lovemaking lays everything we give away.

An accidental man. The title says everything. Falling in love is an accident. Meeting Jack is an accident, two parallel worlds colliding. Homosexuality is accidentally discovered. The murder is an accident. The Narrator’s life is accidental.

This novel isn’t translated into English, this is why you get my translations for the quotes. If I’m being honest, reviews are far from unanimous. Some hated it, some loved it. I loved it, but I guess you know that by now.

PS: the soundtrack in my head was A l’arrière des taxis by Noir Désir.

Books in English about France in the Nineteenth Century

When I read La France à la Belle Epoque by Michel Winock, some of you regretted that this book wasn’t translated into English.

When I read What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool, that wonderful book about everyday life in the nineteenth century England, I said I’d like to read one about France. As I’m rather persistent when I want something –some might even say stubborn– I dropped by the Musée Carnavalet in Paris in order to check the books they could have about everyday life in France in the nineteenth century. It turns out that I didn’t find anything interesting in French but I discovered three books in English you might want to investigate:

- The Pride of Place. Local memories and political culture in nineteenth century France by Stéphane Gerson. This one seemed interesting as it develops everything about politics and as the 19thC was a troubled period in our history, it could be useful.

- The World of the Paris Café. Sociability Among the French Working Class. 1789-1914 by W. Scott Haine. I browsed through this one and it takes cafés as a pretext to explain French way of living. I might be worth reading too.

- To Be a Citizen. The Political Culture of the Early French Third Republic by James R Lehning. This one overlaps with the Winock I’ve read. I saw chapters about the role of teachers and school in transforming any child into a French citizen. I mentioned it in my review here.

I checked out, they’re all available on Amazon. Of course, I haven’t read them, so I can’t be sure they’re good. But I think you’re all grown up and perfectly able to decide whether you want to read a book or not.

Cheers,

Emma

The novel as a ragbag or can you write fiction about anything?

I’m not a thorough follower of literature news but I’ve been thinking of Claustria by Régis Jauffret as soon as I’ve heard about this book. Let’s say it right away: I haven’t read it and I don’t intend to. Hopefully nobody will choose it as a birthday gift or feel the urge to lend it to me. Claustria has just been published and critics highly praise its literary value, which I won’t and can’t contest but its concept has been nagging at me ever since I’ve heard about it. Indeed, Claustria is a novel based on the Fritzl case:

The Fritzl case emerged in April 2008 when a 42-year-old woman, Elisabeth Fritzl (born April 6, 1966), stated to police in the town of Amstetten, Austria, that she had been held captive for 24 years in a concealed corridor part of the basement area of the family home, a condominium-style apartment complex built by her father, Josef Fritzl (born April 9, 1935), and that Fritzl had physically assaulted, sexually abused, and raped her numerous times during her imprisonment. The incestuous relationship forced upon her by her father resulted in the birth of seven children and one miscarriage. (Wikipedia)

Claustria intends to describe what happened from inside, imagining the daughter’s feelings, the life of her children who were kept in a cave with only the TV as a window to the outside world. According to the critics, Régis Jauffret really managed to change it into fiction, comparing the situation of this children to men in Plato’s allegory of the cave. Here’s Télérama’s review, Libération’s article and the one published by Les Inrockuptibles. Sorry, everything is in French.

So why does it bother me? Novelists have always done this; after all, The Red and the Black and Madame Bovary are based on true stories too. I’ve read Lorraine Connection by Dominique Manotti and I wasn’t the least troubled that she used real facts to write crime fiction. However, I was ill-at-ease with David Peace’s Nineteen Seventy Seven when I read Max’s review.

What’s the difference? I think it’s because it comes so shortly after the real case and that this case is very public. When Emma Bovary’s story was hardly a few lines in a newspaper in a country where most of the population was illiterate, the Fritzl case was everywhere on TV and in newspapers.

The novelist Régis Jauffret doesn’t hide that his novel has been directly inspired by this affair, so there is no doubt about it. The humorist Pierre Desproges used to say On peut rire de tout, mais pas avec tout le monde (One can laugh about anything, just not with anybody). I think that one can write about everything but not in any form. I can’t help thinking that the novel is a very convenient form. You don’t have to be thorough about what you write. You don’t need to care about accuracy like a journalist should. You don’t need to conduct any proper investigation and ponder what you write. Hey, it’s fiction, remember? How handy.

But this case is so recent that everybody has it in mind and I’m afraid the reader doesn’t distance themselves enough to remember that what they’re reading is fiction. How can Régis Jauffret be sure that what he invented doesn’t become the truth? I believe that it’s too early to become fiction and that any book about this should be an essay or a documentary written by a journalist.

The protagonists are still alive and yet become raw material for a novel. Don’t they have a right to sink into oblivion to move on with their lives? There was an interesting article about TV documentaries that dig into criminal cases. Years after, people have had a fresh start or sometimes are still in prison and their case is brought up again on TV. New neighbors or new friends who didn’t know about their past are now aware of it, sometimes with disastrous consequences. They paid for what they did when a judge sentenced them. Do they have to pay for it all their lives?

Let some years pass by and then write a novel about it. But now? I think it’s unethical and that’s why I’m ill-at-ease. Deep inside, I think writing this novel is wrong. And I was glad to hear a journalist and critic strongly criticizing that approach to the case too. (France Inter, Le masque et la plume) Apparently, writing about news story is a trend in nowadays French literature. They all refer to In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. But wasn’t this book writtern after a long investigation and isn’t it tagged as non-fiction?

Lullaby by J-M. G. Le Clézio

Lullaby by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. 1978. Lullaby is a short-story (novella?) included in Mondo and Other Stories.

Reading this was a mother-daughter readalong. My daughter had a school assignment; she had to choose a book, read it and fill in a reading form about it. I don’t know how it is in other countries but in France, teachers are sort of fans of reading forms. Lullaby was on the children book shelves at home, among my children books and books I buy for them from time to time. I try to select literary ones from well-knows writers.

Lullaby is a girl who decides she won’t go to high school again. She lives by the sea and she’s uprooted in this town, but we don’t know why. School is a prison except for physics classes. When she ditches school, she starts taking walks on the smugglers path along the sea. The sea here is probably the Mediterranean, according to the description of the landscape and the wildlife.

Lullaby has a secret, her father is away or gone but we don’t know why. She writes him letters, read his letters, let their words fly into the sky. She seeks for freedom by the sea and a connection with her beloved father too. She melts into the natural elements, the sea, the wind, the scents penetrate her being through all her pores and senses.

Lullaby était pareille à un nuage, à un gaz, elle se mélangeait à ce qui l’entourait. Elle était pareille à l’odeur des pins chauffés par le soleil, sur les collines, pareille à l’odeur de l’herbe qui sent le miel. Elle était l’embrun des vagues où brille l’arc-en-ciel rapide. Elle était le vent, le souffle froid qui vient de la mer, le souffle chaud comme une haleine qui vient de la terre fermentée au pied des buissons. Elle était le sel, le sel qui brille comme le givre sur les vieux rochers, ou bien le sel de la mer, le sel lourd et âcre des ravins sous-marins.

Lullaby was like a cloud, a gas, she melted in what surrounded her. She was like the scent of the pine trees heated by the sun on the hills, like the scent of the grass with the honey smell. She was the spume of the waves where the quick rainbow shines. She was the wind, the cold blow coming from the sea, the warm blow like a breath coming up from the fermented earth at the bushes feet. She was the salt, the salt that glitters like frost on the old rocks; or the sea salt, the heavy and acrid salt from the undersea ravines.

As always, Le Clézio’s prose is full of poetry. He was born in Nice and although the coast he describes here has white rocks and Greek houses, I couldn’t help thinking about the Estérel coast between Nice and Cannes. I’ve been there many times and Lullaby’s errands on that smugglers path reminded me of mine on the customs officer path along the sea. I know how she finds her way among the rocks, looking for the best passage, climbing under the sun on the heated rocks. I know the scent of the sun on the pine trees mixed with the salty breath of the nearby sea. I was there with her.

Lullaby is a tribute to the sea whose vastness makes us feel Lilliputian. With her overwhelming presence, the sea shrinks our earthly worries to a speck of dust.  

Lullaby ne pensait même plus à l’école. La mer est comme cela : elle efface les choses de la terre parce qu’elle est ce qu’il y a de plus important au monde. Le bleu, la lumière étaient immenses, le vent, les bruits violents et doux des vagues, et la mer ressemblait à un grand animal en train de remuer sa tête et de fouetter l’air avec sa queue.

Lullaby didn’t think about school anymore. The sea is like this: it erases the earthly things because she is the most important thing in the world. The blue, the light were immense, the wind, the violent and smooth noises of the waves. And the sea looked like an animal moving its head and wagging the air with its tail.

I’ve spent hours sitting on these rocks, reading in the sun, watching the turquoise water move back and forth, feeling the wind in my hair. I understand Lullaby’s fascination. My daughter knows that path too, she’s been there several times and she has a lot of fun climbing the rocks, reaching a small beach or going by the sea. She also pictured that place when she read Lullaby and she enjoyed the novella because it brought back vivid images of her holidays. She understood that it’s a story about loneliness and travelling in one’s mind.

Such readalongs are tricky for me. On the one hand, I enjoy reading her books and discussing them with her. It’s an opportunity to share and nourish the pleasure of reading in her. On the other hand, I feel like an intruder. Reading is something personal and you shouldn’t be obliged to talk about what you’ve read if you don’t feel like to. So I’m not asking too many questions, I don’t push too far; I leave to the teacher the disagreeable role of pulling out emotions and analysis from her.

 

19thC England for foreigners: a great guidebook.

What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. From Fox Hunting to Whist – The Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England by Daniel Pool 1993 Not translated into French.

I was interested in reading this as soon as Caroline recommended it to me. The book is aimed at students and has two parts; the first one explains the facts and life in the 19thC England and the second one is a huge glossary with various words like epergne or Gretna Green. But let me give you a flavor of the book.

If whims, faints and abnormal interest in clothes are often described as the clichéd eternal feminine, Daniel Pool unintentionally points out the clichéd eternal masculine, i.e. cars and sports also sometimes combined into sports cars. I had perfectly gathered from my previous readings that carriages were the sign of social status. So, keeping one or several expensive carriage(s) was the equivalent of our owning German and sports cars. The curricle was probably really a young man’s carriage, like a sports car; it was one of the first things the young Dickens bought when he made money with his writing. Nihil novo sub sole. What I didn’t know was that the Parliamentary season –and thus the London social season—started according to the end of fox hunting time and ended when the grouse shooting began. Put it bluntly: political and social life in Great-Britain depended upon foxes’ and grouses’ living habits. Astonishing.

The chapter about money is absolutely fascinating. It explains taxes, entails, financial investments, bankruptcies and debts. Shareholders in a private company had unlimited liability. One could be jailed for debt until 1869. (In France it was abolished in 1867) Various taxes had collateral damages such as the tax on windows. It was expensive, mere air vents counted for a window, so poor people often lived in lodgings without windows. A tax on paper increased the price of books, slowing their sales. And I now know the difference between an attorney and a barrister.

In the part about Crime and Punishment, I noticed that “Killing a man in a duel, although murder, was considered socially okay for people of quality, so juries generally didn’t convict until the 1840s. Thereafter it became advisable to duel on the Continent”. But where on the Continent? France? The French authorities tolerated duels until the end of the century. (Gendarmes attended the one between Clémenceau and Déroulède in 1892…to keep the mob off the playing field.)

I enjoyed reading about the different social rules: how to address someone, balls and diners, morning calls, stays in the country and so on. When I read Desperate Remedies, I caught details I would never have noticed without this book, such as the social embarrassment about how to call Cytherea Graye when Miss Aldclyffe hires her. As a chambermaid, it should be Cytherea. As a companion, Mrs Graye is suitable even if she’s a maidden. Miss Graye was impossible as it would have been for the daughter of the house.

Pool explains the Church of England, Oxford and Cambridge and more generally the school system. Of course, like in France, women weren’t supposed to learn Latin and Greek. According to an etiquette book, men even had to translate any Greek or Latin quote they said in front of women. School became compulsory in England in 1880. (1882 in France)

It’s full of daily details that aren’t explicit in Victorian novels, such as railroads and lavatories:

There were no toilets on trains until 1892. Ladies might travel together in compartments separate from the gentlemen, for long journeys bringing chamber pots concealed in discreet baskets, while for gentlemen long tubes that could be strapped along the leg under a trouser were advertised.

Embarrassing for us today. It also explores marriage and divorces and the lack of freedom women had to endure. Apparently, auctioning your wife was a form of cheap divorce for poor people. So what Henchard does in The Mayor of Casterbridge actually used to happen. Pool also describes the life of servants, the recycling habits, the nightmare to provide water, warmth and light in big houses. (Servants made 16% of the national work force in 1891) It gives useful information on mourning, illnesses and death; on the poor and the “social system” implemented in parishes to take care of the poorest people.

As you see, it gives a good overview of the way of living in the 19thC England. I’ve read the first part and I intend to use the glossary when needed. I wouldn’t have understood what Trollope really meant by “evangelistic” when he describes Mr Stumfold without this book. The book is very handy for foreigners; it’s staying on the bedside table instead of going back to the shelf.

And actually, if anyone knows a similar book about France in the 19thC, I’ll be glad to read it too.

Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy

Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy. First published in 1871.  It is out of print in French but used copies are available.

But loving is not done by months, or method, or rule, or nobody would ever have invented such a phrase as “falling in love.”

Desperate Remedies is my third Hardy in twelve months. I’m now reading them in chronological order and this one has been published in 1871. I read the 1896 edition, reviewed by the author. According to his foreword, he mostly changed names of places to be consistent with his other works and create a plausible Wessex.

The first chapter takes place in 1835-1836. The young Anbrose Graye stays in London with a friend and falls in love with Cytherea Bradleigh. When he makes his love known, she refuses him for no understandable reason. Although Ambrose will marry and have two children, he will never forget her. His daughter is named after his lost love and his children Owen and Cytherea know about his first love story.

Then we move forward. Mrs Graye passes away in 1861 and Ambrose Graye dies in an accident in 1863. His children discover he poorly managed his fortune and that they are left without resources. Owen is a learning architect and they move away to Budmouth Regis where Owen has found a temporary position at an architect’ office. Cytherea is resolved become a companion or a maid and advertises to find employment.

Edward Springrove works in the same office as Owen and soon the two men befriend. Edward and Cytherea fall in love and he moves to London to make a career and be able to support a family. When Edward leaves, the reader knows he has a secret which may prevent him from marrying Cytherea. Meanwhile Cytherea is hired as a maid by Miss Aldclyffe in Knapwater House. Miss Aldclyffe hires her on a whim despite her lack of references. She has an instable temper,

Like Nature in the tropics, with her hurricanes and the subsequent luxuriant vegetation effacing their ravages, Miss Aldclyffe compensated for her outbursts by excess of generosity afterwards.

Cytherea isn’t quite at ease with her, living in the fear of her outbursts. Cytherea soon discovers that Miss Aldclyffe is actually Cytherea Bradleigh. The older woman recognizes the daughter of her former lover in her young companion. Both women know they are linked by Ambrose Graye but they don’t mention it. Then with no apparent reason, Miss Aldclyffe intrigues to hire Mr Manston as her steward. She pushes Cytherea in his arms while doing everything to erase in her any memory of Edward Springrove. We know that a secret bond ties Miss Aldclyffe and Mr Manston. She’s fond of him and he has some sort of power over her. What is that secret? Things get complicated for the pretty Cytherea when Mr Manston falls madly in love with her and when she discovers that Edward has been engaged to his cousin Adelaide for years.

The novel is full of twists and turns, unlikely Victorian coincidences, secrets and passion. I totally fell for it. The last third of the story is particularly suspenseful and I didn’t expect it in a novel by Hardy. It was a great read, recreating, well-written and with the right dose of thoughtful visions of humanity.

It’s not without flaws though. I could feel Hardy was at his beginnings. His talent isn’t fully developed, especially in characters descriptions. But the roots of his future masterpieces are already there: the subtle irony (She was, at the distance from which they surveyed her, an attractive woman (…). But to a close observer it was palpable enough that God did not do all the picture.), the little statements on life (A great statesman thinks several times, and acts; a young lady acts, and thinks several times.), the exploration of human flaws and especially the impact of passionate characters on their life and the poetry of some descriptions. (Their hearts could hardly believe the evidence of their lips.)

In addition, I recognized elements I’d already noticed in The Mayor of Casterbridge and Life’s Little Ironies: the power of music that carries someone away and results in an impulsive and stupid move, the importance of a tiny decision in sealing a future, sex and desire (Concentrated essence of woman pervaded the room rather than air.) in a society where it was improper for a man to give his chair to a woman because she’d feel his body warmth on it.

I thought the author put something of himself in Edward Springrove, relaying his thoughts in the character’s mind (I often think, that before I am ready to live, it will be time for me to die.) and making fun of his own ambitions as a poet:

Poetical days are getting past with me, according to the usual rule. Writing rhymes is a stage people of my sort pass through, as they pass through the stage of shaving for a beard, or thinking they are ill-used, or saying there’s nothing in the world worth living for.’ ‘Then the difference between a common man and a recognized poet is, that one has been deluded, and cured of his delusion, and the other continues deluded all his days.’

He also employs self-irony and slightly mocks the strings he pulls to move the plot forward.

Whether, as old critics disputed, a supernatural machinery be necessary to an epic or no, an ungodly machinery is decidedly necessary to a scandal.

As always, I enjoyed Hardy’s insight and hindsight. All these little sentences spread in the text change a banal page-turner into a great novel. Highly recommended except if you have a strong allergy to coincidences and secrets. My next Hardy will be Under a Greenwood Tree.