International Women's Day: Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

published 1926

[1902: Lolly Willowes’ father has died, and she is to go and live with her brother and his wife]

Lolly was a gentle creature, and the little girls loved her; she would soon fit into her new home… London would be a pleasant change for her. She would meet nice people, and in London she would have a better chance of marrying. Lolly was twenty-eight. She would have to make haste if she were going to find a husband before she was thirty.

Poor Lolly! black was not becoming to her. She looked sallow, and her pale grey eyes were paler and more surprising than ever underneath that very unbecoming black mushroom hat. Mourning was never satisfactory if one bought it in a country town. While these thoughts passed through Caroline’s mind, Laura was not thinking at all. She had picked a red geranium flower, and was staining her left wrist with the juice of its crushed petals. So, when she was younger, she had stained her pale cheeks, and had bent over the greenhouse tank to see what she looked like. But the greenhouse tank showed only a dark shadowy Laura…

observations: Lolly (also known as Laura) is such a surprising and splendid feminist that she seems the ideal subject for International Women's Day. 

Her sister-in-law thinks she might still get a husband, but she doesn’t, because of a tendency to say this kind of thing to a prospect who makes a harmless remark about the seasons of the year:

If you are a were-wolf, and very likely you may be, for lots of people are without knowing, February, of all months, is the month when you are most likely to go out on a dark windy night and worry sheep.

- but we need not worry about her: she will triumph (as we found out in this entry) by going to live in a small village and becoming a witch. This is a highly enjoyable book, as well as being a true feminist novel.

It is a tremendous, easy read, but it is not for the faint-hearted: these are not white witches, and Lolly has made a pact with Satan – a rather good-looking man dressed like a game-keeper in corduroy jacket and gaiters. Like this one from a past entry:

Lolly gives this reason for becoming witches:

to show our scorn of pretending life’s a safe business, to satisfy our passion for adventure. It’s not malice, or wickedness – well, perhaps it is wickedness, for most women love that – but certainly not malice, not wanting to plague cattle and make horrid children spout up pins… One doesn’t become a witch to run round being harmful, or to run round being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick.

Though she does say about the Witches’ Sabbath: ‘There was something about their air of disconnected jollity which reminded Laura of a Primrose League gala and fête.’ Then again, ‘she could dance until the gunpowder ran out of the heels of her boots.’

Warner does a nice line in casting a cold eye on women who are plainly meant to be rather vulgar, but are fun to read about – Miss Mauleverer teaching Lolly the catwalk, Pandora and her rebeck and greedy appetite. There is a wonderful list of the presents that she buys for her family in a village shop – jars of buttons and other joys – which has to be read in full and relished.

There is never any doubt that women’s interests are worthwhile, and that their interior lives are worth looking at, even if Lolly wasted half her life trying to keep other people happy.

If you look for a 'mushroom hat' online, you get an astonishing range of pictures of people wearing bizarre headgear, which you would probably mostly describe as ‘toadstool hats’. In The Nutmeg Tree, Julia’s Matrons’ Models hat is mushroom-shaped, and this picture might have done for Lolly's mourning.

The top photograph is from the Library of Congress.

Crewe Train by Rose Macaulay - part 2

published 1926

Noel walked along the cliff path from Polrew in the dark of the December afternoon. A soft fog folded sea and land. Through it pieced the shrill cries of gulls and the deep cries of ships at sea…

As she walked she hummed whisperingly a cold little stave from Bach, that was like the cold whispering of the winter sea…

‘Hallo,’ said Noel.

‘Hallo,’ said Denham. ‘Have some tea?’

‘Thanks very much.’

Denham filled another mug with hot tea. ‘Bread and jam?’ Denham cut a slice, spread it, and handed it to her guest. Then she sat down and went on with her own tea…

As the two young girls sat together in silence, something in each, something virginal, childish and remote, found response in the other, and, without words, the young barbarian and the product of a fastidious civilisation became friends, as children become friends, suddenly, with tacit recognition.

observations: Should be read in conjunction with earlier entry.

This is almost the only time in the whole book that Denham is shown as having affection for another character – she certainly never shows any emotion over her husband Arnold. There’s an implied feeling for a mysterious fisherman in St Ives, but we never really find out what happens there…

Noel, an Oxford undergraduate, ends up persuading her cousin to come back to London and try again with her husband. It’s not clear if this is a good thing or not, and there’s a way in which the book is maddeningly indecisive. The key to Denham’s philosophy is ‘It’s such rot... doing things we don’t like doing because someone else does them.’ She is of course completely selfish and uncomprehending, but her view of life is interesting.

There are some very funny bits: Denham tells her RC fiancé: ‘Being Church of England saved a lot of trouble, because there was no English church in Andorra’ [where she grew up]. The book suggests making the spare room ‘as repulsive as possible, in order to spite visitors from coming to stay.’ The intellectuals in the book all enjoy crosswords and parlour games – Denham’s complete horror at this is very amusing. What she enjoys is going to the Zoo, and motorcycling, and hanging around on the beach with her dog.

Overall I am very glad I read the book, and grateful to Leaves and Pages for finding and recommending it. 

My good friend Margot Kinberg of the Confessions of a Mystery Novelist blog  pointed out to me (after reading the entry earlier this week) that Crewe Train is one of the books on the victim's bookshelf in Agatha Christie's Murder in Mesopotamia: a solid gold piece of trivia, thanks Margot. Hercule Poirot concludes that the list shows that the owner is 'not a fool... she had a mind.' He tells us that each book reflects some aspect of the victim (though it won't solve the crime for you), Crewe Train because of its picture of an independent individualist.

The picture – which really made me construct this entire blog entry because it looked so much like my image of Noel and Denham – is by Dame Laura Knight. It’s called The Cornish Coast, and was painted a few years before the book was published.

The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell

published 2013

[the young narrator visits his grandmother, who lives in a small Missouri town blighted by an explosion and fire in a dance-hall in 1929]

The twenty-eight unidentified dead were buried together beneath a monumental angel that stood ten feet tall and slowly turned black during year after year of cold and hot and slapping rain...

We’d make our way through the wilderness of headstones, gray, brown, puritan white, glancing at some, nodding at some, Alma turning her nose up at others, until we reached the Black Angel, the sober monument to our family loss and a town bereaved. Standing in the shadow of this angel she would on occasion tell me about a suspect person or deed, a vague or promising suspicion she’d acquired with her own sharp ears or general snooping, and when she shared the fishy details with me it would be the first time she’d said them aloud to anybody in years. She’d repeat herself so I’d remember. We’d then walk home...

The Black Angel standing over the unidentified dead started to dance in 1989. Folks laying wreaths saw the angel shimmy her hips just a little and called for more witnesses and there were indeed more small attempts at divine dancing observed, so the newspaper was notified. The tombstone the angel stood atop was as long as two men, crowded with names chiseled into marble decades ago, but still shiny. The Black Angel towered and held a torch overhead, in case, I suppose, Truth tried to sneak past in the dark. The flame had also turned black.

observations: Everything you have heard about Daniel Woodrell is true. He is an extraordinary writer, absolutely compelling, the kind who makes you shake your head in wonder.

I don’t really know what genre this book is. There are crimes in it, and deaths, and there is a kind of resolution at the end. But really it’s just a picture of a small town in Missouri over the 20th century – short, to the point, but making you feel you know the place.

He has marvellous snippets of character – the man who quotes a line of poetry on a date and then

seemed nervous, suddenly concerned that he might now be expected to have an apt quote for many sights or situations and he did not.

Much later he ‘saw tomorrow forget his name and title and stroll past him without so much as a fond glance his way’, and later again he ‘moved fast as a bad idea.’

The woman who doesn’t really appear at all but has a son who

never visited her anymore and was likely dancing with men again since he was still alive and a devotee of sins that can’t be spoken.

The two women who receive a fancy note – they

smelled its scent of vanilla and admired the fine script. They had to wait more than an hour for a child to come home and read the enclosed card to them.

It’s not a long book by any means, but in between the riveting story of the main characters, Woodrell inserts short chapters about some of the other people who died in the fire - just showing off really, that he can create more of a real person and family in a few pages than most authors can in a whole book.

One character goes to Columbia University in Missouri, which is where Stoner , key book of last year, featured on the blog before that , is set. The poverty-stricken lives and the two contrasting sisters – one virtuous, one not so much - reminded me of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and a fatal dance-hall fire is a key feature in Courtney Sullivan’s Maine, on the blog here. I could mention The Help, which might be thought to cover similar territory, but the two books are on different planets. 

The photos are all from Perry Photography and used with her kind permission: you can see more of her pictures at Flickr, or at her website weddingsinitalytuscany. Her wonderful photos have featured on the blog many times before.

Guardian Books Blog: random whiny complaints

many more editors needed, under my direction

Today’s entry appears on Guardian Books Online, and deals with things that make you go hmmm: words, phrases, small mistakes – anything in books and articles that annoy you. A random list of whiny complaints, as one commentator correctly said. Phrases that make you ‘inexplicably outraged’ as another put it. This is part of it:

Of course we all make mistakes (and by the way, any errors in this blogpost are IRONIC), but I can't be the only avid reader who has a mental list of red flags when I'm reading a new book or writer. There are warning signs that tell me I am not going to enjoy this; things that make me go "hmmm". I've divided them into categories, and asked other people for their ideas (so don't blame me for all of them): 

Spelling – I am astonished by how often minuscule, supersede and longueurs are misspelled, but it's a helpful alarm signal that this author isn't too careful. Confusing uninterested and disinterested is a giveaway, too.

Misquoting poetry – how hard is it? It is 'they shall grow not old as we that are left grow old' NOT 'they shall not grow old …' and the rhythm of the line should tell you that. (A proper book from a proper publisher got this one wrong recently, but put it right for paperback.)

Putting the dialogue of some characters in supposedly phonetic dialect – RP isn't phonetic, so why do authors start dropping h's and g's when it is a working-class character?

Characters' speech is fertile ground for irritation. No one listens to Elmore Leonard's rule that "says" or "said" is all an author needs, but if other talking words must be used, then I would ban characters from chortling, growling, blurting out and using a husky voice. "Smile" and "laugh" are not speaking verbs.

READ MORE AT THE GUARDIAN BOOKS BLOG HERE

To see all the blog pieces featured at the Guardian, click on the tab above. 

The picture, from the US National Archives, shows editors in the Census Department in 1940.

No Name by Wilkie Collins

published 1862

[Magdalen is impersonating her older governess in order to meet people she considers her enemies]

The same quick perception of dangers to be avoided and difficulties to be overcome which had warned her to leave the extravagant part of her character costume in the box at Birmingham now kept her mind fully alive to the vast difference between a disguise worn by gas-light for the amusement of an audience and a disguise assumed by daylight to deceive the searching eyes of two strangers. The first article of dress which she put on was an old gown of her own (made of the material called "alpaca"), of a dark-brown colour, with a neat pattern of little star-shaped spots in white. A double flounce running round the bottom of this dress was the only milliner's ornament which it presented—an ornament not at all out of character with the costume appropriated to an elderly lady….

[Some time later]After placing these dresses side by side on the bed, she looked into the wardrobe once more. It only contained one other summer dress—the plain alpaca gown which she had worn during her memorable interview with Noel Vanstone and Mrs. Lecount.

observations: Should be read with earlier entry on the book.

A lot is made to ride on this dress, perhaps a little unconvincingly, including Mrs Lecount crawling round the floor near the chair in which Magdalen sits, in order to cut out a tiny bit of the skirt. This is going to be ‘proof’ of the impersonation; with some dramatic irony Magdalen keeps almost getting rid of the dress, but doesn’t, leaving herself open to discovery.

Alpaca turns out to be a fabric ‘invented’ – if that is the word - by the textile magnate Sir Titus Salt. Apparently after coming across bales of wool of the alpaca, a kind of lama, he had it worked into a lustrous cloth which became very popular. (The Duchess of Denver, in Dorothy L Sayers Busman’s Honeymoon, claims that Jane Eyre gets married in alpaca – ‘so gloomy to have your bride, however bigamous, insisting on grey alpaca’- see this entry, though actually it is ‘a sober black satin and pearl-grey silk’ as we find here.)

I explained in this entry that it is always quite difficult to find pictures of clothes with spots on – I have no idea why this is. In general the picture above is an impressionistic illustration: no spots, and more of a reddish-brown. But it is an actual governess picture, of roughly the right era, by Vasily Perov. 

Earlier Collins (who gives us plenty of detail about clothes) describes Magdalen’s mother and sister: ‘the first dressed in dark brown, with an Indian shawl thrown over her shoulders; the second more simply attired in black’ which matches nicely this picture by  Alfred Stevens:

 

-- he obviously had a couple of shawls in the studio and made good use of them: they appear in many of his pictures. He has featured on the blog before here. The picture is from the Athenaeum website.

Collins' Woman in White has also featured on the blog.

Crewe Train by Rose Macaulay

published 1926

Denham came home without warning. It had not occurred to her to write beforehand. She clattered up on her motor-bicycle one evening, grimy, dusty and oil-smeared, with Isaac strapped into the side-car, exactly three weeks from the day Arnold had left Cornwall. Winifred opened the door to her… ‘Is Mr Chapel in?’

‘Yes Ma’am. Miss Arthur, Mr Hunt and Mr Jacobs are here to dinner. They are having it now.’

The artists from downstairs. Bother…

Bored, but resigned, Denham followed Arnold into the dining-room in her grimy overalls.

The three guests raised a hub-bub of welcome, of greeting, of inquiry….

She was pale and heavy-faced and sullen, smudged with travel, one cheek bulged out with a peardrop; she was not even attractive. Worse, she understood nothing. Blind and crying, their love groped for a door of entry, and turned away defeated.

observations: Isaac is the protagonist’s dog, Arnold is her husband. It is clear which she prefers.

Here’s a book that won me over after a Bad Beginning: I didn’t like the tone, I didn’t like the arch authorial comments – Macaulay invades the book the whole time in the opening chapters, telling us what to think – ‘one cannot blame them’, ‘People should do this’. There are strange reversed sentences: ‘So many was it already that they could add a new cousin to it and scarcely notice the addition.’

So then I got snarky in return – Andorra is not a republic, as Macaulay says several times, it is a principality. (Yes, I am that pedantic.) Actually, I think nearly all the opening section of the book could have been omitted: in which the young girl Denham (what a stupid name), entirely brought up in Majorca and Andorra, is swept up by English relatives and taken to London when her father dies. The book is a satirical view of how Denham (like a Craig Raine Martian) cannot understand a thing about upper middle class arty life amongst the publishers, writers, theatre types and respectable gentry. She stumbles into marriage, and all does not go well, as that very sad last sentence of the extract shows.

I read the book because the lovely Leaves and Books blog recommended it, so I soldiered on, and then partway through I suddenly got into the swing of it. You have to stop wondering whether any of the characters are in any way likeable (not really) and just enjoy the culture clash.

The book is so odd it will need another entry to cover it – though that’s partly because I found the perfect picture to illustrate another section. Tune in later this week.

The photos of women in overalls are from the Library of Congress – from a series showing women doing what was thought of as ‘men’s work’ during the Second World War. The woman on a motorbike is a photo used ages ago for this blog entry.

Dress Down Sunday: The Wooden Overcoat by Pamela Branch

published 1951

LOOKING AT WHAT GOES ON UNDER THE CLOTHES

Fan was about to knock on Lilli Cluj’s door when, behind it, she heard Peter laugh. It was a low, intimate laugh, the kind that Peter had no business to share with other women – especially with Hungarian cabaret artistes who were Quite Something… If she flung open the door and confronted them, it might be misconstrued and give Peter a certain gratuitous satisfaction…

She did not want to make a fool of herself. She had once seen Bertha furiously snatch open the studio door to find Hugo not, as she had expected, rolling around with a Burmese model but playing with the cat next door.

She compromised. She knocked and opened the door at the same time.

Lilli was lying on the bed in a coffee-coloured negligee. Her spectacular hair hung over one eye. She had a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other. Peter sat at the foot of the bed with one of her small, bare feet in his lap. He was tickling its sole. There was a potted bush in the middle of the room…

observations: The Wooden Overcoat starts off well. The third sentence reads: ‘A pain in the neck had driven all other thoughts from his mind’ – a moment or two later you realize this apparently unremarkable reference means that Benjamin Cann had feared he would be hanged for murder. He has just been acquitted. Wrongly. He then has a most understandable rumination about what the black cap would have looked like: At that time, a British judge giving sentence of death put a square of black silk on over his wig.

But the book went downhill from there: Cann joins a club comprising other acquitted murderers, and goes to lodge next door with the two couples mentioned above (Fan and Peter, Bertha and Hugo). Various deaths result, and some frantic efforts to get rid of the bodies. This is a comedy murder story – a genre I am very prejudiced about, so perhaps I am the wrong person to read it. I found it tiresome, heartless and unfunny. But many people love it: if you look up reviews you can find much more positive opinions, and people who re-read it (and Branch’s other books) regularly.

The murderers’ association is called the Asterisk Club, a reference to a poem by Longfellow.

Of the women in the book, Bertha wears ‘sensible blue pyjamas’, Lilli has some gold tissue pyjamas as well as the negligee mentioned above, but Fan appears to wear nothing but a necklace in bed, and keeps a shawl to hand so she can wrap it round herself if she needs to leave the room. So although Lilli is shown to be a bad woman, it is not her bedwear that makes her so.

The picture is from the Library of Congress and is meant to show Ophelia from Hamlet, dressed according to the caption in that most Shakespearean of outfits, ‘a flimsy negligee’.

We've had a few other negligees on the blog - and another one to come soon - and they are on sale at Mog Edwards' drapers' shop in Under Milk Wood.