These Fevered Days, Ten Pivotal Moments In the Making Of Emily Dickinson, by Martha Ackmann

 Hi Dear Folk,

I have been hunkered down with this book for far too long, and it now, absolutely must go back to the library, no more renewals.   I wanted to do a review and this is the stick I needed.

Emily Dickinson had a fertile mind but lived a life confined to house and locality, at this present time it seemed absolutely the correct read, as my mind is busy, but confined to home and hardly venturing forth beyond our little area on the map.  Can one in such circumstances live a full life?  And I say yes, Emily Dickinson did.  Life other than an external situation.

To some it seemed she lived an ordinary life, 

... resided in one town, went to school, never held a job, lived in her parents home, remained single and died at fifty-five.  She loved passionately, wrote scores of letters, anguished over abandonment and fought with God, found ecstasy with nature, embraced seclusion, was ambivalent towards publication, and created 1,789 poems that she tucked into a dresser drawer.  Only after her death, when her sister opened the drawer, did the world begin to realize, that the life of Emily Dickinson was far from commonplace.

Author's Note.  

Martha Ackmann taught a Tuesday afternoon class in the Dickinson homestead.  I have often thought of that class and how it would be to sit in her very home discussing Emily's poetry.  There is such an ambience of setting to learning, hence my heart goes out to those students sitting at a computer doing remote learning.  Here it is a snowy day in January and my mind goes back to my days at Hadham Hall, sitting in a tower turret room, on a snowy day, with leaded glass windows, looking out over the snow covered cedar trees, taking a history class.

Emily was born December 10th, 1830 in Amherst, MA to Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson, schooled at Amherst Academy and Mt Holyoke Female Seminary, South Hadley, MA.  Published posthumously in 1890.  She did not keep a diary, but frequently corresponded with friends and of course wrote poetry.  She could be reclusive, and reserved the right to hold lengthy lively conversations with you if she so chose, or not to.  Of the town she lived in:

One professor's wife Deborah Fiske, put her finger on two qualities that made Amherst unique.  Amherst, Massachusetts, she said, was filled with "a very spending evening sort of folks" and its best women were "free from the silly very birdish airs."

Emily held dear the group she called her Circle of Five:  smart and lively girls ...

With friends Emily even produced a literary journal they named "Forrest Leaves"  which reminds me so much of the March sisters, in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  The surrounding of oneself with learning and learned people, the founding of schools for just such a purpose, including girls.

Emily came from an academic family who believed in the value of education and had the means to pursue it.  A year at Mount Holyoke cost $60.  Her maternal grandfather, Joel Norcross, was one of the founders of Monson Academy and at the same time Samuel Fowler Dickinson was getting Amherst Academy off the ground.  Emily's mother and Aunt Lavinia had attended Monson, and later Mr. Herrick's School for girls, in New Haven, Connecticut, where young women regularly attended lectures at Yale.  Mary Lyon founded Mount Holyoke, from which many pupils went on to be missionaries and teachers.  Religion was most important at these institutions.

President Hitchcock once remarked that religion was at the very core of Amherst College.  Area newspapers shared his point of view.  In reporting on commencements at Amherst and Mount Holyoke, newspapers listed students who read prizewinning essays as well as the number of seniors who had professed their faith.

The Dickinsons were Congregationalists the largest faith in Massachusetts at that time.  Emily was part of the "no hopers."  As such she was still allowed to attend Mount Holyoke, Mary Lyon was a liberal thinker.

Miss Lyons rooms were behind the double parlors and across from the Seminary Hall.  Emily could remember the many words Mary Lyon had spoken there.  "Don't be a hypocrite," she had told them, "be honest." Distinguish between what is very difficult and what is impossible.  Do what is difficult."  "The difference between great and small minds is the power of classifications.  Little minds dwell on particular things.  Great minds take in a great deal."

Fidelia Fiske had been a teacher at Mount Holyoke, her missionary letters from Persia were often read to the girls.

... and more letters in Seminary Hall from the intrepid Fidelia Fiske.  Emily knew she would never set out for Persia or teach Choctaw Indians. ... she would bore into her own interior, confronting an unknown as wild and uncertain as any new world missionary had seen.

Valentine's Day was celebrated with a Festival in town where ice cream was served and Valentine's were penned.  Esther Howland an enterprising young women who had attended Mount Holyoke; mass produced Valentines from her father's stationery store in Worcester, she hoped her brother could find $200 worth of orders, he came back with $5,000.  Emily loved to write Valentines and spar with them.

"A little condescending, & sarcastic, your Valentine to me," she teased a male cousin, "a little like an Eagle, stooping to salute a Wren, & I concluded once, I dared not answer it, for it seemed to me not quite becoming; in a bird so lowly as myself; to claim admittance Eyrie, & conversation with its King."

Emily did not like housework, it took time away from her beloved writing.  This was especially so when Vinnie her younger sister was away at school.

"Vinnie away," she had written, "and my two hands but 'two' - not four, or five as they ought to be - and so many wants - and me so very handy - and my time of so little account - and my writing so very needless."  Emily said that if she took so much as "an inch of time" to write, she would be castigated - not so much by her family as the world and her own guilt.  Housekeeping, to her, was a way to cultivate a woman's submission and steal time, and she wanted nothing of it.  "God keep me from what they call households," she said.

There are so few literary works written by working class people before the fifties, to find any is a rare and special gem, they just didn't have the time to do so.  One can say that has changed for the better.  Even Emily came from what can be considered a more well to do background, begrudged the time spent on, as she said "households."  Neither was she a fan of small talk and as she got older her solitude became more pronounced, fewer people were let into her secluded world,

That winter when the Sewing Society began its meetings, Emily declined to attend.  She knew "the public"  would be puzzled by her absence and make her the object of prayers, and she let loose with a torrent of sarcasm.  "Now all the poor will be helped - the cold warmed - the warm cooled - the hungry fed - the thirsty attended to - the raged clothed - and this suffering - tumbled down world will be helped to its feet again," she wrote her friend Jane.  

In reference to her hand sewn little books which came to be know as 'Facicles.'

Sometime Emily would carefully write a poem and fold the sheet as if for mailing, but never send it.  She dated practically nothing and almost never included titles.  One poem was as short as two lines and others extended to five or six stanzas.  There were countless images from nature - robins, gentians, owls, snowflakes - and verses that echoed the religious cadences of her youth:  

In the name of the Bee - 

And of the Butterfly - 

And of the Breeze - Amen!

Several poems described an aching void that she refused to identify.  

Emily and the people of Amherst were heart broken by the loss of Amherst men in the Civil War, thirty-one men from the town died for the Union cause.  

She delighted in standing apart, and sneered at puffed-up somebodies who forever croaked about themselves.  "I'm Nobody!  Who are you?"  she wrote in one verse.  "Are you - Nobody - too?"

Yet it was unclear - as it always would be - if Emily were speaking for herself in her poems or inventing a persona with vastly different opinions.  Amherst residents would have been surprised if they had discovered the shy, reclusive daughter of Edward Dickinson was capable of writing such bold lines as  

I'm "wife" - I've finished that - 

That other state - 

I'm Czar - I'm woman now - 

She rarely showed such audacity in person.

Thomas Higginson was the co-editor of the first two collections of Emily's poems.  She corresponded with him for eight years before finally agreeing to meet with him.

First he heard her.  From upstairs on the second floor came the sound of quick, light steps - footsteps that sounded like a child's.  Then she entered.  A plain woman with two bands of reddish hair, not particularly good-looking, wearing a white pique dress.  The white stunned him.  It was exquisite.  A blue worsted shawl covered her shoulders.  She seemed fearful to him, breathless at first, and extended her hand, not to shake - but to offer something.  "These are my introduction,"  she said, handing him tow day-lilies.

Jostling along on the tracks, miles from Amherst, ... She was not capable of casual conversation, he told Mary, (his wife) or of friendship.  It took every ounce of his being to meet her level of intellectual intensity... "Without touching her, she drew from me.  I am glad not to live near her."

Helen Hunt one of her closest friends, who lived in Colorado and had just married for the second time.

Helen was pleased to hear from Emily, but baffled by the second verse.  What did "dooms" mean and how did the idea of calamity connect to her wedding?

When fleeing from the Spring

The Spring avenging fling

To Dooms of Balm - 

Emily died May 15th, 1886.

That Wednesday afternoon, May 19th, the funeral service took place in the Dickinson's family library.  "To Amherst to the funeral of that rare & strange creature Emily Dickinson."  Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote in his diary.

I never studied Emily Dickinson, or her poetry, but in my year of coming to grips with who is an American? this is just a little cog in rounding out my thoughts.  I feel as did Helen Hunt, much of her poetry baffles me, but my favorite Emily Dickinson poem is this, I'm Nobody!  Who are you?  A question we all should be asking in this present time.

I prefer the first published version.

I'm Nobody!  Who are you?

(First Published Version)

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Dont tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!

I did enjoy this book and would recommend it.

Keep safe,

Christine

The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger

Hi Dear Folk,

I read a book I wanted to review and share with you, it was pertinent in it's time and I would say today too.

The Oppermanns written by Lion Feuchtwanger and published in Amsterdam in 1933 and the edition I have was published in 1934 by The Viking Press, in the USA.  As I've often said love my local library, but I have to say it was brought to my attention by Persephone Books, as one of their newer releases.

It is set in 1932 Germany, current at the time, and is the story of a German Jewish family who own a furniture store, founded in the late 1800s, by their grandfather Immanuel Oppermann, and their coming to terms with National Socialism and all that that will mean for them.  Lion Feuchtwanger saw the writing on the wall, but did not have the skills to decipher it, no powers of prophecy.  Who could have foreseen? And thus makes it even more poignant.  Nationalists, even the name sounds benign but it and they were not.

Goethe:  "There is nothing the rabble fear more than Intelligence.  If they understand what is truly terrifying, they would fear ignorance."

I will set down the characters as it is hard to get a handle on who's who.

The Siblings:-

Gustav Oppermann - Batchelor, fifty years old, a minor literary scholar and writing a biography of Lessing, living in a beautiful house in a lovely suburb of Berlin.  The eldest.

Martin Oppermann - Running the family furniture business from which they all receive an income.

Edgar Oppermann - A world renowned doctor, who came up with a special procedure for throat surgery.

Klara Lavendel - Married

Souses and Children:-

Lisolette Oppermann - Martin's wife, who is a Christian, son Bethold (Baruch) seventeen years old.

Gina Oppermann  - Edgar's wife.  Ruth their daughter is a Zionist and wants to move to Palestine.

Jacques Lavendel - Klara's husband, a Jew, born in an Eastern European country, but has lived in and holds an American citizenship, as does his wife and son Heinrich.

Mistress:-

Sybil Rauch - Mistress of Gustav

The story opens on the day of his fiftieth birthday, Gustav in his home, reminiscing on the beauty of his house, where he lives and how well he looks for his age; he has an indolent, self-absorbed existence.  About twenty guests gather together in the evening at his house for a birthday party, the talk is of politics.

"Here in the charming rooms of Gustav Oppermann, people were not inclined to concede that a thing as imbecile as the Nationalist movement had a chance."

"The paltry varnish of logic is being scraped away."  Says Freidrich Wilhelm Gutwetter an aryan literary critic and writer.

Frau Emilee Francoise, nicknamed Little Thundercloud is the wife of Rector Alfred Francoise, headmaster of a boys school, which Berthold Oppermann attends.  They were originally from France.

"He always believed everything was all right as long as one could prove one's statements.  If she tried to explain to him that accuracy meant nothing ..."

Jacques Lavendel:-

"Why, in the devil's name, had so many French aristocrats been so asinine as to be caught in the Revolution, whereas any schoolboy nowadays knows that the writings of Rouseau and Voltaire, decades earlier, had indicated precisely what would happen."

Winds are changing everywhere and at the hospital where Dr. Edgar Opperman works along with his faithful Nurse Helene and his protege Dr Jacoby, who looks very Semitic.  He believes:-

"He was a German doctor, a German scientist.  German science and Jewish science did not exist, the only thing that existed was Science."

Rector Francoise has had to accept Master Bernd Vogelsong, from Bavaria who is a Nationalist.  He finds it hard to listen to his speech, as it is a low German and even harder to listen to his rhetoric.

"The bombastic German, the ranting, mass-meeting oratory made him physically uncomfortable. ... The worst of it was that he sincerely believed the gibberish he was talking.  Due to an inferiority complex, he had encased himself in an armor of the cheapest nationalism, ..."

Vogelsong quotes Hitler to Francoise:-

"He had made a mistake.  He ought not to have quoted the Leader's book to this misguided man.  It was unfortunately only too true.  Rector Francoise was right in a certain sense.  The greatest living German, the leader of the German movement, was not familiar with the rudiments of the German language."

I found this most interesting that Hitler, who of course was born in Austria, did not speak and have a grasp of higher German.

Professor Mülheim, the family lawyer urges Gustav to invest some money outside of Germany.

"He had been urging Gustav for years to invest his capital abroad.  The outlook in Germany was becoming steadily more threatening.  Would he not be a madman who should  continue to sit in a train, the staff of which showed unmistakable signs of madness?"

"... Gustav agreed with Goethe, who preferred to put up with injustice rather than lawlessness."

Bertold Oppermann's form teacher was Master Vogelsong, his previous form master, who had died suddenly; had asked him to prepare a lecture for the class, a lot of work had gone into this.  He asks Vogelsong if he may give the lecture, but Vogelsong does not like the theme title and gives him an option to write a lecture on the life of Arminius.  A character held in high esteem by the Nationalists as a true aryan hero, who fought against the Romans.  Bertold gives the lecture the way he has been taught pros and cons as to character and outcome.  Vogelsong can only take the pros, no cons must be said about this hero.  He goes into a rage, he considers the Jewish boy, not just a problem in class, but a problem in the school.  He must apologize.  Berthold does not see it that way he was just presenting Arminius in the way he had been taught.

Rector Francoise must set this right, he sits on it for a while, he agrees with Bertold, but as Little Thundercloud points out to him this could mean his job.  He agrees to ask Gustav to intervene and say something to the family about this.

"It could only be hoped that the irritating new teacher who they had planted in his beloved institution, like a potato in a tulip field, would not spoil things too much.  And then he related the Vogelsong affair." 

"On the 30th January, the President of the Republic appointed the author of the book entitled My Battle to the post of German Chancellor."

That was in 1933.

Things are not looking well for Oppermann's Furniture Stores and it is decided very quickly to change their name to the German Furniture Company.  This had been discussed previously but now they see the necessity of changing their name and taking on Herr Heinrich Wels a competitor; who's grandfather had established his furniture company at a similar time to which their grandfather had established theirs.  In fact Wels had made previous offers to come in, but they had always turned him down, but now as a Nationalist, it would be good to have him on board.  Herr Wels has the upper hand, they no longer do.

Martin speaking to Herr Brieger, Herr Hintze who help run Oppermann's Furniture company, along with Jacques.

".... Do you believe that, because a few thousand young, armed ruffians roam about in the streets, there is an end of Germany?"  

"There are no pogroms in Germany nowadays."

Back at the hospital Nurse Helene is trying to warn Dr. Oppermann of what could happen at the hospital.

"In the hospitals, in the University, on all sides, medical men without ability were seeing signs of hope.  An era was beginning in which the requisites were no longer talent and accomplishment but the ostensible consanguinity to a certain race."

"On one of the following afternoons it so happened that a patient of the third class, which was treated gratis, was caught smoking a cigar contrary to strict instructions."

The nurse told him to put it out, he would not do so, so she called in Dr Jacoby.

"The sight of the Jew made the man raving mad."

Dr Jacoby:-

"He had nothing to offer the shouting, rebellious ward but the arguments of reason, the least suitable of all sedatives."

Herr Markus Wolfsohn is a shop floor salesman at the furniture store.  His brother in law Moritz Ehrenreich has booked passage to Palestine.

"Perhaps his brother-in-law Moritz Ehrenreich was right in clearing out now as he was doing.  Yes, they had got to that point now:  Moritz Ehrenreich was due to sail for Palestine on 3rd of March, from the French  port of Marseilles, on the steamer Mariette Pacha."

Herr Rudiger Zarnke lives next door in the same two-hundred and seventy apartment building to Herr Wolfsohn.  He would like Herr Wolfsohn's apartment for a relative.  It isn't fair that Oppermann's has a special block deal on a number of the apartments especially for their employees.

"In booming tones, impossible to ignore, he would tell his wife how the Nationalists, the moment they took over the reins of government on the fifth of March, would make mince-meat of the Jews."

Herr Wolfsohn:-

"Yes, it was all over with his snug security in the beloved flats in Friedrich Karl Strasse."

Berthold has been in a turmoil over his speech and the thought of apologizing to Vogelsong.  He decides to visit his uncle Joachim Ranzov, his mother's brother who holds a high position as a Commissioner.

Berthold says:-

"Must I now go and confess that I am a bad German because I spoke the truth?"

Muhlheim entreating Gustav to leave Germany:-

"What nonsense!  Because the Reichstag was on fire, he, Gustav, would have to leave Berlin."

Gustave decides to travel to Bern, Switzerland.  He is given a bundle of papers to read from a man who introduces himself as Dr. Bilfinger this man has documented atrocities in Germany, he reads it.

"The aged President had handed the Reich over to them in good order.  They had ruthlessly broken their solemn pledges, trampled law underfoot, and submitted caprice, disorder, and brutality for civilization and order.  Germany had become a madhouse in which the patients had overpowered their warders.  Did the world realize this?  What was he going to do about all this?"

In this passage I wonder whether the writer Lion Feuchtwanger had a spark of hope, but I think not.

"Very many people had left Germany but very many more had remained.  The Nationalists could not kill or imprison all their adversaries, for their adversaries comprised two-thirds of the population."

Bernd Vogelsang is appointed as Minister of Education.  A former student of his Werner Rittersteg a tall blond nicknamed Long Lummox, of no great intelligence, takes it upon himself to stab a journalist Richard Karper for printing the truth.  He does it to attract the attention of Heinrich Lavendel, a great football player at school, who he has silently hero worshipped for a long time, the cousin of Berthold.  He Rittersteg gets of scot-free.

Did they intend to entangle a young hero in the maze of stupid rules, to impede his career, his activity on behalf of New Germany, merely because his scholarship had not stood the hazards of an examination?"

Rector Francoise stands up to Vogelsong, he knows he will lose his position.  His wife is pragmatic.

"These comforting words did Francoise good.  He had always known that Socrates must have had some good reason for marrying Xanthippe."

"Jacques Lavendel informed Friedrich Pfanz, the head of the Department of Economics, that he proposed to leave Germany and that he would liquidate his German business interests."

A turn of events with Herr Zarnke, who has become disillusioned with unfulfilled promises.  He listens and agrees with his little troop, not turning them in for subversive speech.

"Such rebellious views were gaining more and more control over the simple soul of storm-troop-leader Rudger Zarnke."

The Oppermann family are together at the Lavendel's house in Switzerland.  They are celebrating Passover. Enjoying each other's company and using all the old utensils dedicated to the celebration, reading the Haggadah.

"They wanted to sterilize all Jews, as well as the Socialists and the intellectual classes.  Nationalists only were to be allowed to propagate, there would be no one left to spoil their power."

"In Nationalist Germany there was no worse crime than the profession of reason, peace, and honorable sentiments."

"Unemployment figures rose to staggering heights.  Germany's percentage of unemployed became the highest in the world.  But the stiff-necked Nationalist declared that they had reduced unemployment.

Lies, profiteering, and selfish indulgence went hand in hand.  Anyone who belonged to the party in power could have his competitor spirited away to a concentration camp."

The story by no means ends here, the ending is quite incongruous.  I think it had to be, because it was published in 1933 and at that time it had taken National Socialism fourteen years to rise to power, and only at the beginning of their government control of Germany.  So how could Lion Feuchtwanger actually end his story.  The Third Reich did not come to an end until 8th May, 1945.

I hope my humble review of The Oppermanns has moved you to read this book.

Christine

Re-Posting My Review of The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes.

The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes

The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes is one of the books on the Persephone list, as you may or may not know I am gradually working through all the books they have published and did actually get to visit their shop on Conduit Street in London.  If you just click on my Persephone label you will pull up all related posts.

Again a First Edition published in 1963 from my local library, Dorothy Hughes was an American writer and you would call the style of this book Noir Fiction, with a very American setting and style of writing.  It is a refreshing change to the Persephone Collection.  I also love the dust cover of this book in orange and purple with white and black so very sixties.  It says a Random House novel of suspense.

When you read a book you form pictures of the story in your mind, the characters, what they look like and sometimes it is very bad news to watch a film before you read the book.  That would certainly be very true of this book, because for the first sixty odd pages you have one image in mind and then you read a line and your whole image of this person goes through a 360 degree turn and this is so with this book.  So if you want to read this book and don't want to ruin the surprise, stop right here.

Hugh Densmore a UCLA intern, is traveling from California to Phoenix, Arizona in his mother's white Cadillac, to attend a family wedding, his niece is getting married.  He sees a young teenager at the side of the highway in the twilight of the evening and in all good conscience cannot leave her there, this he does against all his better judgement.  He knows his parents have told him never pick up a hitchhiker it will get you into trouble and other such phrases run though his mind and you begin to think it is beginning to touch on paranoia

"The shadow, raised up from its haunches, waited for his car to approach.  He knew better than to pick up a hitchhiker on the road;  he'd known it long before the newspapers and script writers had implanted the danger in the public mind.  Most assuredly he would not pick up anyone in this strange deserted land."

Bonnie Lee Crumb

"She was a teen-ager, she might have been one of the girls he'd seen at the drive-in.  She wasn't pretty;  her face was just a young, thin, petulant face, too much lipstick on the mouth, wisps of her self-bleached hair jutting from beneath the gaudy orange and green scarf covering her head.... She also carried a box handbag of white plastic."

Such a nineteen sixties picture is now set.

"I go ape over Johnny Mathis."

"Personally I prefer Sinatra."  He wondered if that dated him, as his mother was dated with Bing Crosby.

At last the music kept her quiet and he could enjoy the morning ride.  He'd always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country.

Hugh had dropped her off before the California/Arizona border and bought her a bus ticket, to Phoenix, it is illegal to transport a minor across a State Line, but there she was waiting for him on the Arizona side having cashed in her ticket, he was again put under an obligation to give her a ride.  He drops the girl off and arrives at his parents house.

"I stayed over in Blythe.  It was late when I got off."  He wouldn't tell her the story, he wouldn't worry her.  "Where's Dad?"

When you watch so many of the old American black and white movies, you know it was a tradition for the bride to get married out of her parents house and it is no different with Clytie, his niece.  I think a very nice tradition which has been lost now.

Clytie had chosen to be married in the ancestral home, to walk down the long front stairway as her mother and her mother's mother had before her.  With Grandfather to marry her.  He was retired now, but once a minister of the Lord, always a minister.

"The schedule?"  Tonight's a barbecue at Uncle Dan's.  The whole tribe of course and members of the wedding party.  Sports clothes."

Gram returned for more dishes.  "Barbecue.  Cooking outdoors like Indians."  She didn't wait for rebuttal but trotted back to her kitchen.

Bonnie as you already know, because you know the direction this is heading in, turns up dead.

"Like Ringle says, we got a tip.  Right after that report went out on the radio.  this guy says a nigger doc driving a big white Cadillac brought Bonne Lee to Phoenix."

This sentence is where you have to rearrange all your mental pictures and all the little cogs of information have to be taken out of their slotted cubbies in your mind and rearranged and slotted back into the correct cubbies of your mind.  It now makes sense why his parents say never pick up a hitchhiker, his grandfather is a minister, he is able to be a doctor, they have escaped the South and have a nice family home with a staircase to walk down for the bride.

This wasn't the deep South.  It was Arizona.

But prejudices are still high even out of the South.

Innocently involved?  No, he couldn't call it innocent.  Rather, it was mindless.  It was neither;  it was a paper chain of circumstances, cut from sympathy and too much imagination.  Imagination, yes - why else should he have thought that unless he picked up the girl she would be in danger?  Another car would have come along, a family car for which she had said she was waiting, or even another man, a white man.

He Dr. Hugh Densmore, product of his heredity and environment, sufficiently intelligent and well adjusted to his mind and body and color and ambition.

His mother is reading the newspaper.

Hugh could have asked her:  May I have a quick look at the front section?  But what answer could he give to her inevitable:  Why , is there some particular story ...?  And she wold glance at the front page in passing, would see the headlines about the dead girl.  Fear would squeeze her, the fear lying ever-dormant beneath the civilized front, beneath the normal life of a Los angeles housewife whose husband's income was in near-five figures, whose children had been born ad bred and coddled in serenity and security and status.

Somehow he knew, knew with dreadful clarity, that this man had full intent to make Hugh the killer.

Because the wedding was in the home, the guest list was small - the family and a few old friends.  But the reception which followed seemed to include the entire community.  there was no segregation with Clytie's university friends and John's Air Force crowd on hand.  

With all the different friends flying in for the wedding Hugh meets Ellen.

He offered Ellen a cigarette, took one himself, and lighted them.

A scene with a man and a woman smoking together seems dated in this time, but maybe not.

"You need a lawyer."

"No." He rejected it utterly, violently.  "What could a lawyer do?  I haven't been accused of anything. I haven't done anything."  He tried to make her see it.  "Having a lawyer would make me look guilty.  And I'm not."

She smiled wryly.  "Most lawyers prefer an innocent client."  He tried to laugh.  "the Judge's daughter"

The night was sharp with cold at this hour, the stars were broken glass patched against the dark sky.

I do like the above quote.

She had thought it out with care;  she must have been thinking of little else all day.  "A young man, not over forty, but top drawer in his profession;  liberal, but not too liberal, no Civil Liberties lawyer, they're suspect from the beginning because they show up in any case involving minorities.

Trying to check Ellen into the same motel as Hugh.

It was a lie and they all knew it was a lie, but there was no rancor among them.  This clerk couldn't cancel the system;  her genuine friendliness was her contribution toward eroding it.  Five years ago she wouldn't have had a vacant unit;  ten year ago she would have said, "We don't take Negroes,"  if any had had the courage or spunk to inquire.

Skye Houston pronounce  Howston, the lawyer.

His close-cropped hair was sun-bleached to pale lemon;  he was tanned far darker than Ellen, almost as dark as Hugh.

There was no excuse he could give for postponing food; ..."There's a bakery cafeteria a couple of blocks from here.  Not elegant but friendly and the food used to be good will that do?"

"It sounds just right."  She was a different girl since Houston.

The cold of the cafeteria enveloped them like a snowfall.

This so takes me back to when I first stepped foot in the USA in the seventies and what a shock air conditioning was.  Coming from a country where you did not need it and it did not exist.  How one always had to carry a cardigan even in the hottest of days, just for the sake of AC.

He'd have to ask Houston for help.  They'd be afraid not to answer Houston's questions.  It rankled that he could not bring the same force to bear, that he had to forgo his own social position and become a caricature to ask a simple question.  And receive no answer.

"He said lightly, "I hear we have some fine courses in foreign diplomacy.  Maybe you'll decide to transfer."

"Okay, Madam Ambassador."

She smiled at him.  "I didn't choose the field because I'm a feminist."  Thoughtfully, she continued, "We've traveled abroad quite a bit.  Because of my father's various assignments.  I believe there's a definite need for what I call dark diplomats.

This book is far more than Fiction Noir, it addresses the racial prejudices of the era and makes you think about what has changed and what has not.

Christy

I first posted this Monday February 15th 2016.  I think in view of what is happening this is an interesting read.  I was at approximately page 60 before I realized the story was about a black doctor and not a white doctor.  

The Rabbit Hole of Reading, The Kingdom By The Sea, by Paul Theroux

Hi Dear Folk,

How are you all holding up without a hug?  So big hugs and handshakes to all.  I'm afraid that even when we are let out, things will not be the same.  I can't see handshakes and hugs being freely given to strangers anymore, at least not for a long while, and that's very sad.

As you know if you follow me on Instagram, is that I'm reading The Kingdom By The Sea, A Journey Around Great Britain, by Paul Theroux.  This book has been in my personal library for a long while, I started it years ago but could not get into it.

It was published in 1983.  His travels around the coast of Britain and Northern Ireland was during the time of the Falklands War.  Theroux sticks to the coast line as much as possible, it takes him along windswept headlands, quant villages, but also past nuclear power plants, old dockland areas and industrial towns that have seen better days.  In the eighties I was newly married and living in the States, but would go back to the UK for long holidays.

I started the book with the preconceived notion, that it would read something like the book by Susan Branch My Love Affair With England, but no, it is the UK without the rose coloured glasses, the gritty side of people and places.  It is worth a read, it makes me think back to that time, how things were in the eighties, how some things have changed and some are still the same.

Moving on to the thought of the rabbit hole of reading.  While in Wales, he, Paul Theroux, mentions Taliesin, and I remembered that Frank Lloyd Wright named two of his houses, Taliesin Spring Green in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona.

Taliesin in Welsh history was a Brythonic poet, a Celtic poet in sub-Roman times whose work possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, The Book of Taliesin.  Taliesin a renowned bard who is believed to have sung at the courts of at least three Brythonic Kings.  Now of course he Frank Lloyd Wright used the name Lloyd which is a Welsh surname and his mother's name was Anna Lloyd Jones, her forebears emigrated to Spring Green, Wisconsin, from Wales, hence the connection.  I always thought Taliesin was an interesting name for a house.

Now down another rabbit hole while reading Kingdom By The Sea, were some quotes from the Ulster poetry of Louis MacNeice, who wrote so well about the sea.  "Upon this beach the falling wall of the sea..." and my favorite "That never satisfied old maid the sea.  Rehangs her white lace curtains ceaselessly."  I will never again go down to the sea and not think of that quote, the old maid rehanging her lace curtains, the white froth of lace as the waves crash, I love it.

So then I went on to who was Louis MacNeice, born in Northern Ireland? I was not familiar with him.  It seems that he was a counterpart of W. H. Auden while at Oxford along with Cecil Day Lewis, who were all part of the Auden's circle.  He was a contemporary of John Betjeman and Anthony Blunt who he was a life long friend.  All these names I know.

The Day-Lewis I am familiar with is the actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, well Cecil was his father, I found that interesting.  He often plays an Irish part, although born in London, but his father Cecil, was born in Ireland, hence connections.

And of course who does not know Anthony Blunt, who had close association with the royal family as the curator of their art collection.  He was recruited by the NKVD, later to become the KGB, while he was at university.  He worked for MI5 but was spying for the Russians.  He never was publicly outed at the time, because of the high circles he moved in and the scandal it would have caused, let alone the embarrassment with the Americans.

See what I mean about Rabbit Holes.  Well wasn't that diversionary.

Stay well, keep safe.

Christine

Kosti Ruohomaa, Night Train At Wiscasset Station and Dull Days and Dirth

Hi Dear Folk,

Welcome to all new folk who are following my blog, I do appreciate you stopping by and spending time here.  This will be my eleventh year of blogging and I obviously enjoy keeping on online journal of my life and do it for that reason.  If you enjoy my blog A Little Bit of British, do become a follower, and add me as one of the blogs in your blog list that you enjoy reading.  That would be great.

So here I am in today with a head cold.  Even had to break a luncheon appointment because I am not feeling up to it and I was looking forward to that.  I took one of those tablets that you drop in hot water with high doses of vitamin C to try and ward off what I knew was coming, hope it works somewhat.

With a lot of dull very soggy days we have a dirth of sunlight, the only brightness of light is when I light the fire in the afternoon which is as much for the ambience as the warmth, along with a few candles it does lift ones spirit.

Mr. B. watching the game, with Miss Tuppy.

I have been keeping up with my diary and my journal, also the fountain pens and the letter writing. Reading poetry and re-visiting some books that have sat on my shelf for a long while.  One is Night Train at Wiscasset Station.  It's mostly to showcase the photographs of a Maine photographer Kosti Ruohomaa.  Who was born in Maine to Finnish parents.  The writer is Lew Dietz who travelled along with him at times.  He said "As I see it I wrote the words and Kosti the music."  The forward is by Andrew Wyeth.

He caught a way of life from the forties and fifties in his black and white photographs.  This book was a library discard, but as soon as I saw the wonderful photography I knew it would join my collection.  He died young in his forties because he was an alcoholic.  His photographs were in several leading magazines of the time such as Life.  He travelled all over, but always returned to the family farm in Maine, his roots.

I love his photography he just catches a mood, wrinkles, warts and everything; which is how my son, the photographer tends to take photos of his mother.  No beautifully posed pictures, but the true gritty reality of old age, and when I object he says, "But that's a great photograph look at the light." and I say "Can't you just take a photo of me when I'm looking my best not all these down to earth shots." The ones that get filtered out and stay in the archives of your hard drive.

One time Rob posted a photo of me on his Facebook, my sister saw it and said "You should have him take that photo down, that's an awful picture of you."  My sister was right, it was, but it was reality.  Everything today is edited and airbrushed, so to view these wonderful photos of a Maine way of life that even at that time Kosti thought was slipping away, is delightful.

Here is a write up on his life in the Bangor Daily News Kosti Ruohomaa

I like Dietz's writing in this book of the Mainer's way of thinking, who these folk are "... they are inclined to pity those who never see snow."

Christine

National Provincial by Lettice Cooper

Hi Dear Folk,

This book review of National Provincial has taken me a long time to get to.  Fortunately I do take notes.  I am trying to remember how I came to order this book out of old shelving at the library.  I think I read about the author Lettice Cooper on the Persephone Books Blog.  Now it's coming back to me they published one of her other books, The New House.

Lettice Cooper was born in 1897 and died in 1994.  She was born in Eccles, Lancashire.  She want to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.  She had deep socialist convictions, reflected in her books and an affinity to her Yorkshire roots.

The time period is 1923, Mary is on the train back to the Sheffield area from London where she has had a promising career in journalism, and has lived the new life style for young women of the 1920's sharing a flat with other women.  Entertaining, with a young group of friends who talk about the future and change.

Mary has to go back to Sheffield as her younger sister Doris  is getting married to Frank and their mother is an invalid, and makes more of it than need be.  The person that she has a true affection for is her Aunt Grace, her mother's sister and her Uncle John a Trade Union leader.

In reviews I have read about this book many comment that the story is centered around Mary and that is true, but all the other characters in the book are fleshed out just as well, so you might almost think well who is it centered around?  It just starts off with Mary.

Mary's father left the family when they were small and her mother has never got over the shadow of stigma.

"Cant't we ever be ordinary again?"

Vivian a London friend speaks about the Provinces.  This could almost be a social commentary on the world today.

"There's always been a gap between us and them, and the gap's widening.  I noticed it last month when I had a week-end in Liverpool.  I expect you'll find it stiffer and slower there, you'll probably run up against a lot more settled prejudices than you do with our lot here, but don't be a fool and waste time down there wishing you were back.  You soak it in.  I don't believe you can do anything much in England unless you've got the feeling of the provinces."

Interesting she says down there because we always think up there as it's North.

Mary has been excepted on the local rag as a reporter for social events, she moves in several different circles.  The Harding family and their cousins the Marsden family make up the old industrial money.  Mr Ward and his family, he is currently the largest industrial employer in town, the new money and Steven Harding the son works for Mr. Ward, an uncomfortable position to be in.  Mary's uncle is the Trade Union leader and works at Mr. Ward's plant.

You have a circle of intellectuals and another circle of communist intellectuals, along with elements within the trade union that lean towards communism.  But don't think of communism in the Eastern European way, think of the naiveté of ones who believed in the ideals of communism, in the 1920's.

Think of social reform and the moving towards a National Health System, which is not communistic, to want a better standard of living.  In National Provincial you feel all the tug backwards and forwards, between those who want change, those who don't.  It is a personal story of many individual characters, too many for me even to go into.

The story almost ends where it begins, but you don't mind that because the wealth and detail of the characters, their interaction and a look though a window on time in a 1920's Northern English town.

It is a very good read.  I will have to see what else I can read written by Lettice Cooper.

Christine

John Le Carre The Biography by Adam Sisman

Hi Dear Folk,

John Le Carre The Biography by Adam Sisman.

This book is 600 pages long.  I'm sure most people are familiar with John Le Carre the writer.  His real name is David Cornwell.  Probably his most well known books are The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, The Perfect Spy and the Constant Gardener.

Back in 1963 he became known worldwide with the publication of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold.  This was made into a movie staring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom.  Most of his earlier novels were based on spies MI5 and MI6 and the Cold War of Iron Curtain years.  His more recent novels have touched on a number of issues such as Pharmaceutical Companies in the Constant Gardener, set in Kenya and The Tailor of Panama, a country that only came into existence because of the USA and the Panama Canal.

Cornwell had a sad "hug-less" childhood, in the care of a "totally" hopeless father who was a charming womanizer and a charismatic con man.  They would rise and fall from living in mansions and driving round in a Rolls Royce to his father being in prison.  A common expression of his father was "I'll see you right son."  Much of his childhood and father was put into The Perfect Spy.

To say the least it was a very unconventional childhood.  He went to some of the better public schools, but his father always owed money for his tuition and usually the school would land up paying some of his fees.  He excelled in languages and totally immersed himself in German literature, language and the culture.  An excellent advantage for a cold war spy.  He was recruited by MI5 and MI6 during a year that he spent studying in Switzerland as a teenager and later at Oxford where he spied on a number of his fellow students who were thought to have communist leanings.  An appointment to a government job they had applied to might never come through and they would never know why.

MI5 was not a very impressive organisation.  'For a while you wondered whether the fools were really pretending to be fools, as some kind of deception,' David wrote later; 'but alas, the reality was the mediocrity. Ex-colonial policemen mingling with failed academics, failed lawyers, failed missionaries and failed debutantes gave our canteen the amorphous quality of an Old School outing on the Orient Express.  Everyone seemed to smell of failure.  Many of the older men seemed to be living on credit they had accumulated from their wartime records,  David noted wryly that 'anyone who was old enough to have fought Hitler was deemed a hero.'  Stella Rimington, who would eventually rise to become MI5 first female Director-General, has related how, even at the end of the 1960's 'the ethos had not changed very much from the days when a small group of military officers, all male of course and all close colleagues working in great secrecy pitted their wits against the enemy.'

It was very much an old boys society, many having known each other from their public school days. The country club view not open to Jews and Blacks. Interesting that Stella Rimington was the first to raise doubts about Kim Philby.

Looking back at his career with MI5 more than thirty years afterwards David would write that 'it was witch-hunt time,'

After a while David transferred to F4, the section responsible for agent-running.  The 'agent' is confusing, because it has different meanings in British and American parlance.  In America, an 'agent' is used to mean an intelligence officer, as in 'FBI agent'; but in Britain, it means an individual who is paid or persuaded by an intelligence officer to provide information about the Communist Party, or any other organisation deemed to be subversive.

David hit back at 'the whole oppressive weight of political correctness, a form of modern McCarthyism in reverse',  He insisted on his right, as a non-Jew but as a convinced supporter of the nation state of Israel, to condemn Israeli actions without being branded an anti-Semite.  

I like the terminology "modern McCarthyism in reverse."

In 2005 David had suggested that Britain might be sliding towards fascism.  'Mussolini's definition of fascism was that when you can't distinguish corporate powers from governmental power, you are on the way to a fascist state.  If you throw in God power and media power, that's where we are now,' he told an interviewer from the Guardian.  When asked if he was saying that Britain had become a fascist state, he replied, 'Does is strike you as democratic?'

He has been with many publishing houses over the years, but decided in later life to publish his old classics with Penguin Classics, to keep them out there.  All his manuscripts and work have been donated to the Bodleian in Oxford.

His books are always current based on things happening in the world, he is a prolific writer and has had many #1 best sellers.  He takes time to travel to political hot spots, seeking out people in the know all this is fodder for his books.

Penguin marked the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of The Spy who Came in from the Cold in August 2013, with a special edition, featuring a retro cover design, archival images and a new afterword from David.

Yes, we must both keep writing, keep creating, it's the only weapon against death.  When I'm writing properly I still feel 23.  When I'm not, I can hardly sleep for despair;  such an awful life in so many ways, and looks so terribly impressive from the outside.  But the inside has been such a ferment of buried anger and lovelessness from childhood that is was sometimes almost uncontainable.

If a few words could sum up his life. maybe the above quote could.

Asked how it felt to be eighty, David replied that is seemed premature:

It was always in the contract, I just didn't know they would deliver so soon.  But it's okay, I feel ready to die.  I've had an incredibly good life, an exciting one.  I've got 13 grandchildren and fantastic wives for my sons.  I was the bridge they had to cross to get from my father to life ... I find it very difficult to read my own stuff, but I look at it with satisfaction.  So if it were over very soon, I would not feel anything except gratitude.  To have had my life and be ungrateful for it would be a sin.

A most interesting biography and well written, with access to David Cornwell's, friends, colleagues, unpublished photos from the family archives as well as lovers and enemies.

Christine

The Call by Edith Ayrton Zangwill

Hi Dear Folk,

I just finished reading The Call, by Edith Ayrton Zangwill, first published in 1924.  One could say it was almost a biography of her step mother Hertha Ayrton.  Set in the Edwardian period, just before WWI and during the War.  Ursula Winfield the heroine of our story lives an upper class life in Kensington, living with her step father Colonel Hibert and mother  She has her own laboratory in the attic where she carries out experiments and writes her papers. She also becomes involved in the women's suffrage movement, for women to get the vote in the UK.

Ursula has studied a little under Professor Smee and he opens up an opportunity for her to be the first women to read a paper at an all male scientific institution.  Professor Vernon Smee lives a middle class life in a suburb of London with his wife Charlotte. He is in his forties and is smitten with Ursula and they have science in common.  Ursula is totally unaware of this, and just enjoys his company as a friend.

This period of time before the first world war was when women were asserting their rights. The right to equal opportunity of a job in a men's world, and the right to vote.  Her mother would just like to see her marry well.  Her mother married Andrew Winfield, and was told he was a little different which he turned out to be, going out to Australia and just making his fortune as he died, this certainly changed her circumstances in life and she marries Colonel Hibert, because a women needs to be married and a girl needs a father.  This family works well together, because she understands both her husband and her daughter, even if she would like her daughter to socialize more, instead of shutting herself away in the attic.

At the Henley Regatta Ursula's mother introduces her to Tony Balestier.

Yes, he was handsome, there was no doubt about it, although, perhaps, he hardly justified her mother's description of him as an Adonis.  Still, his fair, crisp hair, his blue eyes, his well-cut features were pleasant to look upon, while his figure was altogether admirable.  She notices that Professor Smee, who was standing near by, had suddenly grown short.  Why Mr. Balestier must be quite six foot two or three, although his excellent proportions kept one from realizing it.

Ursula's family go away for the summer up to their hunting lodge in Scotland, Ursula has stayed at home on her own to finish her experiments.  It had been her habit to take an early morning walk by the Serpentine and feed the ducks, where she runs into Tony Balestier.

Mr. Balestier was standing in front of her.  He was wearing grey flannels and a straw hat - evidently he considered London in August could be put on a country footing - and he looked very cool and big and altogether pleasant to the eye. And Ursula did feel pleased, although she was rather surprised at herself for doing so.  

Ursula's companion glanced at her with interest.  How mistaken he had been about Miss Winfield!  He had thought her to coldly clever for any human weakness, and here he found her feeding ducks and sympathizing with ragamuffins.

This relationship progresses to a quiet engagement understanding between them, much to her parents joy.  Tony must go off to a secretarial posting in India.  During his time away, Ursula becomes more involved in the suffrage movement.  Many of their letters cross in the mail or are late so she does not truly understand Tony's thinking on the suffrage movement and he hers.

She attends a meeting at the Albert Hall.

More interesting than the vehicles were the actual people all around her.  the great majority were naturally women- women of curiously diversified strata.  There was a large element in so-called artistic attire, rather untidy, rather attractive - at least Ursula found them so, although she could not help remembering the well-known quip, "Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in they name."  There was another numerous and distinct contingent, probably ladies from Suburbia, the mamma's stout and unintellectual looking, the daughters slight and equally unintellectual looking, but all alike wearing the then fashionable large hat and long coat, the latter usually of a deplorable cut..... Another distinct class was present with which Ursula was less familiar, poorer women with sensible worn faces and toil-coarsened hands.  She guessed them rightly to be the wives of working men, probably mothers of large families.  There were also a sprinkling of working girls, more noisy and even smarter than the young ladies from Suburbia-perhaps hailing from East end factories.  

The Albert Hall was full except there were some empty seats held by 'Life Holders' and they would not release their seats for the suffrage movement, although they would for many other gathering at the hall.

It's interesting that I found this book The Call and it is under Women's Suffrage Literature, and you can learn a lot of history of what women did and how they went about getting the vote.  From lecture tours, passive resistance, imprisonment and hunger strikes.  Also just the down to earth life of traveling around the country giving lectures on the cause and staying at different peoples homes.  On one of these occasions Ursula is housed with Mrs. Todd and her daughters.  Mrs. Todd turns out to be the sister of Charlotte Smee.

"But it ain't the friendship being bad for 'Im that I'm thinking about!"  Her voice shook.  "It's my sister, my little Charlotte - for she'll allies be that to me.  When she was 'ere she spent 'alf 'er time crying - crying because o' you.  You've taken away all the 'happiness of 'er life - an' that weren't over much." .....

Menfolk is born silly, but that's why we women 'as got to stand up for each other.  Ain't that what suffrage mostly means?"

"Yes, that is what suffrage mostly means," Ursula agreed slowly.

All of this is a total revelation to Ursula, who had no understanding of the situation she had put herself in and that she was the cause of such unhappiness.

1914 comes and WWI Tony is enlisted and all the worry that comes with that.  For several years he has a behind the lines posting, which he finds out has been wangled for him, by a relative. When he finds out he immediately revolts against this and gets himself transferred to the front.

Ursula has been working on a device to extinguish liquid fire, a terrible weapon of war used in the trenches.  She thinks it will be greeted with welcome arms when she presents her invention, only to find out that it is not.  This similarly happened to Hertha Ayrton, who invented a design to sweep poison gases from the trenches which was originally dismissed by the War Office.

True Moloch had gripped them nearly all into his service either at home or abroad.

Moloch is a pagan god mentioned in the Bible who the Israelites offered up their children to in the fire.

I will not go any further or spoil the ending.  This book is rich in detail and feelings of the period.

Christy

A Town Like Alice

Hi Dear Folk,

The thunder is rolling around, It rained fiercely but is now gently raining, and I'm happy because I do not need to go out and water the garden, and it is deliciously cooler again.

I have been immersing myself in A Town Like Alice, I found the full 1980 series on YouTube, it is one of my most favorite stories.  So after watching that I had to go and read the book.  It seems appropriate to read it in the heat of summer, because so much of the story is based in warmer climates, Malaya and the Gulf Coast, Queensland.

The series has a lot of verbiage right out of the book and follows it quite closely with a few minor changes.  The book fills you in on more mundane story line, but still very interesting.  In the series Joe Harmon was played by Bryan Brown, he is tall and dark haired, where as in the book Joe Harmon is described as five foot ten and stocky, with blond hair, clear skin and very blue eyes, which would be a fair description of my father when young.  So all through reading the book it was easy to visualize my father,  who was a very down to earth man and good to have around in a bad situation.  Jean Paget was played by Helen Morse and I think she fits the description.

Jean and Joe meet in Malaya during WWII when it was under Japanese rule.  Joe is an Australian prisoner of war driving the trucks transporting metal rails used to build the infamous railway lines they built during their occupation, with one prisoner of war dying for every sleeper laid.  Jean is with a group of English women and children being walked all over Malaya, because the Japanese do not know what to do with them.  Eating very little and getting no medical attention.  Joe thinks that Jean is married as she always has a baby with her and Jean thinks that he was executed by the Japanese for stealing the commandants black chickens, to give them a square meal.  Six years later 1948, both find out that the later is incorrect, so they both go looking for each other, and that's the very basics of the story.

Joe is a ringer in the Gulf Coast managing a thousand square miles cattle station, but it is very remote, not the place for a women, straight from England.  Willstown the nearest town has nothing to it, just the usual hotel and bar, few businesses of necessity.  The description in the book, of the house that he lives in on Midhurst homestead, is actually so much nicer than was depicted in the series, more like the house depicted in Road from Coorain if you ever watched that, which I cannot find on YouTube and wish I could.

The homestead was a fairly large building that stood high off the ground on posts, so that you climbed eight feet up a flight of steps to reach the veranda and the one floor of the house.

Since the book was written in 1950 by Neville Shute, some expressions I do not think would be politically correct now, or may not even be used anymore, obviously such as Jap and Abo, but other terms are "Too right," "Crook place," and one which Joe says frequently is "Oh my word." And other such Australian terms.

Last week I visited my friend Candyce, her MIL was from Australia, and we went through her photo album, which came into their possession after her FIL died.  He was in the American Army Air force as it was called in WWII, stationed in Australia and that is where they met.  So it has been a WWII Australian era immersion over the past couple of weeks.

Today I got a blood test, as I was bit by a tick and unfortunately in this day and age you can catch all sorts of nasty things from tick bites.  I asked for two tests one to show if I have recently been exposed to Lyme disease and the other to show if I've ever been in contact with it.  There is a lot of controversial thought as to how one should treat past exposure.  Current exposure is treated with a one month course of antibiotics, but past exposure is not treated.

A pot of tea on the patio with my book.

We haven't been away on vacation this year, so last Saturday treated ourselves to a South American meal.  The restaurant here Tierra Columbiana was recommended by a friend.  It is in an area of Philly that one would not want to be in after dark.  But the restaurant is very nice.

Rob had a Columbian meal.  Rob had a sunny up fried egg on his meal, which rather reminded me of the outback Australian breakfast of eggs and steak.

Bob had Cuban.

I had Dominican Republic.

I wore my Indian jewelry, which seemed appropriate with such a meal, if jewelry actually goes with a meal.

We treated The Boy to dinner and he treated us to Mango Marguerites, which he said were the best he had tasted.  Portions are good so we all had left overs to take home.  Yummy!

Christy

Rise Of A Star by Edith Ayrton-Zangwill

Hi Dear Folk,

I have not written a book review for such a long while, mostly time is against me,  I've read some good books and would have loved to have shared my thoughts.

Edith Ayrton-Zangwill, here is a good bio of her life.  Married to Israel Zangwill  She was a member of the London National Society for Women's Suffrage and later joined the more militant group Women Social and Political Union.  Edith was very influenced by the women in her life, her mother and her step mother, leading women in their field of work and views on society, working for the vote for women.

In Rise Of A Star, the characters are Francis West, her stage name nee Lennox, an actress who has after twenty years on the boards of acting, traveling the circuits, is just about to make it to bigger venues.  Her daughter Imogen, who Mrs. Lennox has spent every penny on sending her to the best schools out East, John Vandeleur a multi millionaire copper baron, Hobson her manager, Joan North nee Joan Vandeleur, daughter and rising star in the field of acting. Adam Fletcher a playwright and socialist union leader.

Francis West has just reached the plato of minor stardom in her part as an old Irish woman, when Mr. Vandeleur begs an audience of her, she has no idea what this is about, but has heard of him.  John Vandeleur in this forties is smitten with eighteen year old Imogen, who is very lovely.  The one obstacle as Mr. Vandeleur sees it is Frances West actress, because everyone knows how he views the theatre life.

"Really Mrs. Lennox, I cannot understand you."  Mr. Vandeleur made a great effort to control himself. "Surely your work cannot be so attractive," he suggested; "traveling around the country in cheap, little Vaudeville companies, dressed up as a vulgar, old Irish woman!"

For the love of her dear daughter Imogen, Mrs. Lennox gives up the theatre, Imogen marries Mr. Vandeleur and Francis is ensconced in a nice apartment in NYC not far from their palatial residence on 5th Avenue.

In this little arrangement of marriage and domesticity, nobody turns out to be happy.  The main cause of this is Imogen, Imogen is totally selfish and almost incapable of loving anyone except for herself.  She very much likes her position and along comes a baby, named Joan.

Joan has a series of nannies but does not thrive as a baby in fact there is fear of death.  She has all that money can buy but no affection, Mrs. Lennox her grandma is in dispare and appeals to John to let her look after the baby for a while, he despairingly lets her do so.  Joan begins to thrive and here is built up a loving lasting relationship between the two.

Mrs. Lennox was forbidden to refer to her acting career, so Joan never knew anything about it, but at school she discovers she loves acting, has a passion for acting and I'm sure you can see where this is going to go.  At eighteen, by this time she knows her grandmother once had been an actress, they contact Mr. Hobson and he gets her a part with a touring company as an understudy in the play Viva another successful play touring at the same time is Under Dog, written by Adam Fletcher.

Many adventures happen during their impoverished years on the circuit, Joan did not take her jewelry but was advised by her grandmother that she should at least take her clothes, including a fur coat each of which both had to be porned.

During all this time Francis has thought about her daughter, but Imogen has not thought about them, she has carried on in different little flirtations with poets and politicians, this happens one too many times and Mr. Vandeleur comes home to find Imogen In flagrante delicto with Senator Baxtor.  Senator Baxter is not happy with the way Vandeleur spoke to him in front of the servants, he swears to get even with him.  This is the last straw for the Vandeleur marriage, and Imogen may just love this one.  Off she goes to Kentucky for a period to be granted on their divorce.

The Senator laughed as he read the letter over his breakfast table in his Washington apartment.  "She's a devilish lovely women," he murmured, "but what a lot of words she takes to say that she wants a good hug!

Grandma becomes very ill with pneumonia and has to go into a nursing home Joan has to find a way to pay for this.  Eventually things get so bad that she is working as a waitress, but there is a certain young man who keeps coming to sit at her tables, Adam Fletcher.  He eventually reveals that he wrote Under Dog and has a new play and would she play the lead part in it.

The play is called The Combine, set in the garment industry.  The lead part is about a young girl union activist, her grandmother can play the part of the older women who does not want to join, how is she to feed her children?  The play has only partial success, as the ending is not what appeals to the audience, Joan does not reach the fame and stardom that she thought she would, although playing the part very well.  She leaves the company to work for a minor Shakespearean repertory company in New England and grandma continues on the circuit, her part is well loved.  Mr. Hobson is not too happy with Joan's decision for her "art" as she says, but is never one to hold a grudge.

Mr. Fletcher writes another play with a happier ending, on the advise of Mr. Hobson.

"I am afraid it would hardly do, Mr. Hobson."  Adam Fletcher smiled. "You will have to content yourself with my play ending well."

"I guessed you'd say so.  Anyway, it will make them like your play all the better- be more of a contrast."

"It will be a contrast all right!"  This time Fletcher laughed out loud.  "Then that is settled?"

"Yes, but you've got to answer for Miss North;  I ain't going to be turned down a second time.  I suppose if we write her at Miss West's, that will find?  By the way, where's your contract to be mailed?"

"To Wood Haven, Maine."

"Why ain't that where Miss West - ?"  A smile broke over Mr. Hobson's face.  He felt that he had put two and two together, or rather one and one.  "Well, you let me have that play real soon.  I tell you there's rich human blood in it.  that's what the public wants, my boy - blood.  They're sick to death of the Ibsen-Shaw-Maeterlinck gang."

This book was published in 1918 and I think the above reference to the Ibsen-Shaw-Maeterlinck gang is quite interesting, and made me laugh.

The authors ideologies come through in this book, especially with the character of Adam Fletcher, not only a playwright but an ardent Union leader, willing to travel the country for working men.

Sometimes I have found books of the late eighteen hundreds long winded, even though good reads, but the date of the publication takes this book out of that time into a more paired down way of telling a story and it works.

There are still more turns and twists before the end, but it is an excellent read.  I hope you are able to find this book in the archives of one of your libraries.

I am now onto read The Call, also by Edith Zangwill, to be published by Persephone Books next Autumn 2018

I enjoyed sharing this book with you.

Christy

Sleeting Ice and Reading - Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Hi Dear Folk,

Our Nor-Easter did not turn out to be twelve to sixteen inches of snow, but rather a tiny amount of snow which has now turned into sleeting ice, with no let up in sight, soo glad I do not have to go into work today.  Leisurely morning, tea, coffee and reading.  I've just finished reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, who wrote Sea Biscuit, which was made into a movie.  I've been reading this as a download from my local library, on my fire.

Unbroken is the biography of Louis Zamperini, who grew up in a close loving Italian family in Torrance, California.  A delinquent youth who was encouraged by his brother Pete to become a runner in High School and goes on to be an Olympic Medal winner in the very famous Olympic Games held in Hitler's Germany.  WWII comes and he is sent to the Pacific arena, to fly in B24 Bombers.  (I almost wrote B26, but that was what my FIL flew in Europe, he was a flight engineer.)  Sent out in a bucket of a plane that everyone knew was temperamental, a lemon, which any number of mechanics could not put right.  On their search and rescue flight they go down, and only three survivors make it out onto two tiny life rafts.

Eventually after one of the longest survival records with no food and water, encircled by sharks who try and launch themselves up onto the rafts to get at them, beating them off, drifting with the currents into Japanese occupied islands, they eventually land and are immediately picked up by Japanese, and unexpectedly treated very well, that is the last time and are told that they will probably be executed.  For over two years he endures the horrors of Japanese POW camps, which no man can understand, mans inhumanity to man.

My great uncle George was a POW in Burma, and if you remember after the war we were flooded with Japanese things, my aunt Eddie dared not bring a thing in the house that said Made in Japan.

Lou is famous even in Japan and one particular sergeant, who came from a well to do family, and thought he should have been an officer, takes out all his bitterness on the POWs and especially Lou, they nick name him The Bird, his last name was Watanabe.  He fled after the war, and hid out until America gave out an amnesty's to all Japanese war criminals in the fifties.  He went on to be an insurance agent and a millionaire, even buying a summer vacation residence on the Gold Coast of Australia, and considering how the Australians suffered terribly under the Japanese, it's totally ironic that he bought a summer holiday home there.  When interviewed many years later Watanabe showed no signs of thinking he had done anything wrong, just feeling he had been caught up in the war hysteria and had suffered terribly, while in hiding, separated from his family.  And as the Nuremberg trials brought out to say you are just following orders is no defense at all.

Lou does live to return to the USA and family but is never able to reach his dream of being the first man to break the four minute mile, because of the injuries received and he was capable of that. He suffered from what we now call PTSD.

His life story is very interesting and so well written, the research is meticulous.  A good read.

Now I look out of the window and it is snowing.  Rob made it safely to Toronto and said that was neat to see Niagara Falls encased in ice.

I went out last night to buy yarn, I have an idea of a red crochet skirt in block stitch, let's see if that works out.  I also found one odd ball of yarn to match my shawl, I have plans for a matching hat in the same stitch a band along with felted crown.

My other reads are:

Einstein's Greatest Mistake - David Bodanis - Read - VG
Lila - Marilynne Robinson - Read - G

Out of print women writers:

Earth and High Heaven - Gwethalyn Graham - Read - G
Earth Horizon - Mary Austin - Read - VG
Starry Adventure - Mary Austin - Not read
The Ford - Mary Austin - Not read

Picked by Mr. B. for me before the storm hit, I get to see spring.

I hope to get to the Flower Show tomorrow, all being up and running.

My greenhouse on the dining room table, four pots of calla lilies and one orchid.

Three blooms.

I found a LUSH store in Philadelphia, I was introduced to this cosmetics store by my nephew's wife, one of her favorite stores in Cambridge, UK.  I didn't even know they were in N. American until I saw a girl standing on the train station platform with a Lush bag, and I asked her, I hadn't even thought of looking.  The store is just a couple of blocks from where I work.  I must say I am addicted to Sikkim Girls perfume, a pungent, heady perfume.  Some of the ingredients are jasmine, frangipani and tuberose.  It is a bit expensive so bought the small tin, a rub in perfume, great for travel.  Lush cosmetics are vegan and not tested on animals.

Take care have a wonderful day.

Christy