A Right Royal Knit-Wit (Saturday Snapshot)

And now for something completely different for this week's Saturday Snapshot... a Not The Jubilee Knitted Queen! I spotted the pattern in Fiona Goble's Knit Your Own Royal Wedding (published last year by Ivy Press) and decided she would be perfect as Alan Bennett's book-loving monarch in The Uncommon Reader, but I altered her a bit.

I changed her face and hair, because when I followed the instructions she looked like an Oompa Loompa, from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the film starring Gene Wilder, that is, not Dahl's book, or the Tim Burton movie). And I made her a glittery, golden crown, studded with red jewels, because otherwise how would you know she is the Queen? In addition she has a book, and is wearing spectacles, so she can read it, and pink, fluffy slippers instead of shoes. because, she says, one has to take care of one's feet when one spends so much time standing and walking! Her cardigan is a little old and shabby and has probably been worn on too many visits - read the book and you'll see that her maid threatens to outlaw just such a cardigan.

Here, I'm afraid, my imagination took over, for this is not her usual chair. Ma'am as she is known around the Palace (to rhyme with jam or ham rather than charm or farm) prefers a nice upright seat, with a firm back, and likes to keep her feet on the ground. But her favourite chair was sent away for conservation and came back with a shiny, slippery satin seat, to match the gilt party chairs in her office. Her private secretary explained, rather sternly, that the chair had been restored, at great expense, to its original state, and is now an object of desire, much admired by those who know about these things. So the Queen gave a reception for the restorers and conservators, to thank them for their work at her various homes, and to show her gratitude she insisted that the chief conservator must sit on her own special chair, where he spent an uncomfortable couple of hours sliding around on its hard, slippery surface. The Queen smiled. If one thinks about it, she thought to herself, though it may be the kind of expression not suited to polite society, there is more than one way of skinning a rat.

Early the next morning the chair had disappeared, and in its place was this very battered and squashy 'recliner' belonging to the chief conservator, who likes to relax in comfort, if not style. Her Majesty, who is not given to lolling about, is disconcerted each time the back drops down but, as she says, one cannot be rude, especially when the chief conservator is 'unrestoring' her own chair. He did offer to put new covers on the gilt party chairs as well. However, the Queen said than you very much, but no thanks, And she smiled again, because one finds that those particular chairs discourage unwanted visitors from remaining too long.

I had such fun knitting the Queen (not not to say making a story to go with her) I'm now producing corgis who will chase and chew books. And I've some orange wool in the scrap bag, so I could knit ginger-haired Norman, the kitchen assistant who advises the Queen about books and reading, and is promoted to being a page! Reading this through, I fear you will all think that a) I don't have to do with my time, and b) I must be totally mad (and you'd probably be quite right). But should anyone want to try their hand at a knitted Royal, it's not that difficult – I'm only a novice knitter, but I managed quite well, and the pattern can be adapted fairly easily. And if you've never read Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Queen, it's very funny, and you can see my review here.

For more Saturday Snapshots see  Alice's blog http://athomewithbooks.net/

The Company She Keeps

I love Mary McCarthy's 'The Group', and her autobiography, 'Memoirs of a Catholic Girlhood,' but I could not get along at all with The Company She Keeps. I got this from the library, and renewed it several times, as I kept picking it up, and trying to read it, and putting it down, but I didn't like the style of writing, the story, or the central character, so I gave up, and it will remain remain unfinished. I always feel slightly guilty about not completing a book – I think it must be a hangover from my schooldays, when I assumed everything must be read from beginning to end, whether one enjoyed it or not.

This was McCarthy's first fictional work, based on her own life apparently, and published in 1942 as a novel in six parts. Each of the six sections (you really can't call them chapters) had previously appeared as stand-alone-stories in various publications, including Harper's Bazaar which explains why the ones I read had the feel of a short story. There's no real plot: instead each episode offers a different view of Margaret Sargent, giving brief glimpses of her life and personality. These sketches slot together to form a multi-faceted figure, but she remains elusive, and the various parts never seem add up to a whole woman – though I admit that is is an unfair comment since I didn't read the whole book.

It's an unusual format for a novel, and the form and content must have seemed shocking when it was first published. For Margaret, or Meg as she is sometimes known, is on a quest for love, moving from man to man as each encounter and relationship fails to live up to her expectations. 

In the first tale, Cruel and Barbarous Treatment she is never named, a reflection of the need for secrecy surrounding her affair with the Young Man, and her own uncertainty about who she is. Eventually, however, she's driven to tell her husband, destroying both her marriage, and the relationship with her lover: her passion, fuelled by the exciting urgency and anticipation of an illicit liaison,does not survive.  “She would never have left one man unless she had had another to take his place,” McCarthy writes. “But the Young Man, she now saw, was merely a sort of mirage which she had allowed herself to mistake for an oasis.” Fearing a frightening future where she is old and alone, she feels driven to find another man.

The second story, Rogue's Gallery, was the one I liked the best, moving from the third person to a personalised account, as Margaret tells us about her time working as a stenographer for Mr Sheer, a dealer in objects of art at the Savile Galleries. We soon learn that : “Like Mr Sheer himself, that plural was imaginative, winged with ambition, but untrustworthy.” Margaret's boss is is shifty, shady, and thoroughly dishonest, but she seems genuinely fond of him, in a purely platonic way. She never inquires too deeply into his business methods or his personal life, but she helps stave off creditors, and even buys him meals when he has no money. She only leaves when her typewriter is repossessed (after all, you can't type without a machine), and she sees him from time to time afterwards. Here she is shown in a warmer light, as kind and caring, and not selfish and frivolous as she appears elsewhere .

American author Mary McCarthy

After that it was back to Margaret's amorous adventures (which are never explicitly described – it's much more about her emotional response) and by the end of the third 'chapter' it all began to seem a little sordid, and she was tedious in the extreme, so I skipped through to the final piece, Holy Father, I Confess (and I didn't read all of that). It's here we discover that she was orphaned as a young child, and abused by a relative which, presumably, is supposed to explain her behaviour, and her inability to form lasting relationships. She's seeking some kind of perfect lover because, I think, life only becomes real for her when she believes someone loves her, and she imagines she loves them back, but it's all like a game, and I really couldn't feel any sympathy for her. I found it hard to see her as a victim - on the whole she seems fairly predatory, and makes her own decisions about the actions she takes. 

Do You Clean Vegetables With Soap?

Today's novel was described as 'a real oddity' and 'a book unlike any other' when it was discussed on the Radio 4's 'A Good Read'. House-Bound, by Winifred Peck, (published by Persephone), is the second in my loosely-themed 'housework' quartet. The time is 1941, the place is Edinburgh, and middle-class, middle-aged Rose Fairlaw, unable to get servants, decides she will do the cooking and cleaning herself.

My initial reaction was that Rose needed a copy of 'How To Run Your Home Without Help', by Kay Smallshaw (reviewed here), but this wonderful and invaluable domestic guide was was not available until 1949, while Peck's book was published in 1942. Anyway, it was selected for the radio programme by author Sara Maitland, who described it as 'a bit of oddity' (albeit a 'rather good' one) and 'one of the weirder novels I've ever read'. Fellow guest Michael Morpurgo and the show's host Harriet Gilbert both agreed. You can listen to their discussion here, and can also read a transcript of their conversation in the latest edition of the Persephone magazine Biannually.

Personally, I'm not sure I agree with everything they say, because the book is actually not that odd (certainly not compared to Rachel Ferguson's 'The Brontes Went to Woolworths', which remains the strangest story I have read). Granted, the relationships are a little peculiar, but relationships in novels are rarely straight forward, creating tensions vital to the plot, developing characters, and demanding an emotional response from readers. I think what they found so weird was the lifestyle, social setting, and moral code of the day. Time and place can be difficult to grasp when they are so different to your own life – I'll bet Jane Austen's concerns about social position and marriage must appear pretty incomprehensible to many people these days, but no-one describes her books as weird or a bit of an oddity.

The beautiful endpapers in this Persephone edition are from
a 1941 watercolour by Eric Ravilious for a textile commissioned
by the Cotton Board to persuade manufacturers to produce
 economical fabrics during WW2

Oh dear, this is turning into a rant about other people's views on 'House-Bound', rather than a piece about my own opinions. So here goes. I'll start by saying that Rose is not one of those self-deprecating women who cope with domestic disasters, house, husband, servants, children and tradesmen with good-humoured aplomb. She has a sense of duty, whether you're talking about relationships or housework, and she regards managing without servants as her contribution to the War Effort, freeing up younger, fitter, more able women for more valuable war work.

The reaction of her family and friends to her decision is hilarious, even if they do show the values of the strong, snobbish class system in force at the time. And her early efforts at housekeeping are very funny indeed. When it comes to cooking and cleaning she doesn't have a clue. She's never boiled a kettle, let alone an egg, has never wielded a duster – and has certainly never been expected to answer the door and deal with common people like postmen and milkmen.

It's a real shock to her system. “On the first morning of her new vocation Rose decided that she had never in her life seen anything as repulsive as a house in the early morning.” I know the feeling. I find if there's anything worse than dealing with household debris and dirty dishes, it's dealing with household debris and dirty dishes that have been left to fester overnight. The answer is to de-clutter and wash-up before going to bed but, sadly, this is something I rarely do.

Winifred Peck

And anyone who has ever lost the battle with a less than perfect vacuum cleaner will appreciate Rose's struggles: “Sweeping was easy she told herself as she rumbled the carpet-sweeper up and down the beige self-coloured carpet of the dining room [...] the wretched thing seemed to drop out a loathsome gobbet of grey fluff more often than it picked up a crumb.”

She doesn't know how to clean vegetables (does one use soap, she wonders), and her first breakfast is a disaster - the coffee boils over the bacon and toast and makes the stove brown, so Rose's husband Stuart eats sardines! Luckily for her, she is rescued by Mrs Childe, who knows everything there is to know about cookery and housework (and some!), and puts in three hours a day, working, and teaching Rose how to do things herself. And there is additional advice from Major Hosmer, a charming young American army psychologist who, coincidentally, turns out to be treating Rose's troubled daughter Flora.

However, despite the laugh-out-loud funny passages, this book is not a comedy. There is tragedy here, and serious social commentary. Rose has little time to reflect on politics or religion (beyond huried prayers begging God to protect those she loves) but she knows the world is changing. She feels house-bound, tied to her pots and pans, and sees the connection between this and the wider world. The word house-bound, she says: “... belonged not only to herself, not only to Martha in Bethany, but also, surely, to all the unhappy individuals and races all over the world. Peoples, countries, empires, shut themselves up in their own domains, refusing to consider the views on which others gazed from their windows...”

I haven't looked at the other characters or the relationships in this novel, but I will mention the back story. Rose marries and has a daughter, but her husband is killed in the First World War, while Flora is just a baby. Rose's best friend, her cousin Lilias, moves in with her baby son Mickie, while her husband is fighting. The children are brought up together, but Lilias dies from pneumonia, so Rose cares for Mickie, becoming obsessively fond of him. When Lilias' husband – Stuart Fairlaw – returns, he marries Rose, because they are both lonely and can comfort each other and make home for the children. 

Since I bought the book second-hand, there was
no bookmark,  so I printed off this picture of
Woman Reading, painted by Adrian Paul Allinson
in 1940, because it kind of how I imagine Rose
(although she is  dark, not fair) and
her home, and she loves reading

They have a son, Tom, but the marriage is passionless. The one overwhelming love of Rose's life seems to be Mickie, and when he falls ill with polio she shuts herself away to nurse him. When she emerges, two years later, he is cured, but her relationship with Flora is irretrievably damaged, and her chances of growing closer to Stuart are doomed.

It's not until the end of the novel that Rose looks back and remembers her first husband, and the hopes they had for Flora, and is able to reach a kind of acceptance of what life has to offer, and to move on. But she is still bound by duty and doing the right thing. She will continue to do what she must, remaining slightly aloof from everyone and everything. I get the feeling that underneath is a different kind of woman who is too scared to struggle free – someone who would like to flirt, and dance, and have fun.

House-Bound is one of those novels you could read over and over again, looking at different aspects. One last point (well, two really), Peck was obviously amazingly well-read, because House-Bound is jam-packed with literary references, (many of them unattributed), and there is an interesting Afterword by her niece, the novelist Penelope Fitzgerald. 

Discovering Miss Read

Following the death of Miss Read (the nom de plume of Dora Saint) earlier this year, I realised I had never read any of her work so, deciding to remedy the situation, I headed for the library where I found Changes at Fairacre and The Year at Thrush Green.  And what did I think? Well, I wouldn’t rave about them, but they were enjoyable, if a little like wallowing in a bath of warm treacle. However, both are later books (written in 1991 and 1995 respectively), and I do wonder whether I should have started at the beginning, which might have provided a better introduction to the characters and settings of both series. I suspect that if you read several, you’d get to know the people and places, and could become quite fond of them, but I think they are what I would call ‘comfort’ reading.

Miss Read – or perhaps I should call her Dora Saint – must have drawn on her own experiences when she wrote her stories of village life. Born in London, she was brought up in the country, worked as a teacher, and after marriage lived first in rural Oxfordshire, then in Berkshire. She started writing after the Second World War, when her daughter was young, producing pieces for various magazines, including Punch, and working on scripts for the BBC’s education service.

Her first novel was published in the mid-1950s, and she continued writing for more than 40 years, but the world she portrays seems to have changed little in that time. And that, perhaps, is the secret of her appeal, for she shows us an old-fashioned, slower world, with old-fashioned values, like decency and honesty. 

Dora Saint, who wrote her popular novels under the pen name Miss Read

Fairacre and Thrush Green both feature tightly-knit, feudal village communities, where everyone knows their place, and it would be easy to dismiss the characters as caricatures (and, quite apart from any literary criticism, my socialist principles about class and society came screaming to the surface).  Everyone knows everyone else’s business, but they provide help and support when things go wrong, which makes for a very cosy and comforting view of life.

There’s little, if any mention, of world events or politics, and you would be pushed to tell which decade of the 20th century was the setting for either of these novels (but the same could be said for a great many other novels which I greatly admire, so that’s an unfair criticism). Saint’s characters are concerned with small, mundane things, which I think shows that she had a far greater understanding of human nature than she is sometimes given credit for. When I was reporting people often ignored major issues, and were much more interested in things like missing cats and school sports days.

And Saint’s recognition that people’s view of events is governed by the way they are affected results in some wonderful throw-away lines. In The Year at Thrush Green, while a microphone is being adjusted, an elderly woman says: “A friend of my dad’s was electrocuted with one of them. The power was off for three hours. Couldn’t boil the kettle.” I just love that – it’s exactly how people react to a tragedy like that, making the lack of hot water more important than the death.

Saint is also good on the relationships between residents, and the way old resentments can smoulder away beneath a veneer of a politeness – the petty rivalries and jealousies revealed at the Flower Show and Fete (in Changes at Fairacre) are quite wonderful, and you know exactly what you are dealing with when you realise the class for quiches is considered to be an innovation!

She has some fascinating accounts of country customs, beautifully observed descriptions of the weather and wildlife, and tales of the past from older residents. However, Saint offers more than rosy nostalgia for times gone by, for death, illness and blighted hopes occur here just as they do in the real world, along with modern problems, which may not loom large, but are present nevertheless. Falling numbers coupled with budget cuts mean Fairacre School is threatened with closure, and both books deal with unemployment, rural poverty and crime.

Overall I would say Saint writes with a great deal of warmth, love and sympathy. She’s never cynical and never satiric or ironic. She can be funny, and sad, and very irritating, and whilst she may not have won me over completely, in the right mood, on the right day, I think I could curl up reasonably happily with one of her novels.

*You can hear 'Miss Read'  interviewed by Roy Plomley in 1977 on the Desert Island discs archive at
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/9c20d7ef#p009mzkz . I was delighted to find her choice of book was the wonderful Diary of a County Parson 1758-1802, by James Woodforde, who is mentioned in Changes at Fairacre - Miss Read is reading Virginia Woolf's essay on the clergyman at the time of the death and funeral of her old friend friend Dolly Clare.

Witches, Woods, and a Big Cat (Saturday Snapshots)

I’ve been at my mother’s for a few days, and I scheduled these Saturday Snapshots to appear early this morning, but forgot to press publish, so they just saved themselves and stayed hidden away!  They  were taken a week or so ago, on a glorious sunny day when the Man of the House and I went for a walk through Hopwas Woods, which has something of a spooky reputation.

Back in 1984 police were called when 16 people were discovered dancing naked in the woods. They denied they were witches, saying they were members of the Order of the Silver Star, an international occult organisation, engaged in a ritual to avert a natural disaster. More recently, in December 2010, the West Midlands Ghost Club unearthed a mysterious copper tablet inscribed with strange markings, and members also found an Egyptian style statuette. Horror writer Guy N Smith, who was brought up in the village, set some novels here, and over the years there have been sightings of a golden-orangey big cat, and of a tall ghostly figure.

 It’s difficult perhaps, to separate fact from fiction, and many people are convinced the woods have an unsettling atmosphere, but we didn’t feel anything odd or sinister: it was just very ‘treeish’, and amazingly quiet, especially when you consider that the busy A51 is so near. We could hear birds singing, leaves rustling, and branches creaking, while the noise of traffic was so muffled it sounded like the distant roar of the sea.

On the day we visited, the bluebells were still in bloom, looking a little past their best, but carpeting the ground beneath the trees with a haze of blue. The sun filtering through the leaves on the trees created a kind of dappled effect of light and shade. We saw grey squirrels, and butterflies (like the Speckled Wood pictured below), as well as ladybirds and all kinds of insects, butterflies and birds, which we were unable to identify because we left the recently acquired binoculars at home, so we have decided we need a ‘walking backpack’ for future expeditions!

 I’m always surprised that there are so many lovely places within such easy reach of home, and Hopwas is only two or three miles away, about halfway between Tamworth, where we live, and Lichfield.  The woodland, also known as Hopwas Hays Woods, is on a hill and seems to be an ancient site: it’s mentioned in the Domesday Book, where it is described as being six furlongs in length and three in breadth. Today the area covers almost 400 acres, and is owned by Tarmac. Fortunately, there is no quarrying, but much of it is fenced off, with wire, gates and forbidding signs, which seems a shame – ever the rebel, I ended up marching along singing Ewan McColl’s ‘The Manchester Rambler’ and thinking about the mass tresspass on Kinder Scout in 1932!

 Anyway, I tried to find out a little more about Hopwas Woods, but have only discovered that during the 18th and 19th centuries it belonged to the wealthy Levett family, and there was a Woodhouse (now demolished) where the woodman/gamekeeper lived.

 Last year local artist Gwyddion Flint got together with other artists and historians to stage an exhibition inspired by Hopwas Woods. He produced a booklet, in which Guy N Smith wrote about his childhood memories of The Woodhouse, and how he went shooting in the woods.

For more Saturday Snapshots see  Alice's blog http://athomewithbooks.net/