Kilmeny of the Orchard

Kilmeny had been, she knew not where,

And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare;

Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew,

Where the rain never fell, and the wind never blew.

That's the only bit I can ever remember from James Hogg's spooky poem 'Kilmeny', but I've always loved its haunting quality. So when I learned that LM Montgomery, author of the wonderful Anne of Green Gables, had written a book titled Kilmeny of the Orchard, I was interested, and thought it would be an ideal choice for the Canadian Book Challenge. This was earmarked for my September contribution, but although I read it last month I'm behind with posts, as I explained earlier in the week, and there will be two Canadian reads during October so I can catch up.

Anyway, I digress. Nan, at Letters From a Hill Farm, really rated this, but I'm not so enthusiastic. Bits of it were delightful, and Montgomery is excellent on descriptions of scenery and wildlife, but overall it really, really irritated me. Our heroine, the beautiful and virtuous Kilmeny is just too perfect, and lacks the appeal of Anne Shirley. I always find Anne very endearing and human, but Kilmeny is neither. The novel also lacks the humour of Anne of Green Gables – not that every novel needs to be funny, but the occasional laugh would have levened the mix in this one.

But what annoyed me most was the notion that that beautiful people are good and clever, and that foreigners are somehow not quite right, and a are 'low' and not to be trusted. I know theories like this were widespread when the novel was published in 1910, but I thought they were distasteful in the extreme, and there are other novelists writing at the same time who didn't express such views.

And I found the hero's obsession with naive, childlike Kilmeny, and his assertion that he will teach her everything she needs to know was more than a little disturbing.

Possibly, at this point I should try and give you a brief synopsis of the book, otherwise my comments will make no sense whatsoever. So, here goes. Eric Marshall has just graduated from college, but has no need to work because he is heir to a fortune and will work in his father's department store. However, he agrees to help a sick friend by temporarily taking over as schoolmaster to a small community on Prince Edward's Island. In the beautiful woods he catches a glimpse of a beautiful young maiden playing beautiful music on her violin. She is Kilmeny, who is an orphan and is very beautiful – oh, sorry, I have already mentioned that, but Eric can only ever love a beautiful woman (shallow bastard). Anyway, she cannot speak, but communicates most ably (and beautifully) by writing lengthy messages incredibly quickly. Brought up by her dour uncle and aunt, who are brother and sister, Kilmeny has never been to school, and never mixes with people.

She's a mysterious figure with a tragic back story dating back to the months before her birth – for her father discovers his first wife is not dead, as he thought, but very much alive, and Kilmeny's goes mad. Well, maybe I exaggerate. She has some kind of breakdown and becomes very peculiar indeed.

Eric, who is terribly good looking, and clever, and everything that is right and honorable, has clandestine meetings with with Kilmeny because he loves her and she loves him. But there is a fly in the ointment...

Before our upright hero can tell Kilmeny's guardians he has been meeting their niece in secret, and ask for her hand in marriage, Neil, the son of Italian pedlars who has been brought up by the aunt and uncle (his mother died and his father ran away) tells on them because he is love with Kilmeny (are you still with me?). I felt sorry for Neil, who is portrayed as 'sullen' and 'low', a thoroughly bad lot, because of his Italian heritage!

Kilmeny won't marry Eric because she can't speak, and Eric's friend, a brilliant doctor, believes her muteness is caused by some kind of psychological disorder, and she may speak if she is shocked into it.

All ends happily, of course, so there you have it it, a sweet, charming, romantic fairy tale – only I don't think it is really. None of the characters really came to life, and Kilmeny and Eric are so beautiful and perfect and good that it's positively sickening.

And, as I said before, it's idealogically unsound, even if some of ideas were prevalent at the time, and there is stuff about children paying for the sins of their parents which also annoyed me, and it's chock full of that rather cloying sentimentality which was so popular with Victorian and Edwardian readers (but not with me). 

By the way, downloaded this from Project Gutenberg, and read it on the Kindle, which is not an attractive image, so I've used pictures of book coves to brighten things up a little! And I should mention that Montgomery quotes quite extensively from the poem, and if you want to read it you'll find it here.

Wordsworth's French Lover

My Virago edition of 'Fair Exchange'. Personally
I'm not keen on the cover, but I often whinge
 about front coverss, so feel free to disagree!

I've always been fascinated by William Wordsworth's youthful espousal of revolutionary French politics, and his love affair with Frenchwoman Annette Vallon, who had his child in 1792. Somehow it's hard to reconcile this passionate, young man with the more familiar, older poet., who always comes across as a rather reactionary, quiet and isolated man – the two selves seem at odds with each other.

Writer Michèle Roberts was equally intrigued took inspiration from the story for a novel, creating characters, places and events based on the romance. But there's a twist in her tale, and things are not quite as straight forward as you think, for the worlds of England and France overlap as two women, both unmarried, both expecting a child, seek sanctuary in the same small French village. And, as we learn in the opening sentence, a crime has been committed: a 'wicked and unusual crime' that took place in 1792...

In an author's note at the start of 'Fair Exchange' Roberts is at pains to stress that her novel is not about Wordsworth, but about his 'compatriot and friend' William Saygood who is, she assures us, 'a wholly fictonal character'. Even so, it's clear that Saygood and Wordsworth are one and the same – although, with tongue in cheek, she actually has the poet make appearances off-stage. And she tells us: “Similarly, although Mary Wollstonecraft appears in the novel, I have plundered aspects of her life for my character Jemima Boote.” Throughout, names are changed: Annette Vallon becomes Annette Villon, Wordsworth's wife Mary Hutchinson is Fanny Skynner, while his sister Dorothy is Polly.

And there's a whole raft of purely fictional characters, including Daisy, the slip-shod maid of all work at both Fanny's childhood home and the cottage where she lives after her marriage. Then there's Louise, the pragmatic French peasant who looks after Annette and is the perpetrator of the mysterious crime.

The female characters really came to life - I felt I knew them. And I liked the way the perspective shifts between them, from Louise, to Jemima, to Daisy, back to Louise, to Annette and so on. But we never see things from William's point of view or learn what motivates him. He may be rather charming and, presumably, rather good-looking, but he comes across as a bit of wimp, a man who goes out of his way to avoid confrontation, rather weak-willed, and selfish, with no sense of responsibility. Frankly, I think his women would have been happier without him, but I've never been a huge Wordsworth fan.

It's the women who dominate, and the themes about their role in society, apply as much to the 21st century as they do to the Georgian period. Louise, Fanny, Jemima, Annette, and Daisy all have different expectations of what life has to offer - and they all make very different decisions. 

At heart Annette, the cosseted daughter of a doctor, is very conservative, but it's easy to understand how she fell in love with an English poet during the upheaval of the French revolution. When her convent school is ransacked she escapes to friends and meets William. Alone and afraid, far from home, she is entranced by the young man, and offers to teach him English. And, of course, love blooms during the lessons. When she returns home pregnant, her parents are only too happy to pack her off to the village of their maid (Louise) so she will be out of the way. Abandoned by William, who marries his childhood sweetheart, she is unable to cope on her own, accepts a proposal of marriage from her wealthy landlord, even though she doesn't love him, and settles down to lead a respectable life.

Jemima is probably the character modern women will identify with: tall and robust, with big feet, she is 'all too obviously a young woman with an independent mind and an active brain', and is a free-thinker who refuses to be tied by convention, and is determined to carve out a career as a writer. In contrast, her friend Fanny is a small, pretty airhead, set on catching a husband by fluttering her eyelashes and acting helpless. Actually, I feel rather sorry for poor Fanny, because she should have married a wealthy man who would have kept her in style. But she weds William, and instead of living in a big house, wearing fine clothes and holding a good position in society, she ends up in an overcrowded, grubby cottage, with hardly any cash, and a husband who spends more time with his sister than he does with her and the children. No wonder she takes to her bed and imagines herself ill!

The novel also raises questions about 'nature versus nurture', which was a popular subject for debate in the late 18th and early 19th century, with some philosophers claiming children were born innocent, and others maintaining that man was essentially brutish and cruel.

'Fair Exchange' is also a wonderful portrayal of Georgian life – not just the social divisions and manners of the day, but the way middle-class households were run, and how poor agricultural labourers got by. Housework and food figure large. In England Jemima enjoys fresh, sweet oily walnuts dipped in salt, sultana studded buns, twists of cheese pastry, and mushroom ragout. In France, as you might expect, people seem more concerned about what they eat and there are delicacies like roast woodcock, soups made from home-grown vegetables, and cabbage leaves, stuffed with chestnuts, breadcrumbs and herbs, and cooked in cider.

William Wordsworth painted by William Shuter in 1798
 when he was 28 years old.

As an aside, I'm thinking of trying this last recipe, because it sounds so delicious, though I'm not sure which herbs would be best – sage, perhaps? Does anyone else ever want to eat dishes which feature in novels? Or am I being light-weight, and do you all consider more serious matters?

Anyway, on that note (or almost) I shall finish. I loved this novel: I loved everything about it, the story, the characters, the setting, the way it was written, and the revelation of the hidden secret. Years ago I started reading 'The Daughters of the House', and didn't get along with it all, and never finished it. So I've never tried anything else by Michèle Roberts, until I spotted this in a charity shop, and now I feel I have missed out on a great author. I need recommendations for her other work - what shall I read next?

October Reading - and Writing!

To celebrate the start of October, here
is the the illustration for the month from
the Duc de Berry's Book of Hours, which
was created in the 15th century.

Well, October is upon us, and what with holidays, various trips, visits from my Mother and Elder Daughter, outings with Younger Daughter, computer problems, and then mum being ill, I seem to be way off track with reading and blogging, and need to get myself organised again. August and September really didn't go according to plan, and while I seem to have read lots of books which weren't on the monthly list, there were things I meant to read and didn't - and I didn't get round to posting many reviews. So October is going to be a kind of mopping up month, caching up on writing, and reading things which have been sitting around for a while. Actually, I said that about September, but I can but try – and if I don't succeed, at least I will be well prepared for November!

I didn't get round to 'To The Lighthouse', because I loved 'Mrs Dalloway' so much that after years of being scared to read Virginia Woolf, I'm now afraid to read more in case I don't like it as much! And Kate O’Brien’s Without My Cloak' is still on the shelf, unopened.

My notes on Carol Ann Duffy's 'The Bees' flew away when Younger Daughter's old computer (which I used after my laptop died) ceased to function at all and, despite assurances from The Man of the House, they do not appear to be on the hard drive. Since this was a library book, I can't write about it until I can borrow it again - unless I buy it! A rough draft of my thoughts on 'The Provincial Lady Goes Further', by EM Delafield also disappeared into the ether in the great computer disaster, but I can remember what I said about that, and re-instate it fairly easily.

Meanwhile, the stack of books that are 'read but not posted' seems to have grown. There's 'Kilmeny of the Orchard', by LM Montgomery, for my Canadian Reading Challenge (I've got mixed feelings on this one), and 'The Third Miss Symons', by FM Mayor, which was difficult to get into – it was one of those books where I wanted to slap the central character (you can't possibly call her a heroine) good and hard.

Some of the 'read but not posted' pile.

But Madeline Miller's 'The Song of Achilles' and 'Fair Exchange' by Michele Roberts were both absolutely fantastic, and Diana Tutton's 'Guard Your Daughters' was one of the best novels I've read this year. And I mustn't forget 'Jabez', David McKie's account of the rise and fall of a Victorian rogue whose financial frauds rival anything dreamt up by modern scoundrels, and could come straight from a Trollope novel.

That sounds a lot of catching up, but they are books that I've read, and I've even scrawled out some some ideas about them, so it won't take long to turn my thoughts into proper posts (as long as I can decipher my writing!).

To be read...

So, hopefully, I'll have plenty of time for more reading. Susanna Moodie's 'Roughing it in the Bush' will put me back on course with my Canadian Reading, and I'm looking forward to 'The True Deceiver' by the wonderful Tove Jansson, which was just begging to be rescued from a charity shop. And I bought 'The Town in Bloom' when I ordered 'Guard Your Daughters' because I wanted to explore more Dodie Smith. In addition, although the Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week is long since fiished, I've acquired 'Every Man For Himself' and 'Injury Time'. And I got Carola Dunn's 'The Gunpowder Plot' from the library, because people keep telling me how good her Daisy Dalrymple mysteries are, so I thought I would give one a go. Finally, I'm just finishing Robert MacFarlane's 'The Wild Places', downloaded on the Kindle some weeks ago for an incredible 99p. I love a bargain!

Birmingham's Spectacular Catacombs

Looking down on the Catacombs at Warstone Lane Cemetery
in Birmingham.

For three decades or more I have lived a 20-minute train from Birmingham (England, not Alabama) and I had NO IDEA the city has its own Catacombs until Younger Daughter took me there a couple of weeks ago (before my mother was ill). Sadly, they are all bricked up, so you can't go inside, and they look very neglected, but nevertheless they are absolutely spectacular, ever so slightly spooky, and well worth a visit.

They are slap-bang in the middle of the Warstone Lane Cemetery, on the edge of the Jewellery Quarter, and I've never seen anything like them. They reminded me of some kind of Roman amphitheatre – something to do with the circular (or perhaps that should be semi-circular) shape I think, and the terraces and the arched entrances around a flat arena-like area. To start with we assumed these were family vaults, but I've done a bit of research, and as far as I can gather they were for poor folk, and coffins were just stacked inside the tunnels, which sounds a bit grisly.

A closer view of the bricked-up tunnels.

In the 19^th century Birmingham was a manufacturing power house where wealthy financiers and businessmen made their fortunes. But the people who worked in the factories lived in squalid conditions, with overcrowding, no proper sanitation, and inadequate water supplies. Illness was rife and mortality rates were high. Graveyards, apparently, were as overcrowded as the streets of terraces and back-to-backs – so much so that in some places 'boring rods' were used to check if there was room for another burial! And at some of the city's churches there were so many interments that the ground was raised several feet above street level.

Facilities were obviously inadequate, so a group of non-conformists established their own cemetery at Key Hill in 1836, and 12 years later Birmingham Church of England Cemetery Company established another graveyard close by, at Warstone Lane. It was created in an old sandpit, and the Catacombs were tunnelled into the sides on two levels, to create more space, while normal burials in proper graves took place on the rest of site.

Memorial stones have been inserted at the
entrance to one or two tunnels.

Bizarrely, when Christ Church, in the centre of Birmingham, was demolished in 1899 the remains of 600 bodies were moved to the Warstone Lane Catacombs. They were taken in funeral coaches, which travelled in a dignified, slow procession, as was right and proper – but it was all a bit 'cloak and dagger' because the journeys took place at night (under cover of darkness) so residents wouldn't be disturbed, and it all sounds quite macabre.

Among those who were transferred to the Catacombs was the renowned printer and typographer John Baskerville, and the story of how he came to be there is very odd indeed. As an atheist he had no wish to be buried in consecrated ground, so when he died in 1775 he was buried in a mausoleum in his garden. , where he lay forgotten some 50 years, until gravel was excavated from the land. He was moved to a warehouse – where visitors paid sixpence (which was probably a lot of money at the time) to see his embalmed body! Then he was moved again, to the shop of a plumber and glazier. By this time, of course, the body was less well preserved than it had been, and people were no longer keen to see (or smell) it! In desperation, the poor old plumber/glazier had the body buried secretly at Christ Church, and from there poor old Baskerville's mortal remains were shifted once again, to the tunnels at Warstone Lane.

The view from the ground.

Baskerville (one of the fonts he created) is still a classic typeface and, since I was once a journalist, I would have liked to pay a tribute to this great typographer and printer by using it for this post but it's not listed on Blogger or Open Office. 

The cemetery also also provides the final resting place for Major Harry Gem who, with the help of a friend, invented lawn tennis in 1860 or thereabouts, and Pte James Cooper, who was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1867 for bravery at sea rescuing colleagues from cannibals in the Andaman Islands.

Part of the main graveyard at Warstone Lane.

I'm not sure when the last burial in the Catacombs took place, but apparently people lived in the tunnels during WW2. However, I'm not sure if they were used as shelters (like the London Tube stations), or whether bombed-out families set up home in them. Either way, it must have been pretty unpleasant. Today the entrances are bricked in and plastered over (to prevent vandalism and accidents I suppose) although a couple do have memorial stones set into them. A section of the wall is in danger of collapse and has been shored up, and the whole area looks in need of some tender loving care.

The entire cemetery, along with the one at Keys Hill (which also has Catacombs, but I haven't been there yet), is 'listed', and volunteers help maintain both areas, which are not only architecturally unique, but have also become havens for wildlife and plants. I think plans for improvements are included in an ongoing scheme which takes in the whole of the Jewellery Quarter, so hopefully something will done.

The blue brick Victorian lodge at Warstone Lane Cemetery
still stands, although it has been sold for offices. But the Gothic
chapel, dedicated to St Michael, was demolished in 1958.

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

Edited, Saturday: I forgot to attribute my sources! Information in this blog was taken mainly from  the website for the Jewellery Quarter at http://www.jquarter.org.uk/webdisk/walk14.htm and the book 'A History of Birmingham', by local historian Chris Upton.

Saturday Flowers!

I know it is Sunday, and I should not have a  Saturday Snapshot, but in some parts of the globe (like American Samoa and Hawaii) I believe it is still yesterday, which makes this post OK!

Anyway, this week's Snapshot is very brief (as well as being very late) because my mother is ill, and I am looking after her. So here is a picture I took yesterday of one of her fuschias, and a shot of part of her lovely garden, which is her pride and joy. Aged 85, she still does the garden herself, and grows the plants from seeds and cuttings - she has real 'green fingers' and sticks tiny fragments of flowers and shrubs into pots of earth, or even jars of water, and they flourish for her. She says she talks to them and that's what makes the difference!

Despite being so independent, she has allowed me to mow the grass - but only because she is not well enough to do it herself!

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