A Moth at Midnight

The Moth

Isled in the midnight air,
Musked with the dark's faint bloom,
Out into glooming and secret haunts
The flame cries,
'Come!'

Lovely in dye and fan,
Atremble in shimmering grace,
A moth from her winter swoon
Uplifts her face:

Stares from her glam'rous eyes;
Wafts her on plumes like mist;
In ecstasy swirls and sways
To her strange tryst.

(Walter de la Mare 1873 - 1956)

*****

MrsM is painfully reminded of the time
when she attempted to persuade MasterM
to learn poetry.
She felt it would be beneficial
for his inner landscape.
MrsM offered to pay by the line
and suggested that 'The Moth'
would be a good one
to start with.

MasterM politely explained
that learning poetry
was not a lifestyle choice
that he was comfortable with.

At the Edge of Another World

I have just finished reading
A Boy at the Hogarth Press by Richard Kennedy
published by Slightly Foxed.
It is a delight - packed with anecdotes of a vanished literary world
and scrambled line illustrations full of energy and wit.

Virginia Woolf setting type by Richard Kennedy

The Hogarth Press was started by Leonard and Virginia Woolf
and published works by members of the Bloomsbury group
with cover designs by Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf.

The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf
cover design by Vanessa Bell

Richard Kennedy worked there during the period
that Virginia Woolf completed Orlando
and talks of visits by Vita Sackvillle-West.

Lady in a Red Hat (Vita Sackville-West) by William Strang, 1918

This inspired a desire to visit Knole House
where Vita Sackville-West grew up as the only child
of Lionel Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville
and so we joined the crowds on Sunday afternoon.

The Venetian Ambassador's Room by Ellen Clacy, 1888.

The most beautiful room in Knole is
The Venetian Ambassador's Room.

Vita described this room as follows:
"Green and gold...of all rooms I never saw a room
that so had over it a bloom
like the bloom on a bowl of grapes and figs"

Virginia used equally lyrical language
to capture the shimmering elegance
"The room...shone like a shell
that has lain at the bottom of the sea for centuries
and has been crusted over
and painted a million tints by the water..."

It was extraordinary to be in the room
and imagine them there, seeing everything that I saw.

(A slight overstatement as the State Bed is currently
dismantled for restoration - but bear with me...)

Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf, Hogarth Press 1919
cover handpainted by Roger Fry and woodcuts by Vanessa Bell

Later, in the gift shop, there was a shelf of rare books
which included copies published by the Hogarth Press.
As I held one of these books
and considered that it might have been packed
by Richard Kennedy or even Virginia Woolf
it felt as though my ordinary Sunday afternoon
and the exotic and complex world of the Bloomsbury Group
were touching at the edges.

Top Secret and Confidential

A Trainee Bibliophile

It is always a mistake
to buy a present for someone
when you really want it yourself.
You hand it over
and are gratified by their enthusiasm.
Then there is the titanic struggle with your conscience
in which you try to decide if it is polite
to borrow it immediately
or whether you have to wait for a day or so.
Such was my dilemma at Christmas.

I suggest to MrM that a subscription to
Slightly Foxed , the literary journal,
would be the perfect present for his father.
MrM is pleased with this idea.
Then I suggest that we could borrow
the journals after my father-in-law had read them.
MrM seems to think that this is acceptable.

I wait...for days...
and the first journal arrives.

I gloat over the cover,
A watercolour of St. Pauls!!
I read it quickly,
Sue Gee writing an article!!
I re-read it slowly,
An article about Hugh Walpole!!
I covet books in the list of collector's editions,
Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliff!!

I give in
and arrange my own subscription.

MrM does not know yet
so I am expecting a stern discussion
about frugality, economy and recycling.

I will be very contrite.

The Potato Peel Rebellion

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

MrsM is sorry to report that she is on the Naughty Step today.
She has said terrible things about the Book of the Moment.
MrsM is a 'Potato Peel' refusenik.

It did not start well because it is an epistolary novel.
MrsM racks her brain to think of similar novels
that she has actually enjoyed.
Her mind goes blank.

Next, the endless list of recommendations
on the cover made her cautious.
MrsM does not consider the review from Saga
'Utterly delightful'
as a selling point.

She consults MissM who blushes and says:
'It was very relaxing to read.'

She emails literary friends:
ReadersGuide
'A sweet, cheering book that you can read in an evening.
Or, an evening and a morning,
providing no one is bothering you.'
Suse
'I started it last night and it's quite pleasant thus far. '
The Coffee Lady
'I'm embarrassed to admit I had never heard of it.'

She reads blog reviews:
MrsC
'Now I've read it ... I've been kicking myself
for not getting hold of it sooner.'

Eventually, MrsM had to start reading the book.
After half a page she asks MissM
'If I only read the first and last ten pages
do I need to read the rest? '
MissM concedes that MrsM would probably not miss much
but says that she is very disappointed by MrsM's negative attitude
and unnecessarily restrictive reading habits.

MrsM looks again at the pages of glowing reviews
and sees the words from the Times :
'Charming...one to lift even the most cynical of spirits'

Which just goes to show
you can't believe everything that you read in the papers.

Acid Drops

Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson

There are times when you yearn
for really salty food
or the mouth-puckering acidity of lemons.
The subtle flavours of carefully balanced seasoning
seems a little delicate, a touch precious.

So it is with humour.
At the moment I have zero tolerance
of bland, delicate and precious.

The best prescription for this ennui
is the wicked, perceptive writing of E. F. Benson
whose biting satire of village life is just the tonic.
Like a dark reverse of Miss Marple
his characters are motivated entirely by self interest.
It is sheer joy to lose myself in the cruelties
of summer fêtes and musical soirées;
to see LuLu and LibLib
pitting their wits against each other.
I feel that zing on the mental palate
as his writing outrageously explores
the boundaries of social conventions in the Thirties
and can't stop myself laughing out loud.

Light and Dark

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani

This is the book that lingers from my holiday reading. It tells the story of a relationship that is and isn’t – or that perhaps only might have been. The world that it evokes has echoes of Le Grand Meaulnes but the dream-like quality of this sunlit garden in Ferrara is shadowed by our knowledge of the approaching nightmare of Fascism and the Holocaust. Micol, with her shining white hair, seems at once predatory in her pursuit of the anonymous narrator and then compassionate in her release of him. As he tells us at the very start of the novel – only he survives to bear witness to the complex world of his childhood and the extraordinary intensity of that first love.

Shortly after I finished the book we visited the Synagogue in Carpentras. Behind an anonymous facade in a small town is the oldest synagogue in France. The prayer room is extremely beautiful and the light was cascading in from every window. It is not a museum - 90 Jewish families worship there now - but as I stood there the Shoah was all around me and I felt overwhelmed.

Michael Frayn

Here is my Michael Frayn collection.
I admit that it is not large
but it is the beginning, middle and end of my obsession.

I picked up Spies from the table in the bookshop
where they display books on special offer.
Spies won the Whitbread award for Fiction in the year
that Michael Frayn's wife, Claire Tomalin,
won the Whitbread award for Biography and beat him to the overall prize.

I understood completely the torment of the mother,

the acrid smell of privet, the whispers and the retained guilt.

It is a haunting evocation of the transition from childhood

and I wanted to read more.

So I went back to the bookshop and bought
Towards the End of the Morning
which describes the now-vanished world of Fleet Street.
The smell of newsprint leaks out from the pages
and the energy of the writing makes me gasp.
It makes me laugh out loud and I love the title.

Headlong
What can I say about Headlong?
It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
I am therefore a failure because I CANNOT read it to the end.
I start off with good intentions and enjoy the characterisation.
But then I know where the plot is heading.
I have the feeling that I am running
towards the edge of a cliff with the main character.
The second time I tried to read it I was braver
and got even closer to the terrible drop
- practically teetering on the edge -
Then I slammed the book shut
and let the plot and all the characters fall over by themselves.

I should check the bookshop for more books by Michael Frayn.
I admire his craftmanship.
They say he is a modern day Chekhov.
But I am still feeling guilty about Headlong.

Name Dropping

Yesterday I spoke to Professor Geoffrey Hill.

When I mentioned this to colleagues
there were gasps and murmurs:

“The Greatest Living English Poet”
“The heir to Milton and Coleridge;
Eliot, Poe and Pound.”

I was impressed

by the depth of my ignorance

and decided to do some research.

His poems are indigestible, solid with historical allusions.
His dislike of readers, renowned.

I cannot pretend to have a critical eye
And yet, reading small sections of his work,
I glimpse the magnitude of his art,
The page glittering with extraordinary words.

Not to skip detail, such as finches brisking
on stripped haw-bush;
the watered gold that February drains
out of the overcast; nomadic aconites
that in their trek recover beautifully
our sense of place,
the snowdrop fettled on its hinge, waxwings
becoming sportif in the grimy air.

A Treatise of Civil Power
Yale University Press
2008

The Age of Enchantment

Once upon a time

there was a little girl who loved fairy stories.

Annie French A Fairy Tale (detail)

Her mother bought three beautiful pictures

and hung them on the wall above her bed.

Every morning when she woke up

she saw the Dulac illustration of

Cinderella with the Fairy Godmother

Edmund Dulac She made her escape as lightly as a deer 1910

She was lucky enough to have a collection

of beautiful editions of fairy stories

some of which had belonged to her great-grandparents

and when she was a bit older she would lie in bed

and read the stories over and over again.

Arthur Rackham, RI Goblin Market (detail) 1933

Even when she was almost grown up she still read fairy stories

but now she was very knowledgeable.

She knew about myths and legends;

the tales of Hans Christian Andersen,

the Brothers Grimm and Oscar Wilde.

Laurence Housman The House of Joy (detail) 1895

She knew about the development of children's literature

in the Victorian era and even about

the fashion for illustrated books in the early twentieth century.

Edmund Dulac The Ice Maiden 1915

And so it was that one cold January day

this little girl took her mother to the far side of the world

(well, that is what Dulwich feels like on a cold January day)

to look at an exhibition of illustrations.

She had seen many of them before in the books that she had read

and it was like greeting old friends.

Kay Nielsen The Dancing Princesses 1912

Her mother watched her enjoy the exhibition

and realised that now her daughter knew much more

about these stories and illustrations than she did.

Which is a happy ending.

Edmund Dulac Circe 1911

The Inner Child

I collect children's books

and I have a particular weakness for the limited editions

that are published at Christmas.

Christmas - The King James Version

Illustrated by Jan Pienkowski

They allow me to reach that hidden part

that remains a child.

"The Night Before Christmas" by Clement C. Moore

Illustrated by Niroot Puttapipat

The part of me that still believes

I shall sleep in an iron bedstead on Christmas Eve

And, waking, find snow outside the window.

"Lanterns Across The Snow" by Susan Hill

Illustrated by Kathleen Lindsley

Father Christmas will leave the doll

that I have dreamed of

"The Story of Holly & Ivy" by Rumer Godden

Illustrated by Christian Birmingham

And the carved figures in the Nativity

will tell the story of Christmas

for the very first time.

"The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey" by Susan Wojciechowski
Illustrated by P. J. Lynch

Sue Gee

Sue Gee - how do I love thee?

Let me count the ways.

1.You write a book with a ravishing title

that leaps off a bookshelf and into my hands.

Who could resist 'The Mysteries of Glass' ?

2. You describe the Herefordshire countryside in a way

that makes me almost renounce my Cornish heritage.

3. The principal characters are agonisingly well drawn.

As they meet I want to reach out and prevent the catastrophe.

4. My head aches with the complexity of the dilemma as I read.

5. I immediately return to the bookshop for more.

I find 'The Hours of the Night' and am not disappointed.

Philipa Gregory agrees with me.

6. Now I am reduced to searching

through second hand bookshops for the backlist.

I find ' Keeping Secrets' in a strange shop

in the back streets of Sligo

with a scary amount of 'Dungeons and Dragons' manuals.

It is the earliest of your books

but has the compassionate insight into relationships

that characterises your later writing.

7. A new book 'Reading in Bed' has just been released.

I want it for Christmas.

MrM - are you listening?

John McGahern

Memoir by John McGahern

Memoir was written at the end of a life. It has an intensity and clarity that comes from a distillation of memories. He writes of his mother and the love that he had for her. He writes of her death and the sense of loss that never left him. His father is a constant, brooding presence and other people come and go in the narrative but it is this shining love that remains with you long after you have closed the book.

I read Memoir in Ireland, in Co. Sligo close to the places that he evokes with such unsparing detail. We drove over the hills and past turf cuttings, through little villages and market towns. Much of the landscape is unchanged and his description is lyrical.

It might seem that much of the book is about grief and hardship; about living without love. But it is the knowledge of love that informs his writing of loss. At the end of his life he is still able to recall minute details of his mother and the home that they lived in; the words that she spoke and the paths that they walked together.

She had so little to give him and so little time and yet she gave him everything that he needed.

Books, Books, Books

Breadbox invited me to write about reading.
My immediate response was

"No! That is TOO much typing"

But then I realised that blogs cannot survive on pictures of pansies

There needs to be some content

So here it is:

Question 1

What do I read?

I am a haphazard and slow reader.
I read for pleasure and not for self-improvement.
I love audio books.

MissM is the intellectual in our family.

Question 2

How many books do I have?

Too many.

This is a picture of the books
I have just removed
from MrM's bedside table.

Question 3

What are you reading at the moment?

The Convenient Marriage

by Georgette Heyer

Which is mainly written in Capital Letters

and is having an Alarming Effect on my vocabulary.

Note to Self:

It is Vital that I do not start referring to MrM as Sir

it would be Very Bad for His Ego.

Question 4

What is the last book that you bought?

36 Murders and 2 Immoral Earnings

by Ludovic Kennedy

but it was for MasterM

so it doesn't count.

so here is a bonus question

What is the last book that you borrowed?

The Poisonwood Bible

by Barbara Kingsolver

And yes, Thomas, I promise I will remember

to bring it back next time we visit.

Question 5

List 5 books that have influenced you.

This is impossible.

But here are 5 books that have influenced me

Mr William Shakespeare's Plays
illustrated by Marcia Williams
which MissM knows off by heart.
Badger's Parting Gifts
by Susan Varley
which deals with bereavement.
The Treasure Hunters
by Enid Blyton
which was the first book that my children read by themselves.
A Traveller in Time
by Alison Uttley
which I read and reread as a child.
Dean's Gift Book of Fairy Tales
given to me by a very dear friend.

And before I go and lie down
and rest my weary hand
if any of you would like to do this interview too
do let me know.

Dandies, Corinthians and the Nonpareil.

MissM is going through a serious Georgette Heyer phase.

It is a passion she shares with her Granny.

Although, perhaps serious is the wrong adjective

because these are not wholemeal bread

but the lightest of patisserie.

I had not read Georgette Heyer

and was worried that such frivolity

might be bad for her intellectual digestion.

The modern edition by Arrow features delicious covers
for the adventures of the various heroines
and, I was surprised to discover,
a range of reviews from the most impeccable of sources.

Who can argue with Margaret Drabble?

I discussed this with a young academic
who specialises in Nineteenth Century Literature
and she admitted to reading everything
that Georgette Heyer had written
before moving on to Dickens.

Georgette Heyer to Charles Dickens.

That must be like
gorging on meringues
before gobbling fruitcake.

From our Bookshelves

I have asked the local librarian to review our summer reading.

MasterM

"ambitious"

****

MissM

"intellectual"

****

MrM

"eclectic"

****

MrsM

"obsessive"