Random Jottings

No Ring for me

 

Well I have made the symbolic gesture of throwing the Ring back in the Rhine for the Rhinemaidens to play with.  After much soul searching and scrutiny of bank accounts and credit card statements, I have decided that I just have to give up the idea of booking for the entire Ring next year.  Even if I buy the cheapest amphitheatre seats it is going to cost in the region of £250 for the entire cycle and I have decided I am not going to do it.  It is a wrench not to see the Mighty Bryn again, but I console myself with the thought that it will be on radio and TV and I have already seen him in this role and, no doubt, will do so again in the future. 

As I have written before, the main reason for this decision, apart from finance, is the production.  If I had loved it and thought it marvelous then I probably would have put myself in hock, but as I found it deeply irritating and disappointing, I can take consolation that I am not missing much.  Only exception was the lighting of the ring of fire at the end of Die Walkure when Bryn (Wotan) seemed to have a flame coming out of the palm of his hand which he then used to send the fire hurtling round the stage.  That was simply terrific.

In February next year there is the possibility of getting single seats for certain evenings.  At the moment, for obvious reasons, they want you to purchase entire cycles, so I will try then and see if I can get one for Die Walkure, just to hear Wotan's Farewell again and to see the magic fiery ring.

Roderick Alleyn - Lord Peter Wimsey

Having recently discovered, and become addicted to, the Lord Peter Wimsey books set in my favourite period for detective stories, 1920's and 1930's, it struck me after three Peter books under my belt, that Roderick Alleyn, the creation of Ngaio Marsh, (who I have already blogged about) have a lot in common.

They are both 'gentlemen detectives' though Roderick Alleyn is a real policeman and a member of the CID, while Lord Peter regards it as a hobby.  They are both elegant, wear their clothes well, are interested in the theatre, music and books.   

They both marry strong women with their own careers:  Lord Peter marries Harriet Vane, who writes detective stories and Alleyn's wife, Agatha Troy, is a famous and distinguished artist.  They also share the same rather prickly personality in that they both fought their feelings and, initially, did not wish to marry.  Harriet because she disliked being beholden to Lord Peter who saved her from being convicted of murder, and also did not wish to lose her independence, and Agatha, a very private woman, who disliked her husband's profession very much.    As she was involved with a murder investigation (Artists in Crime) shortly after their initial meeting, this is hardly surprising.

As with all good detective stories, each has his 'side kick', usually of the plebeian order, Lord Peter has Bunter (who, in many ways is a more of a snob than his master) and Alleyn has Inspector Fox, who he calls rather whimsically (if you will forgive the use of the word) Brer Fox.  Both are essentially there to admire and appreciate their superior, usually uncritically.  Readers know that Bunter and Fox are devoted to their masters and would lay down their lives for them.

Both Alleyn and Wimsey moved in high society circles; both had aristocratic mothers, Alleyn had a brother George ( a 'silly ass') who was a diplomat and Wimsey had a brother who held the fictional title of the Duke of Denver.  One of my favourite Marsh novels is Death in a White Tie which is set in the Season and where a murder takes place at a grand social occasion.  Beautifully described and written this shows that NM had a very good working knowledge of the aristocracy and its comings and goings at this time.

The 'gentleman detective' has, of course, continued in the books of Elizabeth George and, to some extent, in PD James Inspector Dalgliesh stories (as well as being a policeman he is also a poet).  Elizabeth George is an American writer who has a huge admiration for the English detective novel and has striven to recreate this genre.  The current editions of the Sayers that I am reading at the moment have a foreword written by her in which she makes no secret of her admiration for these books. 

Sadly, her detective, Inspector Lynley (who is a member of the aristocracy and is called 'Tommy' by his friends for heaven's sake) is a pastiche and not really believable.  He is self obsessed, angst ridden and continually doubting himself and his motives.  He also has a side kick, Barbara Havers, very much a member of the working class, no musical tastes, eats junk food, wears trainers and dreadful anoraks, and is a complete contrast to her boss.  Though she will not admit it, she is devoted to the Terrible Tommy and it is her detecting that solves the problem most of the time. Lynley marries an equally self obsessed, ghastly wife called Helen who is, without doubt, the most irritating female I have ever met in fiction (with perhaps the exception of Irene in the Forsythe Saga, who I wanted to shake most of the time.  My sympathies were always with Soames who I felt showed remarkable forbearance towards his wife but that is a blog for another day).

I did wonder, who had influenced who, and if either of these authors had read the other and, on checking bibliographies, can see that the first D L Sayers novel was published in 1923 and Ngaio Marsh had her first, A Man Lay Dead, published in 1934 so she would have had ample time to read, and be influenced by, Lord Peter Wimsey.  I am trying to see if I can track down any comments by Ngaio Marsh on Dorothy L Sayers to see what she thought of her, and vice versa, as I am sure this would make interesting reading.

This simply terrific illustration purports to be Roderick Alleyn interviewing a suspect in An Opening Night.  I can only assume that the artist must have read the wrong book as to me, this looks more like Lord Peter and Harriet Vane.  Whoever it is meant to be, I love it.

A Conundrum

As someone who lies down with a drink when the feeling that I really should do some housework comes upon me, I sometimes find myself pitching in and sorting out at the most ridiculous times.  Last night I could not sleep so stayed awake watching rubbish movies on the TV and drinking tea and dunking biscuits.  Incredibly unhealthy I know, but there you go.

I finally got to bed and asleep at around 2am in the morning and then find myself wide awake at 7 am and to my utter astonishment found myself leaping out of bed and shifting all the furniture around in my living room.  Now, this was not a sudden impulse, I tend to mull on things for a while before I do them, but why on a Sunday morning should I suddenly decide that this is the time it must be done?  I moved everything around, took me an hour, took one look at it, decided it did not work and moved it all back again.  I then went into the kitchen to make some more tea and prepare breakfast and to my utter horror found myself cleaning the oven....yes, the oven, the most loathed job by all women all over the world (as a recent survey discovered - well, I could have told them that straight away and saved them money but they did not ask me).

I am now sitting on my sofa with my trusty laptop to hand tapping away about this as I really need to get this momentary aberration well and truly out of my system.  I am hot and dusty and dirty and need a shower and I know this afternoon I am going to keel over and fall asleep on the sofa.  I am going out to lunch with a friend today who is a life coach - perhaps she can shed some light on the matter.

Or is there anyone out there who can solve this problem?  I do not want to go through this dreadful experience again, it is all too much to bear....

A Life on the Ocean Wave

Ex Libris has been shivering her timbers and hauling up the Skull and Crossbones this week and, by coincidence, so have I.  I went to see the second Pirates of the Caribbean film on Thursday with the simply gorgeous, utterly outrageous Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, once more not only stealing the film but fleeing the country with it and leaving everyone else floundering.  After seeing Orlando Bloom as Legolas in Lord of the Rings, I was totally smitten, but gorgeous though he is, he just cannot cope with the screen presence of JD in these movies.  Orlando plays Will, the good guy, who gets the girl but the attraction between his fiance Elizabeth Swann and Jack Sparrow, hinted at in the first film, is made very clear in the sequel.  The fact that she is played by Keira Knightly who I find fairly uninspiring, and who has just recently had the lovely Matthew McFadyan in Pride and Prejudice as her leading man, only makes me feel even more that life is just not fair.....

One of the comments over on Ex Libris' blog mentioned The Crimson Pirate.  This was a film I saw as a child and has remained as one of my favourite swash bucklers of all time.  It stars Burt Lancaster in his prime with gleaming teeth and beguiling smile who seemed to spend the entire film running around in the most outrageous pair of striped trousers I have ever seen (as you can see in the picture on the left which seems to be the French poster for the film.  The US one is much more restrained and has him wearing looser trousers). 

Burt Lancaster used to be in a circus, as anyone who has seen him in the film Trapeze will testify, and his circus skills are certainly utilised to the full in a wonderful chase sequence where he swings from rooftops and vaults from beams, always escaping his pursuers in the nick of time.  There is an unforgettable scene where he and his henchman are shackled to a dinghy and sent out to sea to die and Burt turns the boat over, traps the air underneath and walks the boat back to shore.  This scene is lifted in its entirety and placed in the middle of Pirates of the Caribbean 1 and I let out a shriek of recognition when I spotted it (I was the only one in the cinema that night who did and I embarrassed my children no end).  The director in an interview on the DVD admitted he had done it and said it was in homage because The Crimson Pirate was one of his favourite movies.

I also remember that this film was part of a summer holiday double bill, the other film being Calamity Jane with Doris Day.  I went in to see these movies at 1.30 pm in the afternoon and sat and watched them round four times before leaving at about 10 pm in the evening.  All for about 5 shillings.  You could do that in those days.  This week I paid £9.50 to see the Johnny Depp movie which shook me somewhat.

Ex Libris also mentions the dazzling Errol Flynn as Sea Hawk and he is, of course, quite wonderful but for me Errol is Robin Hood, one of the greatest swashbucklers of all time.  I have to say that my feelings about the current BBC production of Robin Hood have been proved right.  Started well and Richard Armitage (oh be still my beating heart) is just eatable as Guy of Gisborne, but Jason Armstrong as Robin is simply awful and whiny and the young actress who is playing Maid Marian has the acting ability of a whelk.

So I think I will be giving this a miss from now on much though it grieves me to miss out on further yearnings over Richard Armitage.  I have to say I think he would make a terrific pirate.  Now there is a thought....

A Christmas Carol

I know it is a bit early to be talking about A Christmas Carol (though I had lunch in a pub last Saturday  which already had its tree complete with lights and sparkle up and running) but this is the final book in my RIP Challenge so, of necessity, it has to be looked at sooner than I normally do. My annual read of this masterpiece is usually Christmas Eve, preferably curled up on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate and looking at all the presents wrapped and the candles lit.

I have to admit that I have a certain fellow feeling with Ebenezer Scrooge as Christmas is not my most favourite time of year.  I find the relentless pressure to produce, as most magazines insist on calling it, 'the best Christmas ever' all too much to bear so now adopt a much more laissez faire attitude towards the whole festive season. One custom I always adhere to, however, is my re-reading of Dicken's A Christmas Carol which surely must be one of the most heart warming stories ever written.  There have been endless stage shows, films, musicals, cartoons and TV shows based on this story (the Muppets being a particular favourite of mine!) and its appeal never wavers. I have several copies of this book on my shelf.   One battered old edition I have had for years, another one from the OUP and then one I could not resist buying a year ago, illustrated by the simply magical Quentin Blake which is now the one I look at the most for the sheer joy of looking at the delightful images he has created.

The opening lines of A Christmas Carol are unforgettable 'Marley was dead: to begin with.  There is no doubt whatever about that......Old Marley was dead as a doornail'.  Perfect.  What a start. And then, a few  pages later when Scrooge goes home '.....they were a gloomy suite of rooms in a lowering pile of a building up a yard where it was so dark that Scrooge was fain to grope with his hands'  and what happens when Scrooge looks at his door knocker? It turns into Marley's face. 'Humbug' and Scrooge goes indoors and locks himself in.  He sits by a lowering fire, when a disused bell in the corner of the room starts to ring, then deep below there comes a clanking noise as if chains were being dragged and the cellar door swings open with a booming sound....and in comes Marley's ghost.

Everyone who is familiar with the story knows what happens next, the Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge as he was when young and hopeful, shows him the girl he loved and lost and how the love of money began to take over his life.  The Ghost of Christmas Present takes him and shows him how people are celebrating the current Christmas and, of course, we meet the family of his clerk, Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim.

It is the final ghost that is the most chilling of all, the Ghost of Christmas yet to Come.  This ghost is silent and terrifying, it is faceless and featureless and the only part of him that Scrooge sees is his hand with his long pointing finger. Scrooge is taken to the deathbed of a lonely, unloved, unmourned old man where he lay while his belongings were shared out amongst those gathered in his room.  He is taken to a graveyard 'where the wretched man whose name he had now to learn lay underneath the ground.  It was a worthy place. Walled in by houses, overrun by grass and weeds ....choked up with too much burying....a worthy place!'

Scrooge creeps trembling towards the neglected grave and reads EBENEZER SCROOGE.  The Phantom is still silent, the pointed finger still there. 'O tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!' Scrooge catches the spectral hand 'it shrunk, collapsed and dwindled down into a bedpost' and Scrooge wakes up  in his own bed.

Well, we all know what happens next.  The joyous realisation that all the spirits visited him in one night, that it is Christmas Day and he has time to make reparation, the delirious delight in which Scrooge sends the delivery boy to buy the biggest Turkey he can find and have it delivered to the Cratchits, never ever fails to lift my heart and make me feel that perhaps Christmas isn't so bad after all!

And anyone who is not moved by Tiny Tim's  'God Bless us, every one' can, in the words of Scrooge 'be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart'.....

Edith Wharton

My fourth book in the RIP Challenge is the Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton.  I was initially rather surprised to find that she had written in this genre and, while they are not spine chillingly frightening, they are beautifully written and constructed and have a certain creepy air about them.  I have been reading one a night just before putting the bedroom light out and they certainly make me slightly reluctant to leave the safety of my bed.  I summarise two below.

Afterward

Ned and Mary Boyne, an American couple, who have made their fortune through a mining project decide to live in England in the country.  They find a house and to make everything perfect, jokingly wish for a ghost. They are told that ‘Oh there is one of course, but you’ll never know it. Well, not till afterwards at any rate’.

Life settles down into a happy routine until one day a young man is seen walking up the avenue to the house but who seems to disappear when Ned goes down to meet him.  It is after this visitation that Mary senses a change in her husband and receives a press cutting from America in which she finds out that he has been the subject of a claim on his mining interests by an investor and may not have behaved in an honourable manner.  When she confronts him, he shows her a letter in which he has been told that the claim has ‘come to an end’  and it is all settled.

Time passes, but then one morning returning to the house Mary finds her husband has received a visitor and they have gone out.  He  does not appear for the rest of the day, and then the night and though the countryside is scoured he appears to have vanished into thin air.  She then learns the true story of the suit brought against her husband and, though reassured that her husband behaved quite legally, morally it might be a different story.  An investor who lost heavily in the enterprise, shot himself and lay dying for some two months.  On seeing a photograph of the man in question, Elwell, the wife is horrified to realise that this is the young man who first came to visit earlier in the year, and then returned later – after a two month gap.  This was the day her husband had disappeared.

Mary then realises that she will never see her husband again and that the young man she saw was a ghost.  She also remembers her friend’s words ‘that she would not realise until afterwards’.

Kerfoil 

Kerfoil is a house in France.  A prospective buyer, with a view to purchase, is rather annoyed to  find that nobody is there to see him when he arrives and that he is followed around by a pack of dogs in a rather unnerving silence.  They do not bark, whine or make any noise.  On returning to his hostess and mentioning the peculiar behaviour of these dogs she gives him some old papers to read relating to the trial of an ancestress, Anne, who was charged with the murder of her husband after he had been found dead and covered in blood at the top of a flight of steps in the old house. 

As it was discovered at the trial that Anne had slipped out to meet a purported lover, public opinion went against her but she insisted that she had not murdered her husband.  She had been afraid of him but had not killed him.  When asked why she was afraid of her husband her reply was ‘he strangled my dogs’.  He had been jealous of the attention she lavished on them and every time she had a dog, or even petted a stray, she returned to find the dog dead on her bed.

When asked by the judge who had killed her husband, if not she, her reply was ‘The dogs. My dead dogs.  I heard them snarling and snapping…..once or twice he cried out, then he was silent.  Then I heard a sound like the noise of a pack when the wolf is thrown to them, gulping and lapping’.  The marks on the body were consistent with such an attack.

Although deemed innocent of the murder she was taken out of court and handed over to the keeping of her husband’s family who shut her up in the keep at Kerfoil where she died many years later, a harmless madwoman.

The house sale does not go through by the way.....

John Betjeman

I have always adored John Betjeman and his poetry ever since we had to study 20th Century poets at school and three of his poems were in the anthology we were using.  I clicked with them immediately, but for some reason our English teacher, Mrs Jackson, always skirted round them and would not include any of these poems in class discussion.  She worked her way through all the others but was very chary of Sir John.  One day when Mrs Jackson asked which of the poems was our personal favourite and I mentioned one of Betjeman's, her ire descended upon me and my low habit of always liking the commonplace and the ordinary were proclaimed to the rest of my stunned class mates. 

This was the same teacher who thought I could not have read Bleak House in three days and made me read it again (no hardship of course), and then ripped my essay on Esther Summerson (who I view as one of Dicken's 'saintly' and, therefore more irritating characters) to shreds saying I did not know what I was talking about as I was immature and stupid.  Probably true, but she could have been kinder about it.  Some 20 years later when the BBC did a super adaptation of this book in the 1980s, the Radio Times printed an appraisal of the character of Esther Summerson identical in all respects to mine and if I could have tracked this wretched, now retired, teacher down I would have brandished it in front of her and vented my fury. 

However, I am letting an incident of my school days take over, but it was one I had never forgotten, and made me even more determined that no matter what she said, I liked Sir John's poems and was not going to be swayed.

I know that opinion is divided on him, but I have never changed my mind about his ability to paint the most wonderful pictures with seemingly simple and straightforward poetry.  The trouble is he was too successful and consequently, not to be taken seriously.  I daresay if he had published one esoteric, slim volume of poems which had sold about 20 copies but was raved about by the critics, he would be deemed worthy of attention, but he was popular, always death to a wish to be taken seriously by the world of literature.

The fact that he appeared to be hugely funny, witty and amusing and a delightful character every time he appeared on the TV or was interviewed, probably sealed his fate (though if you read about his incredibly complicated private life or read his letters he was not as straightforward as he seemed).  His love of churches, the Metropolitan line, Suburbia,  were deemed 'commonplace', hence my erstwhile teacher's use of the word.  It is very easy to be snobbish about reading and books (I fall into this trap myself, I know I do) but sometimes it is good to put all pretentions to one side and admit that you enjoy something simply because you do, no analysis, no freudian undertones (though I daresay they might be there if you look hard enough) but just plain enjoyment.

I have yet to meet anyone who can resist Miss Joan Hunter-Dunn  'furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun' which is my all time favourite of Sir John's output.  The picture he conjures up of a sunny summer's day playing tennis, the walk back to the summer house for a cool drink, then getting changed and ready as the sun sets for the dance in the evening, is all so vivid and evocative. And then, of course, the sitting outside in the car in the dark listening to the sound of the dance in the distance and finally:

'We sat in the car park till twenty to one, and now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn'

I always remember Michael Parkinson interviewing Sir John and asking him if there was anything about his life he regretted.  After a moment's thought, Sir John replied "Well, I wish I had had more sex'......................

Arthur Rackham

I have opened up a new category, Book Illustrators, as I am having a great time tracking down books with wonderful illustrations that I have enjoyed throughout my life.  Most of them are children's books as adult stories are not illustrated and, as Alice said before she popped down the rabbit hole 'what is the use of a book without pictures or conversation' . 

One illustrator I always loved for his Gothic and magical drawings and paintings was Arthur Rackham.    While Tenniel is the artist one immediately thinks of in connection with Alice in Wonderland, Rackham also produced illustrations that I, personally, feel are more suited to the slightly nightmarish quality of this story.

Rackham was very good on trees and vegetation and somehow made them rather menacing.  In his illustrations for Wind in the Willows, particularly the foray into the Wild Wood, you felt that these trees would swoop down and attack you with their branches (as did the Whomping Willow in the Harry Potter books, though that particular tree is not as menacing as any of Rackhams).

Arthur Rackham was one of 12 children and was born in Lambeth in 1867 and lived until 1939.  Reading his entry in Wilkipedia does not make for exciting reading.  He seems to have been born, grew up, married and had a perfectly normal happy life with no seeming angst or artistic temperament, and yet somehow one feels there must have been an inner person lurking somewhere who produced all these magnificent images. 

Of course, for me, a Wagner fan, his illustrations of the Ring Cycle are my favourite.  I did not discover these until well into my adulthood and after I had become a Wagner convert.  I had borrowed Das Rheingold from my local gramophone library (as they were quaintly called then - now they are multimedia centres), in the old LP format which had the bonus that the booklets inside were packed full of information and terrific photos.  (CD inserts nowadays are a different thing altogether but that is a blog for another day).  Inside this box set was the translation of the German and it was full of the most wonderful images by Arthur Rackham.

These superb colour drawings and paintings captured perfectly the magical, mysterious, incestuous world of Wagner's great epic full of dwarfs, giants, gods, goddesses, norns, and Valkyries.

This is Brunnhilde, the Warrior maiden, daughter of the great god Wotan and his favourite out of his nine children.  The Valkyries spent their time galloping around battlefields and collecting the slaughtered soldiers and taking them to Valhalla to live in paradise with them.  Not a bad place to end up one might think, though on viewing some productions of the Ring and seeing the Valkyries on display, even a dead hero might think twice about it.

And here are the Rhinemaidens.  Now, in most early productions of Das Rheingold, the Rheinmaidens were well covered up as modesty demanded.  I have seen some photographs of Rheinmaidens dressed in what looks like Victorian bathing costumes and looking incredibly hideous.  These ladies were meant to be sexy and seductive, otherwise why would Alberich lust after them?  A production at Bayreuth not so long ago actually had a pool on stage with the singers swimming around in body stockings reflected in an angled mirror above so it looked as if they were swimming in the Rhine. The latest Ring at Covent Garden has them totally starkers but, oddly enough, by the time we reach the final opera, Gotterdamerung, they all appeared out of the Rhine fully clothed, for reasons which were never explained.  Rackham's pictures caused a bit of a scandal when they were first printed, if you take a look at this picture you can understand why Victorian/Edwardian sensibilities were shaken.  To me this is what Rheinmaidens should look like, but very rarely do.

There are hundreds more pictures to be tracked down on various websites. Arthur Rckham illustrated a Midsummer Night's Dream, The Secret Garden and Peter Pan to name but a few.  To view these illustrations is to enter a world of enchantment.

Wide Sargasso Sea

Last night, to run alongside the BBC1 production of Jane Eyre, BBC4 screened a dramatisation of The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, the prequel to Jane Eyre, the story of of Rochester's marriage to Bertha Mason in Jamaica.  This book had languished in obscurity for many years and back in 1968, when I worked at Highgate Library in London, I remember reading about this newly discovered book which was due to be reprinted that year, and was thrilled to bits, Jane Eyre being one of my favourite reads of all time.  Jean Rhys was half Creole, as was Bertha Mason, and as her biography shows, she led an extraordinarily precarious, raffish life, at the mercy of her emotions and seemingly victimised and treated badly by men.  Hardly surprising that the intriguing conundrum that was the Mad Woman in the Attic should have attracted her attention.

I was only about 17 when I read it and was bitterly disappointed. Not quite sure what I expected, but I found the writing wild and disjointed and the whole atmosphere totally repellent.  I had expected Jane Eyre and instead I got this free wheeling stream of consciousness in great clumps.  I re-read it years later and of course,  realised that this style perfectly portrayed the febrile, decaying atmosphere of the lush Jamaican countryside and Mrs Rochester's fragile hold on sanity.  I still found it unpleasant and disturbing however, and the BBC4 adaptation last night left me feeling vaguely nauseated.  The fact that it did so is, perhaps, an indication that they got it about right.

The story starts with the arrival of Edward Rochester in Kingston, sent there by his father to earn his living as he was the younger son, and feeling very much that he lived in his elder brother's shadow.  He wanted to earn his father's approval and respect and was easily seduced into marrying a rich heiress, thereby earning himself a fortune and making his father happy.  He was duped, as we all know, and we see his own mental disintegration when he hears of the rumours of the madness in his wife's family and his fear that her erratic behaviour will lead to her insanity.  Rochester is portrayed as cruel and unpleasant in the Rhys novel and his treatment of his wife is sadistic and pretty unforgivable.  The fact that his own actions could have tipped her over the edge of madness is made very clear to the reader.

As a lover of the Yorkshire moors myself, which I have often visited and found beautiful with clear moorland air, it is hardly surprising that Rochester, after all his wanderings, returns to Thornfield perhaps hoping to find some way of coping with his tortured life.  He is riding home when he sees Jane for the first time.

"On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall.  I expected no peace - no pleasure there.  On a stile in Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself........I had no presentiment of what it would be to me; no inward warning that the abritress of my life .....waited there in humble guise.................After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love, I have found you"

Quite quite beautiful.

The Mist in the Mirror - Susan Hill

I picked this book up a week or so ago without giving a thought to the RIP Challenge and that it would form part of my list of five, until I started reading it yesterday and then realised that this was another creepy ghost story to put alongside The Woman in Black on my bookshelves.  I started reading it in bed late on Saturday night and then remembered that I had made this mistake with WIB and had scared myself witless, so I shut it up, turned the light off and read it in the sunny morning next day.  I then realised that really this was another mistake.  This kind of book must be read at night when you are on your own and nobody around - it all adds to the reading experience.  Better still to read it on 'a dark and stormy night' with the curtains drawn, sheets of rain hitting the window panes and a fire flickering in the hearth. 

This is the story of James Monmouth who has returned to England after years of living abroad.  His childhood was spent with his guardian in Kenya, whence he was taken after the death of his parents, and when he found himself alone at the age of 18 he decided he would travel.  He reads the works of a famous traveller, Conrad Vane, and on his eventual return to England he decided to discover more about him.  Everywhere he goes, he is warned off his quest and it soon transpires that Conrad Vane was not a nice person, and did some pretty awful things during his life, though nobody will actually say what.

James, ignoring all the warnings he has been given, travels down to Vane's old school to research the archives there.  He arrives on a dark, winter's evening with snow falling and all is quiet and still.  In London he has been haunted by the sight of a boy with a face of despair and fear on his face but who vanishes when James tries to follow him to find out what is troubling him. He sees him here also - he has followed him.  In the middle of a sleepless night, James decides to take a midnight walk into the library and sets off down a dark, corridor and opens the doors.  At this stage, the reader will be screaming DON'T DO IT, but to no avail.  He knows somebody or something is watching him.  He can hear breathing:

"The soft breathing came again, from a different place, in the darkness just ahead of me, and I began to edge forward and then to stop, move and stop, but it was always just out of reach.  I looked down in the great barrel of the room below.  Every shadow seemed like a crouched, huddled figure, every corner concealed some dreadful shape"

He also hears the sound of despairing sobbing behind a door and discovers later that a boy, badly beaten, had been found hanging from a beam in a locked room.  The next morning, he cannot find the door.  It has vanished.

James manages to trace his original birthplace, Kittiscar Hall in Scotland,  but when he visits he finds it, and the surrounding village, deserted.  Nobody will go near the house. His surviving relative has died and left him the property and he decides to make his home there to the horror of the local vicar (Mem: While I understand that in order for the narrative to progress it is necessary for secrecy to abound, there are times when you just wish that somebody, anybody, would tell the hero why he should not set foot in the place instead of pussyfooting around with 'I would not recommend it' and 'strange things happen here' and remarks of that sort, but then of course we would not have a story)

I digress.  James is in the house and, once again at night, when most of us know full well that this is the worse possible time to visit a ruined chapel, decides to do so.  He discovers that it is full of the tombstones of all the Monmouth males and on the wall a memorial to none other than Conrad Vane of Kittiscar.  As he realises what it is that has been pursuing him and causing him to live his life in fear he hears a sound and 'turning, saw the door of the chapel which I had left open, begin slowly to close'.  He is locked in and sees a dark shadowy figure watching him:

"He was standing in the open entrance to the crypt......I knew him, knew him from the seductive, smiling expression of decadence and silken cunning, knew him for my tormentor and betrayer....'"

So, no more - please read this book for yourself and, once again, be prepared to be scared witless.  It makes a wonderful companion read to The Woman in Black.  It has the same darkness, rain, fog, lights shining in pools of light on pavements, gas lamps, squalor, and over it all a brooding sadness.

Don't forget what I said about reading it in daylight.  Of course, if you choose to read this late at night, then there is nothing I can do to stop you....