Random Jottings

Amos Barton

This is one of George Eliot's Scenes of a Clerical Life, the others being Janet's Repentance which I posted about here, the other Mr Gilfil's Secret which is next on my list.

These are among Eliot's earliest works and, indeed, Amos Barton was her first work of narrative fiction.  Its full title then was 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton' and it was published, unsigned, in the 1857 edition of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.  It was a year later that it, and the other two I have just mentioned, were collected together published as one book.

Amos Barton is a curate sent to assist at Shepperton Church. The vicar of Shepperton gave £80 a year as an annual stipend to his curate and given that Amos was married with six children and who was 'obliged to always exhibit himself when outside his own door in a suit of black broadcloth'  poverty looms.  He is not a charismatic man and lacks personality and charm and is not overly popular with his parishioners though he does his limited best.  He does, however, have a lovely charming wife, Milly, which makes people look on him more kindly.

'She was a lovely woman Mrs Amos Barton, a large fair gentle madonna with thick, close chestnut curls beside her well-rounded cheeks and with large tender, short sighted eyes.  The flowing lines of her tall figure made the limpest dress look graceful..... happy the man whose eye will rest on her in the pauses of his fireside reading......Amos was an affectionate husband  and, in his way, valued his wife as his best treasure"

Amos and Milly have been taken up as friends by the Countess Czerlaski who now resides with her half-brother in Shepperton, having been widowed in her thirties.  She is on the look out for another husband, but has begun to feel that there is very little likelihood of this happening.  She has a limited income and relies on her brother to house her.  They entertain the Bartons and Amos has spoken of his admiration of her to fellow clergymen, who are secretly rather contemptuous of his outpourings.  There is gossip in the village that perhaps she is not really a Countess and that her brother is not a blood relation at all, but worse.  After a quarrel with her brother who has decided to marry the Countess's maid, she decamps and goes to live with the Bartons at the vicarage.  Their poverty stricken existence becomes worse as she makes no payment for her board and lodging and gradually those parishioners who would help the Bartons in their financial difficulties, fall by the wayside as rumours of a scandalous nature begin to surface. It is even hinted that Amos helps the Countess on with her stockings in the morning.  Amos is aware of the change of feeling towards him but he could hardly hint a departure to his guest and he felt some indignation towards those who would think evil of him.

Eventually the Countess leaves having had an argument with the maid of all work who is not backward in telling her what she thinks of her behaviour and, as Milly is pregnant with her seventh child and ill, the neighbours begin to thaw towards the Bartons and help them once more.  However, the damage has been done and Amos lost the opportunity of moving to a better living because of the scandal.  It is almost inevitable that Milly and the baby die and that Amos is told his curacy is at an end and has to seek employment elsewhere just when he has found friends and assistance among his flock.

In many ways this is a bleak little book full of sorrow and trouble, with a hero not designed to appeal to the imagination or to find a place in the reader's heart, and yet I found myself drawn into this little gem as I had with Janet's Repentance.  It is clear that no matter how noble a woman George Eliot was, how respected for her intelligence and intellectual ability and how contemptuous she was of a society that would exclude her, she really yearned to be part of it and to be accepted.  In both these books we have a 'fallen woman' treated badly. With Janet she redeemed herself by nursing her brutal, drunken husband.  Here, the Countess is forced to leave Shepperton by the gossip and scandal.  We have another such woman, beyond the pale, in Daniel Deronda which I will write about another time. GE uses her writing to say what she thinks of the way her heroines and, of course, herself have been treated.

As always, beautifully and scrupulously written, no words wasted and somehow she makes the reader warm to Amos and feel for him and his poor orphaned children with the the eldest child, Patty being left with the responsibility of taking care of her father.  It is a melancholy ending. Amos goes to bid farewell to his wife at her grave as he knows he has to leave:

"Milly Milly dost thou hear me?  I didn't love thee enough, I wasn't tender enough to thee, but I think of it all now"   The sobs came and choked his utterance and the warm tears fell.

and then the last page:

Years later he visited the grave again, this time he held on his arm a 'young woman, with a sweet grave face which strongly recalled the expression of Mrs Barton's .  Amos himself was much changed, his thin circlet of hair was nearly white and his walk was no longer firm and upright.  But his glance was clam and even cheerful and his linen told of a woman's care.  Milly did not take all her love from he earth when she died.  She had left some of it in Patty's heart.

I will admit to a tear in the eye when reading this last page.  A slim book, in which really nothing of great moment happens, but written with great understanding and sympathy.  I liked it very much indeed.

Get a load of this cover....

I have an old Crime Club copy of this book with this dustjacket.  I have just finished reading it, one of Dame Ngaio's theatrical themed murders, this time Mary Bellamy an ageing jealous actress, dies a ghastly death, poisened with Slaypest, a lethal spray which she uses on her azealas.  Simply great stuff but this cover is utterly wonderful.  Lurid, sensationalist and the dead body on the front only resembles the victim in that she is wearing a red dress and diamonds.  Classic.

Eye or Ear?

I have read a very interesting post over on Table Talk earlier today Another Sunday Salon .

A student was looking at "the extent to which the format of a narrative affects the audience; more precisely at whether our emotions are engaged more by a written text or by an audio format.  One interesting, if tentative, result was that while an audio book tended to provoke new emotions, the written format was more likely to evoke emotional memories".

This set me thinking. I have a great deal of difficulty listening to audio books.  I have tried to work out why and I think where I come a cropper is that I find the vocal attributes of the person reading can really get in my way if I feel they are not suited to the story.   This is not just audio books but listening to books read on the radio or dramatic adaptations, again on radio, of books I know and love. 

A few examples: two or three years ago Radio 4 produced a semi-dramatised, semi-read version of Diary of a Provincial Lady one of my most favourite books in the world, and Imelda Staunton was the eponymous heroine.  I felt her slightly elliptic breathless delivery suited this book well, but still could not wholly engage and was much happier reverting to the actual print later.  On another occasion I listened to cassettes of one of my favourite children's books, The Little White Horse.  This was read by Miriam Margolis, a wonderful actress, but she was just so wrong for this reading and when she tried to put on a masculine voice for Sir Benjamin, I had to switch off.  It just did not fit.

A happier occasion when I was lying in bed recovering from flu many years ago, was the complete unabridged reading of Persuasion read by Juliet Stevenson.  She was simply perfect and I took enormous pleasure in listening to her reading of the entire book. So, for me it seems to be that if the voice does not fit then I cannot enjoy the book. I find when reading my imagination can run riot, I build a picture of the hero and heroine (it is quite distressing how often Colin Firth and Alan Rickman persist in popping up with Richard Armitage in their wake) but mostly it is a composite picture in my mind.  I can imagine what the house looks like where they live, the countryside, the sea, whatever, one's imagination can run riot and there is no narrative speaking voice getting between me and the story. 

Many many moons ago when I was young and green and in my salad days, I read through the Whiteoaks series written by Mazo de la Roche featuring the saga of the Whiteoaks family over generations.  My sister was reading them also (recently I came across a few of these at a book sale, picked one up and realised it was now unreadable which was a shame) and one night we were sitting down discussing the characters and Jalna, the family house.  First up, we had a very heated argument as to the layout of the house. 'No Adelaide's room is at the end of the corridor on the left' 'Oh, no don't be silly, she is in the west wing' we argued about the colour of the carpets, how the garden was laid out, whether the characters were tall, short, fair haired, red headed, big nose, little nose etc.  We were both amazed at how totally different our perceptions of the book had been and our imaginary scenes we had built up while reading. I have to say that this book cover on the left bears no resemblance to my idea of Jalna at all either!

This is why I will always prefer reading a book rather than listening.  I know full well that there is nothing stopping my imagination running riot while listening and still creating my own images, but it is odd how I find somebody else's voice intrusive and this seems to stop me in my tracks.

I am sure I am being wildly rambling in this post as it is quite hard to define just precisely what it is that causes me this problem, so my apologies.  I would really be most interested to hear what others think about this.

Main reason to be thankful of course, is that I have all my faculties about me (my daughters my disagree of course...).  I may feel differently if my sight goes later on in life and I have to rely upon the voice rather than the eye.

PS - I noted in the Radio Times this week that Celia Imrie is reading one of my favourite Georgette Heyer books on Radio 4 next week, Arabella, so I will have to give this a chance and see how I get on with that one.  I already have my own view on how Mr Beaumaris looks so we shall see....

Wednesday Letter

Charlotte Bronte - 23 December 1848 to to Ellen Nussey

Dear Ellen

Emily suffers no more from pain or weakness now. She never will suffer more in this world.  She is gone after a hard, short conflict.  She died on Tuesday, the very day I wrote to you.  I thought it possible then that she might be with us still for weeks and a few hours afterwards she was in Eternity - yes, there is no Emily in Time or on Earth now. Yesterday we put her poor wasted mortal frame quietly under the Church pavement.   We are very calm at present, why should we be otherwise?  The anguish of seeing her suffer is over, the spectacle of the pains of death is gone by, the funeral day is past, we feel she is at peace.  No need to tremble for the hard frost and keen wind, Emily does not feel them.  She has died in a time of promise, we saw her torn from life in its prime, but it is God's will and the place where she is gone is better than that she has left.

God has sustained me in a way I marvel at through such agony as I had not conceived.  I now look at Anne and wish she were well and strong but she is neither, nor is papa.  Could you now come to us for a few days?  I would not ask you to stay long.  Write and tell me if you can come next week.......you will I trust find us tranquil.

Try to come, I never so much needed the consolation of a friend's presence.  Pleasure of course there would be none for you in the visit, except what your kind heart would teach you to find in doing good to others

C Bronte

In a short period of nine months Charlotte suffered the death of Branwell, Emily and Anne.  It is impossible to read these letters without a lump in the throat.

Hector and moi

Here we go with another of my favourite composers, of which there are many.  On this occasion it is Hector Berlioz whose music I was ipodding on the train this morning.

HB can vary wildly.  Bombastic is a word quite often used to describe his output.  Grande Messe de Morts, massed choirs, orchestras, etc etc is a crashing bore.  Well, I think so but am prepared to be excoriated for this.  His Te Deum is just totally over the top.  I do love this piece however, as it was the very first thing I sang when I joined a choir many moons ago.  Full of gorgeous tunes and a lovely solo for a tenor and in rehearsal with a piano it all sounded fairly understated.  Then we met up with the orchestra at the Albert Hall and heard the full force of the orchestral playing backed up by the Albert Hall organ (remember we were sitting in the choir so the thundering and shaking of the organ reverberated through the ground beneath our feet).  We had been told there was a boy's choir joining in as well.  Turned out the be the Haberdasher Aske choir, very well known and very good, and when they came in with the most amazing sound I have ever heard every collective hair stood on end. 

I also remember with this piece that we did an extra performance in a large cavernous church somewhere in London and it was so cold we were all numb.  I ended up wearing tights, trousers over which went a long velvet skirt, a black polo neck sweater and a waistcoat and gloves.  Of course, by the end of the performance when we were singing away and had warmed up layers of garments were shed by the bucket load.  I have a great fondness still for the Te Deum however, even if I find it difficult to listen to now.

And you should hear his version of the Marseillaise which I also sang in concert.  HB threw in everything but the kitchen sink, pretty sure if I had looked I would have found it there.  Love this picture I found entitled 'A Berlioz Concert' which just about sums it up really.

Not all HB is loud and bombastic however.  L'Enfance du Christ quite wonderful; the Romeo and Juliet tone poem, particularly the balcony scene, totally ravishing and his song cycle Nuit D'ete which is what I had on my journey into town today.  La Spectre de la Rose particularly beautiful.

My favourite Berlioz is the Symphonie Fantastique.  This has five movements and tells a story. First movement, Reveries, is the lover thinking of the woman he adores; second movement is At the Ball when he sees his love dancing with another, a simply gorgeous waltz tune here; third movement In the Country, he is lying on a hill musing and he sees her pass by, in the distance a rumble of thunder presaging unease and menace is heard (very very eerie moment); fourth movement March to the Gallows, he has killed his lover and is being marched to his execution, the drums roll and just before the final crashing of the guillotine the theme, the idee fixee, of his lover is heard.  Final movement is a demonic Witch's Sabbath after his death and is a tour de force for the orchestra culminating in a shattering finale where the sound of the orchestra feels as if it is being dragged out with giant like rumbling sounds.

Many moons ago I was present at a performance I will never forget.  I have mentioned before how, sometimes, you can attend a concert, opera whatever and there is a moment when the conductor raises his baton and he knows, the cast/orchestra knows, everyone in the venue knows that suddenly there is going to be magic.  I have heard seasoned conductors be interviewed about this and saying that it is unexplainable, they do not know when it is going to happen, but when it does it is unforgettable.  This occasions was such an one.  I was standing in the arena at a Prom concert at the Albert Hall back in 1968, and I was literally some ten feet from the orchestra.  It was a Saturday night and the hall was packed as there was a visiting orchestra, Amsterdam Concertgebouw conducted by Bernard Haitink.  He raised his baton, flicked a glance over the orchestra and a hush fell and we knew it was going to be one of THOSE occasions.

Suffice it to say the effect was simply sensational.  From the Reveries through to the Witches Sabbath, with a chilling drum roll in the March to the Gallows, the audience was transfixed.  I found myself at the end standing on tip toe and clasping both my hands tightly together and when the final brass resounded throughout the Hall the audience as one, leaped to their feet and simply yelled. There was such an explosion of sound that members of the orchestra at the front were, literally, knocked backwards.  The applause went on and on and on with the orchestra laughing in delight and sheer amazement at their reception and even after the stage was empty and they had all left, nobody had moved.  In the end Bernard Haitink came back on stage, clutching a whiskey, tie undone and looking shattered and made the most delightful little off the cuff speech to the audience.  We all ended up singing For He's a Jolly Good Fellow and he finally exited, almost in tears.

Outside, it was a beautiful warm summer's night and the coaches taking the orchestra back to their hotels had to slowly make their way between rows of cheering shouting Promenaders. I went round to the stage door and waited and gradually the crowds thinned out but I still waited.  Ended up with just half a dozen of us when after an hour out came Maestro Haitink himself.  He must have been exhausted, but he stayed and talked to us for about 15 minutes and thanked us for the tremendous reception and how wonderful it had all been, signed progs etc.  Lovely man and I have adored him ever since.

The following Sunday on Omnibus (these were the day when the Beeb regularly showed Proms on the popular channels) they showed this performance.  I had wondered if its extraordinary intensity would come across on the screen but it did.  I remember the commentator, Richard Baker, saying how difficult it was to convey to the TV audience 'the incredible feeling that was in the Hall' so it obviously affected everyone.

An evening I have never forgotten as you can see and later on I went to a concert where I heard Bernard Haitink conduct Mahler 2 which I had never heard before and another love was born.  But that is for another day.....

Death in a White Tie

Finding work tiring at the moment and am still not 100% so a quiet sit down and post this evening while listening to the evening concert on Radio 3 which has just finished with a Schubert Octet played by the Nash Ensemble.  Sheer delight and very soothing to the soul.

I have been re-reading Ngaio Marsh who as many of you know is one of my favourite detective writers.  I have blogged about her here and make no excuse to posting about her one more time.  Death in a White Tie is, I think, one of her best in her not inconsiderable output.  It was published in 1938 and set during The Season, full of gay young debutantes and men about town knocking back the whiskey and soda, twisting their mustaches and eying up the young 'gels'.  There is a blackmailer at work in the midst of all this gaiety and fear and suspicion lurks underneath the glittering surface of the social comings and goings.

The central part of the book, the murder and the setting, is a ball given by Sir and Lady Carrados for their daughter Bridget.  At this event, the protagonists come and go, up and down stairs, in and out of rooms, ballrooms and buffet, meeting and separating, dancing and weaving in and out of each other's company. The reader feels as if he or she are witnessing a stately dance and close to the end of the book we realise this is a deliberate device as Alleyn:

"...saw the protagonists as a company of dancers moving in a figure so elaborate and the pattern of their measure was almost lost in the confusion of individual gestures....to and fro the figures swam more and more dizzily, faster and faster until the confusion was intolerable.  Then with terrifying abruptness, they were stricken into immobility and Alleyn in a single flash, saw the pattern of the dance"

I find this book rather touching as the victim, Lord Robert Gospell, is a delightful personality, loved by all and a friend of Alleyn.  It is the Ngaio story where she allows her hero to be seen at his most vulnerable as he is also in love with Troy and uncertain of what will happen.  He is alone and faintly despairing but must bring all his finesse and personality to solving the crime.

Wonderful list of characters given at the start of the story.  Ngaio Marsh always does this and I rejoice heartily in the names and descriptions:

• Lady Evelyn Carrados - a London hostess (wonderful job description!)
• Lord Robert Gospell - a relic of Victorian days
• Sir Daniel Davidson - a fashionable London physician
• Mrs Halcut-Hackett - a social climber
• General Halcut-Hackett - her husband
• Captain Maurice Withers - a Man about Town
• Colombi Dimitri - a fashionable caterer
• Lucy, Dower Marchioness of Lorrimer - an eccentric old lady
• Mr Cuthbert - Manager of The Matador (clearly a Dive...)

Isn't that a simply marvelous collection and doesn't it wet your appetite and make you want to read the book?  We are in the same world of course as Lord Peter Wimsey, which I have written about in previous posts, and have mentioned the similarities between him and Roderick Alleyn, their love for a woman who at first does not seem to reciprocate, their struggle before they win their respective brides, their refinement of spirit and appreciation of beauty and art.   Critics of Dorothy Sayers used to say she fell in love with her creation and became besotted with him.  Can't help but feel that Ngaio Marsh did the same with her Roderick Alleyn.

My discovery of Lord Peter was many years after my discovery of Roderick but I love them both dearly and find them totally fascinating.  Never could understand why Harriet Vane and Agatha Troy pussyfooted around so much with two such gorgeous men in love with them. 

Wish I had had such a choice I can tell you.  I would have snapped one of them pretty darn quick.

Monday Ramblings of a Musical Kind

Back on the 7.37 am train this morning and back to the old iPod.  I am beginning to wonder how I survived the commute without this wonderful little gadget in my handbag.  While it is quiet and I read my paper all is well, but as soon as we get to Chelmsford and the train fills up and the mobile phone inane conversazione begins, it turns into my lifesaver as I use it to block everything out.  According to a survey carried out some time ago, the music best suited to listen to while on a train or plane is Mozart or Beethoven.  Now I would very much like to know just what percentage of travellers actually do tune into Wolfgang or Ludwig.  Not many on my line I feel.  Most Colchester-London commuters with the ear phones in seem to have a permanently dazed expression on their faces while jogging up and down, banging their knees in time to the music or thumping the floor with their feet.  The rhythms they are displaying certainly do not sound like the aforementioned composers.  As I can usually hear the tinny drum beat as well it is odds on that they are listening to something completely different.

So this morning when the usual irritants started, in I plugged and decided that Ludwig was my choice for the Monday morning trek.  I decided to listen to his Fifth Symphony.  When building up my post divorce record collection again (I was not allowed to take a single CD away with me.......a sore point still) I was fairly indiscriminate in my choice of CD, finance tended to point me towards the cheaper end of the market and I ended up with a pretty eclectic bunch of orchestras and conductors performing the symphonies and piano concertos etc.  I ended up with a performance of the Fifth and Seventh by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Carlos Kleiber (I have managed to avoid the ubiquitous Herbert von Karajan even though he recorded each cycle about five times and was in charge of Berlin Phil for yonks) which is simply stunning.  Each time I listened to it I was totally overwhelmed by the way it was driven forward, the momentum achieved and the incredible brass sound which just makes your hair stand on end.

A few months ago Radio 3 was doing the Fifth in its CD collection and recommendation so I decided to listen out of curiosity as I certainly had no intention of purchasing a new one, and lo and behold, it turned out that this was the recording that stood head and shoulders over every other one (well, according to the Beeb anyway), and apparently had also been recommended ten years ago when they had reviewed the then current recordings.  So I had stumbled by accident on the best one on the market and I am not going to argue with Radio 3 about that.  Oddly enough, the recommendation ten years ago was by one Richard Osborne who used to reduce me to hysterics with his poncy reviews.  He used to write for the Gramophone as well and totally adored Herbert von Karajan and became positively oleaginous in his praise for him and the Berlin Phil.  I well remember his writing about the 'grieving strings of the Berlin Philharmonic' and the 'luminosity of his conducting'.

He produced a biography of Karajan which was quite stomach churning in its I-am-not-fit-to-breath-the-same-air-as-this-genius manner and it is quite interesting to read a review of this book and his chats with the Great Man and note what is said in a review I just checked out:

''Conversations With von Karajan'' is a thin and disappointing volume. In a way it's a double portrait, of the subject as hero and the questioner as hero-worshiper. Just over half the book's pages are devoted to the interviews; the rest go to photographs of varying interest, to footnotes and to Mr. Osborne's tendentious preface and introductory profile. The footnotes are detailed, but sometimes irrelevant (there's one about how Simon Rattle and Karajan never met) and sometimes wrong (at one point Karajan talks about one film version of Mozart's ''Don Giovanni'' and Mr. Osborne in the footnote talks about another). It is amusing to read Mr. Osborne's attempt to depict the unpretentiousness of Karajan's Salzburg household, despite the presence in the garden of ''three llamas and a charming old donkey that once appeared in Carmen.''

and

"He is an obsequious conversationalist, addressing Karajan in a tone the conductor apparently accepted as only his due (''you are the first conductor in history to use film as an integral extension of your work as an interpretive artist'').

When one takes agin somebody, you look back and think 'well was he really that bad, perhaps I over-reacted' and then I read these reviews and remember just how dreadful he was.  I also remember reading a letter from a Gramophone reader saying 'how grateful and humble he felt that Richard Osborne was put on this earth to educate us in the fine art of Karajan'. 

This really is a rambling post which has just gone on from the Beethoven Fifth and may be of interest to nobody but I have enjoyed writing it.  It is the centenary of Karajan's birth this year and the shops are once more full of recordings, CDs, book and DVD's of The Great Man.  I have quite a few of his recordings and under his baton there is no doubt that Karajan was a great conductor.  Trouble was his personality and ego just got in the way of the music and after a while this became a severe irritant.  I have recently read an article by Norman Lebrecht which makes my strictures seem somewhat mild so that makes me feel better!

And as a footnote, my other Beethoven symphony recordings are mainly Klemperer, Muti, Solti and Colin Davis so I have a pretty good mix there.  If it is noisy tonight I shall listen to more Beethoven, and going home commute usually is with endless reports home to various partners of where the traveller is currently located. 'I'm at Chelmsford'.  Ten minutes later 'Oh I have just reached Witham' and so on and on and one until we arrive at Colchester.  'I'm in Colchester are you in the car park?  Oh I am just getting off the train now, can you see me"

I kid you not...

Old Friends and New Fancies

Well it is Sunday afternoon and I am still feeling a trifle post-virus and lethargic and not back in my routine, but I must get on with it and start back on Random otherwise I feel I will never post again.  This virus has just knocked me sideways and I have been told it will be a 'few weeks' before I am totally well.  Encouraging words.

Never mind.  Here I am and have spent any reading time I have had over the last week, perusing non-heavyweight intellectual books as my brain is still fuzzy at the edges and I do not have the gumption at the moment for honing my reviewing finger.  So I am writing about a book I came across in Waterstones the other week:  Old Friends and New Fancies by one Sybil G Brinton.  Who she?  Exactly.  Nobody seems to know and the link I have attached here is fairly scathing about this book, which is billed as 'The First Jane Austen Sequel ever created'.  Apparently, it was written in 1913 and was reprinted in 2007, but I had read nothing about it and stumbled across it be sheer accident.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article2358163.ece

I think this reviewer is a bit harsh and humourless about it all as it is obviously written for sheer fun.  I found it to be totally unpretentious, without any of the high flown pastiche that a lot of Austen sequelisers (made that word up) go in for, bar one or two I have enjoyed.  It is all a bit silly and yet, also, intriguing.  All of Austen's characters lived at the same time, were involved in the navy, law and church and so it was likely that they would meet up with each other as they moved in the same circles.

Sybil G Brinton has worked on this premise and so we have Mr and Mrs Darcy with a new curate at the living at Pemberley.  He is James Morland, brother of Catherine (now Mrs Tilney), who falls in love with Kitty Bennett.  However, Kitty who is in many ways similar to her sister Lydia (now in the West Indies with Wickham), rejects him as she has fallen in love with William Price (brother of Fanny now married to Edmund, also friends of the Darcys).  She has been encouraged to believe that he cares for her by Mrs George Knightly with whom Kitty has been staying (Emma still getting it wrong).  BUT, William Price has fallen in love with Darcy's sister Georgiana who was engaged to her cousin Fitzwilliam until they agreed they would not suit.  Fitzwilliam then bumps into Mary Crawford at Bath and promptly falls in love with her.  Tom Bertram also has his eye on Georgiana but is rejected and eventually ends up with Isabella Thorpe, who was briefly engaged to James Morland (see above). 

You can therefore see how totally daft it all is and yet it is written with a deft touch, there is something very innocent about it all and I am sure that any Janeite out there will thoroughly enjoy it.  I found it whiled away a very pleasant afternoon as I lay on my sofa and I can recommend it for sheer fun.

I am being quiet today and have a simmering saucepan of leek and potato soup on the cooker as I write, and am going to put my feet up again soon preparatory to my first full week back at work on Monday.  I am not looking forward to the commute, but it has to be done.  Luckily, as I have said before and will say again, I am working for the nicest man on the planet who keeps telling me 'Elaine you must not overdo it and take it easy'.    Once this contract comes to an end I am going to have a financial rethink and budget and see if I can go part time.  Gosh that would be so wonderful.

In the meantime, back to the office and back into my routine of posting a bit more regularly again.

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend

'A Handbag...?'

Impossible to attend a performance of Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest without the memory of Dame Edith Evans fruity, outraged enunciation of the immortal line above.  It has laid its fell hand upon this play and all actresses playing Lady Bracknell have to find a way of ridding the audience's collective memory of this particular Dame and make it their own.

I have seen it done many times and in various ways and they all work, if the actress is good enough, so it should.  I have the Divine Judi Dench version on DVD (which I may watch again this afternoon as I feel the casting of Rupert Everett and Colin Firth as the male heroes well nigh perfect) and she was, of course, superb but Penelope Keith last night was also excellent.  She surmounted the hurdle of THAT line by not emphasising it all all.  She merely raised an eyebrow and said inquiringly 'A handbag?' as if to say, how odd.  Totally thrown away and probably very sensible too.

Lady B tends to be portrayed as an old dragon but it is worth remembering that she has a daughter, Gwendolyn, who cannot be more than 20 and therefore, is hardly likely to be old enough to be of grandmotherly age which seems to be the norm in her portrayal.. She cannot be more than 45 when you think about it.  This particular characterization appealed to me enormously and I found myself becoming rather fond of Lady B.  She has a clear eye for the benefits of money and position, but is not such a crashing snob that she allows herself to forget that she got where she was today by a good marriage.  She knows she is not aristocratic to the backbone and her delight when she learns that Cicely, who has just become engaged to her nephew Algernon, has '£100,00 in the funds' is very very funny.  However, she maintains she sets no store in the importance of money in a marriage

"When I married Lord Bracknell I had no fortune of any kind.  But I never allowed it to stand in my way"

Priceless.

This play is almost indestructible.  I have seen some slightly less starry efforts in various guises throughout my years of theatre going, but have never found a truly bad performance.  Wilde's lines are, quite simply, impervious to bad acting.  Just saying them seems to lift an indifferent actor into making a huge effort to be better.  I cannot say what pleasure it gave me last night just to sit and listen to superb English, witty and pointed, being delivered so faultlessly.  Full house and half the stalls were filled with a very large party of teenagers and I am going to be honest and say my heart sank when I saw them there  (yes I know, just call me miserable old bag I don't mind) but they confounded my prejudices by listening in rapt silence, punctuated by hoots of laughter and huge cheers and thunderous applause at the end.  A simply delightful evening. 

Grabbed a cab within two minutes of exiting the theatre which was wonderful, thereby catching an earlier train than anticipated and tucked up in bed by 11.30 - not bad going from the West End of London to Colchster in little over an hour and a half.  Glad I took today as holiday though as I feel shattered again and am very glad to rest up.

One of my birthday presents from my elder daughter is the promise of tickets for Dame Judi Dench appearing at the Donmar Warehouse at the end of the year. 'I know you like her mum so thought this would be a good pressy for you'.

Aren't I lucky?

Bijou postette

Taking it easy blogwise this week as I gently ease my way back into work.  Odd how just a few days off and the mind becomes totally disconnected with all things office.  I have a heap of stuff on my desk which I am slowly ploughing through and so am leaving serious posting till weekend.  Tonight I am off to see The Importance of Being Earnest with the redoubtable Penelope Keith as Lady Bracknell so am saving my strength for that.  I was due to take today off as it is my birthday and meet up with friends, but cancelled in the end, thinking that I could probably manage only one treat today.  I have therefore moved my day off to tomorrow so that I can recover after my late night. 

Got home last night and joy to arrive to a lovely clean flat, gleaming taps, and spotless floors and work surfaces.  I felt I had left the place looking a tip, but no point tidying up and cleaning before the cleaning lady arrives though it is a temptation in case she labels me as a slattern.

Sure she has seen far worse.....