Random Jottings

Springtime ramble

I say Springtime but I am currently sitting on my sofa with a heated throw over my legs and lap and feeling cold. Seems to take longer and longer each year before the cold weather departs and the warmth comes.  The mornings are nice and sunny and then by midday the cloud comes in and the temperature drops.

Easter was bitterly cold and I spent most of it hunkering down indoors with some chocolates which I decided was essential and reading.   I stumbled upon a 99p special offer for Kindle by an author called Rachel Lucas and ended up reading my way through all that she has published. I suppose I should call them chick lit as they are clearly marketed in that category, but I always feel this sounds a trifle slighting. Yes they are romantic with a happy ending but they are very well written with interesting and funny characters and I loved every single one. They got me through the Easter week beautifully,

I have a few books to read for review on my pile all of which look interesting,

First up, Queen Victoria and her Prime Ministers by Anne Somerset. No doubt some future historian will write about Elizabeth II and her Prime Ministers as the numbers are pretty similar. Of course, we know nothing about the late Queen's thoughts about her Ministers as these
meetings are kept secret, but Queen V was far less discreet and had no compunction in saying what she thought. I am looking forward to this one.

I am Not afriad of Looking into the Rifles - Women of the Resistance in World War one by Rick Stroud. While this is an interesting subject and one which attracts me, I have started reading it and not quite sure about it. I am finding the style slightly offputting but I shall continue and see how I get on.

The Invention of Charlotte Bronte: Her last years and the scandal that made her by Graham Watson.  I will read anything on the Brontes and am enjoying this but am slightly puzzled by the strap line the scandal that made her. I presume this is a reference to Jane Eyre which was regarded as a shocking book when it was published, but not sure  that this is relevant to the area covered by this book. Mrs Gaskell features prominently as she and Charlotte became great friends and I find myself warming to her. In fact, I have just picked up a second hand paperback by Jenny Uglow on Mrs Gaskell as she seems to me an interesting woman.

I am off to London tomorrow for a few days and as I will be with family and grandchildren I shall probably not have much reading time but I always take a book with me in the vain hope that I can open it...

Back soon.

 

Agnes Grey/The Professor - Anne and Charlotte Bronte

Regular readers of Random will remember that I am very fond of Anne Bronte. I think she was undervalued, not only by her family, but by the reading public. Facts about her are scant and hard to find but last year Nick Holland produced a wonderful biography which I reviewed here for Shiny New Books, and it was wonderful to find somebody else who thought she was such a marvellous person, both in her domestic and her writing life.

Anne was a stayer, she got on with things and kept her unhappiness and sadness to herself. No Emily like histrionics from her, no angst like Charlotte, she kept it under control and so she is less thought of and appreciated.  This book, Agnes Grey, proves her doggedness and determination to forge a life for herself as did the author despite the opposition of her family who thought of her as 'poor Anne' and 'gentle Anne' an attitude fostered by Charlotte. I have my own thoughts about that and you can read them here.

Agnes Grey is autobiographical. How could it be anything else? Agnes is the daughter of a clergyman and sets out to prove the is not the child her parents think she is, but a woman capable of looking after herself and she seeks employment as a governess. Now I am not sure what the average life of a governess is like (I have read a very interesting book by Kathryn Hughes on this subject), but I do feel that the Brontes seems to have been very unlucky in their employers who all seem to have ghastly children who terrorise their governesses and make their lives a misery.

The difficulties Agnes faces are rather difficult to believe, so awful are her charges, but as Charlotte was pretty astringent about her governessing, one has to assume that they are telling the truth. Agnes suffers and is ill treated and unhappy. But she soldiers on, finds love and has a happy ending unlike her real life story.

I like this book. It is a quiet understated but powerful piece of writing.  If you have not discovered Anne Bronte before you are in for a treat. And after this, go on to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall about which I could wax lyrical and often do.

The Professor by Charlotte Bronte was written after Charlotte's return from Brussels where she had fallen disastrously in love with Monsieur Heger. One feels this was written as a catharsis, something to ease her misery as her love was certainly not reciprocated and had, in fact, caused some alarm in the Pensionnat so intense were her feelings and actions.

It was turned down many times. In order to save paper and cost Charlotte send the manuscript to publisher after publisher using the same paper every time, simply crossing out the old address and adding a new one, so each publishing house she approached could see the number of rejections it had already received. Eventually it was put to one side and forgotten and she turned her attention to Jane Eyre.

I freely admit this is not a favourite Bronte of mine. It is written in the first person and that person is male. William Crimworth is an orphan and refuses his uncle's proposal that he becomes a clergyman and decided to accept a position as a teacher in a boy's school in Brussels. He also teaches at a girl's school nearby and becomes involved with Mademoiselle Reuter who Charlotte portrays as manipulative and sly.

This book is really an earlier version of Villette which is an incredibly powerful book - Charlotte had found her voice and her confidence after the success of Jane Eyre - and in  the portrayal of a sly and manipulative headmistress barring the way to the Monsieur who is the object of Charlotte's affections or, as in Villette, Lucy Snow, she is clearly getting her own back.  Whether these portrayals are true or not is a matter for debate but I have always thought they were wildly exaggerated as Charlotte was so besotted with Monsieur Heger she was willing to blame his indifference towards her to the machinations of his wife.

The Professor is an odd book. It is rather awkward as Charlotte is trying to put herself in the mind of a man and act accordingly and sometimes it does not quite ring true. But a Charlotte Bronte book which is slightly less good that her others is still streets ahead of many others and it makes a fascinating read.  And in the Professor Charlotte allows her hero a happy ending which she withholds or leaves in doubt in Villette.

Both these charming editions are from Alma Classics who often send me such delights and I am most grateful to them for their generosity. They are well produced, good covers, not too over the top and not too commercial, just right and contain notes on the texts and a select bibliography.. They look rather good on my Bronte shelves.

Jane Eyre - Reader I married him. Random Thoughts

Everyone is writing about Charlotte at the moment as it is 200 years since she was born and, as I have been fascinated by the Brontes since a teenager, see my last post, I am remembering my first reading of Jane Eyre.

I was a frequent visitor to my junior library and such an avid reader that Mrs Collins, the librarian, let me take out two books on each ticket instead of one. Probably to keep me away for a day or so but whatever the reason I was grateful to her. I was there when she put out a new batch of books and there, in the pile, was a little book with a red cover, Jane Eyre. It fitted into my hand and I loved the fresh new pages and the compact size of it and decided it was for me. Mrs Collins tried to deter me pointing out that it was probably a bit old for me and a bit difficult (so what is it doing in a junior library then was my response) and I took it home determined to prove her wrong. It was a Classic and made me feel very grown up.

And I struggled with it. Of course I did. But the story of the wicked stepmother, as I saw Mrs Reed, her ghastly children and their treatment of Jane got to me and by the time she was sent to Lowood I was hooked. I will admit to finding Helen Burns a bit much to take, bit too saintly and long suffering (Esther in Bleak House another one) but she was good to Jane and they loved each other and oh how I cried when she died.

The second half of the book passed me by - after all I was only eleven but I remember finding it rather overwhelming and came back to it a few years later and then, oh my goodness, I was pinned to my sofa or bed or wherever I was reading at the time, and could not put it down. The scene in the orchard in the evening when she cries out to Rochester that just because she is poor and plain does not mean she does not have feelings or a soul like he and claims equality with him.

I got goosebumps all over when I read that and I still do no matter how many times I have read the book, and I have read it many many times throughout my life (am planning another read very soon) and, to me, it is one of the most powerful moments in all literature. At the time of my early reads it did not really sink in just how empowering that cry was and just how shocking it would have been at the time of publication. It was classified as a 'naughty' book and mothers kept it away from their daughters, not so much because of the fact that Jane was in love with a married man, but I suspect more because of the dangerous precedent set in that she believes she is equal to a man.

Of course, when you read more of Charlotte's work you realise that she is Jane, that the anger and frustration of being a woman and circumscribed by her life and status comes pouring out of her while writing. Her own love for Paul Heger in Brussels which brought her to the edge of a nervous breakdown, the return to her bleak home full of heartbreak and sorrow, well how anybody cannot be affected by her life and her writing is difficult to understand.

Jane Eyre brought her fame and fortune and access to the wider life she yearned for and yet, if you read further about her life and her letters, it seems to me that she never really found happiness. It always eluded her until the very end with her marriage to Arthur Bell Nicols which seemed a very sober affair with very little expectation of the married state. But as the months passed and she came to appreciate her loving husband, contentment entered her life and it is simply heartbreaking to read that when she was so ill and dying she woke one night to find her husband praying and weeping and said:

'Oh I am not going to die am I? Not when we have been so happy'

I have a lump in my throat when writing this. It always affects me.

This was the book that really started my adult reading life and remains firmly as one of my favourite books - ever.

Random on the Brontes and how I touched Charlotte's wedding veil

2016  is the two hundredth anniversary of Charlotte Bronte's birth and it is impossible to escape this fact as articles, programmes and opinions on her and her sisters are all over the place at the moment. I, therefore, decided that I could not miss out on the current surge of interest in all things Bronte, and here are my thoughts for what they are worth.

I have been fascinated by the Brontes since I was in my teens when I worked at Highgate Library, a wonderful Carnegie building opposite the Cemetery. Great place to work and I got to know so many of the readers and their interests. One regular, Leslie Smith (I have never forgotten his name), was a real Bronte enthusiast and I remember him reserving a book called Man of Sorrow by Lock and Dixon, a biography of Patrick Bronte, and his delight when it was his turn to collect a copy. We had quite a chat about it when he returned it and once the waiting list had ended I took it home myself. Jane Eyre had long been one of my favourite books but I knew very little about the family and thought this would be a good place to start.

And so began my fascination with all things Bronte. No need for me to tell you anything about them at all or their life in Haworth, as so many wonderful biographies have been written about each and all of them, the latest being one by Clare Harman on Charlotte which revealed even more about the sisters and I thought I knew most of it.  I joined the Bronte Society and one summer day caught the train up to Leeds, then a connection to Keighley and then a bus to Haworth. I remember the excitement I felt as the bus trundled along through the fairly uninteresting Keighley, through to various villages and then through the Dales and then up the cobbled hill which was quite a pull. Nowadays buses do not attempt to mount this steep gradient and a road has built round the village. Good thing for those of us who remember coming down the hill on the top of a double decker bus.  After that ride the Big Dipper holds no fears.

I attended the lecture and remember that it was given by Margaret Lane, a well known biographer of that time, who had also written a book on Beatrix Potter. My main thought was how glam she was, blonde and elegant and such a good speaker. Afterwards we all repaired to the church hall where the most sumptuous tea was spread out. No delicate cucumber sandwiches here, but great slices of parkin and fruit bread, scones, cakes and buns and steaming urns of tea. It was wonderful and I reeled out about an hour later totally stuffed to the gills.

I spent the weekend roaming around Haworth and walking on the moors and seeing the Parsonage. As I was staying very close I made sure that I was one of the first visitors one morning and avoided the crowds. I had the place to myself as I was on the doorstep waiting for the museum to open and oh my goodness, how to describe my feelings as I walked into the parlour where the sisters use to write and work, there was the table they used to walk around and the room felt as if they would come in at any moment. The bedrooms were tiny and the upstairs study even smaller and how they must have fitted in I do not know.  I remember going through the entire house in a state of bemusement and only left when the first hordes arrived and the peace was shattered.

I was staying five minutes walk away at a Bed and Breakfast run by Mrs Scarborough. Her husband had died the year before and she had decided to take in guests to help with her income and to keep her busy. I was one of her first visitors and she was very nervous but an absolute sweetie. One evening she invited me into her living room and we had tea and she got chatting and told me that her great great great, not sure how many greats, aunt had been a servant at the Parsonage which threw me somewhat. She told me tales and stories that had been passed down the family via this connection and then finally said 'I have something upstairs to show you, I am sure you will be interested' and brought down a cardboard box, put it on my lap and told me to look inside. I opened the lid and wrapped in layers of tissue paper was a square of lace. 'Go on take it out' she said. So I did. It was very small and very old and very fine. 'That's Charlotte Bronte's wedding veil' said Mrs Scarborough at which point I nearly passed out with excitement.   She told me that it had been in her keeping for years and when I gently suggested that it might be a good idea to give it to the Bronte Society and Museum so it could be preserved, snorted indignantly 'Wouldn't give that lot anything' she said and wrapped it up and put it away again.  There was quite a lot of resentment and resistance to the Society then and I gather, now, as many of those living in Haworth felt they had taken over without consultation and they rather resented it.

I did not visit Haworth again for some time - I left the Bronte Society as, with apologies to any sane members who may read this, I found the majority of them slightly weird. In fact, they were barking and many of them were obsessed with either Cathy from Wuthering Heights or else thought they were reincarnations of Emily. One women pinned me to the wall and told me in great detail how she had been Emily in another life at which stage I decided perhaps it was best to leave.

When I did go back I found that Mrs Scarborough had died but when I went through the Parsonage again and into the exhibition room at the back I spotted the wedding veil, on display, and with a small placard saying that it had been given to the Museum by Mrs Scarborough. I do hope that I might have had something to do with her change of mind.

Incidentally, her husband was the village blacksmith and made the sign that hangs outside the Parsonage today and every time I visit, and I have been back several times, I look at the veil and the sign and remember that very kind lady who looked after me so well when I first visited Haworth, bursting with excitement and awe......