A Pumpkin Carving Party

The number of trick or treaters in our group is dwindling but we cling to our tradition of an annual pumpkin carving party.  Aidan was the very picture of concentration.

His sister, Danielle, took a more relaxed approach but she has a few more years of experience behind her.

Anna is at the stage where getting your hands dirty doesn't seem like all that much fun.  Her brother, Luke, is at the stage where being entrusted with a sharp knife is just the coolest thing ever and was thrilled to simply jab at anything.

A bracing walk in the woods behind our hosts' home was just the thing to work up an appetite for dinner.  And the boys were beyond excited to find the skeleton of a fox still bearing its bushy tail...ugh.     

Getting back to the house, the kitchen was a hive of activity whilst everyone sorted out their plates of food, kids going one way while adults went the other.  I love days like this with my friends...and the pumpkin spice cupcakes I baked were a hit as well! 

 Happy Halloween!

The Unborn Dreams of Clara Riley by Kathy Page

'You'll have to be more careful in the sentiments you express, Christine,' says the tall slender woman standing beside her, 'if you don't wish to provoke a riot.  The working classes are not yet ready for the regulation of fertility, I'm afraid.'

It was the green Virago spine that first caught my eye at Skoob Books in Bloomsbury.  The cover art of a tired woman hanging the laundry she takes in for work isn't appealing but the writing most definitely is.

At sixteen, Clara Riley was raped by the son of her wealthy employers.  Her swelling belly is noticed and she's swiftly turned out by the lady of the house with a box of cast-off baby clothes.  Once belonging to her rapist no doubt.  Without means to care for a child, Clara's baby is abandoned on the steps of another wealthy family.  She can only hope his life will be better than hers.

This is Edwardian England but there are no tea parties or yards of muslin for dresses in Clara's life, only hunger, rough hands and hardly a moment of peace.  An offer of marriage from a Bible-quoting man from the working class is accepted but her small sense of security comes with a price.  While many women are happy to bear a child a year with barely enough to live on Clara is not.  Not that she is a woman aspiring to rise above her poor station in life, she simply wants to lead her life free from men's bidding.  And then she discovers she is pregnant.

Mrs Audley Jones supplies Clara with work and some of her cast-off clothing.  She is also actively involved in the suffragette movement and helping women put an end to their unwanted pregnancies.  All highly illegal.  While she is massively forward in her thinking, Mrs Audley Jones is married to the Admiral who is very much a traditionalist.  Thankfully for her, he is away for most of the year and ignorant to her causes. 

Every woman taking part in marches, hunger strikes and protests as a way of achieving liberty could be silenced by two signatures on a document.  An unsympathetic husband and a doctor willing to comply with his wishes was all that was required to lock up a woman in an asylum.  The Admiral is back home, rumours are swirling, the police are making inquiries and the Doctor has been to the house to check on Mrs Audley Jones.  She swiftly decides a course of action and makes plans.  Meanwhile, Clara is on the road to madness due to her lack of choice or say.

The Unborn Dreams of Clara Riley is a riveting read and while the subject matter is frustrating the characters are not.  Kathy Page does an impressive job of depicting the Edwardian era and some of its bleakest moments for women.  This was an interesting and entertaining read so do pick it up if you come across it at a second-hand bookshop and don't let the grim cover put you off!

As It Was by Helen Thomas

"My father introduced us and our eyes met--the boy's solemn grey eyes rather over-shadowed by drooping lids with long lashes.  He did not smile, but looked very steadily at me and I at him as he took my hand with a very hard and long grip.  I remember feeling pleasure in that first touch and thinking "I like him..."

Within a few minutes of meeting Simon at the National Gallery, he handed both Rachel and me a copy of As It Was by Helen Thomas, first published in 1926.  Mary was also included in our blogger meet-up and the four of us jumped into conversation so my book was tucked away.  I had never heard of Edward Thomas or his poetry but the reason to read this book, as I soon found out, is for Helen's stunningly beautiful and open account of her relationship with her future husband.

As a child Helen loved to watch her father smoke cigarettes and sip whisky while he reviewed books and wrote essays.  When he takes David under his wing to go over his writing it isn't long before the two teens are going for long walks in the meadow.  Helen felt she was his intellectual inferior but she loved to learn.  David was very shy but Helen was quick to express her feelings and was quite uninhibited.  Each was exactly what the other needed.  Especially so for Helen when the father she adored died after contracting tuberculosis and her mother turned against her.  I found it heartbreaking to read about the attention Helen's mother heaped onto male boarders while hurling insults at her daughter.  There were a few choice words spinning around in my head for that woman I can tell you.

With David in her life Helen could endure anything.  They shared poetry readings in sunny fields, lazy picnic lunches, letters written every day and nosegays of wildflowers presented at every turn (cowslips feature prominently hence the painting shown above by Ewa Dalecki).  Their courtship is lovely and old-fashioned but eventually they become intimate.  It is fairly clear that it was Helen who initiated their sexual relationship and she writes very openly about their assignations  While professing not to care about convention (it's the late 1800s, after all) I did find it interesting that this aspect was kept secret from even their closest of confidants.  As was likely to happen, eventually Helen falls pregnant and is anguished by David's marriage proposal, seeing it as an impediment to their sense of free love.  But marry they do and the book ends with the birth of their son.

As It Was was written by Helen years after David was killed in France during World War I, as a way to deal with her loss.  When you read her vivid accounts of something as simple as a picnic from years long past you realize that these moments were burned into her memory and her heart.  You could swoon, I promise you!

Helen wrote another book World Without End which follows her marriage and the turmoil of David's/Edward's battle with depression.  It doesn't sound as though it will be nearly as breathtakingly beautiful but if it's anything like As It Was it will be sincere and I'm really looking forward to reading it.

Thank you, Simon, for introducing me to such a remarkable book.  It absolutely deserves its place on your "list of books you must read that you may not have heard about".

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

"The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as on Christmas Eve in an old house a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to note it as the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child."

*Spoilers

Henry James takes the reader through a maze of ambiguity with a story that will leave you none the wiser but better for trying to figure it out.  Also, be prepared to take some time settling in to his writing style of outrageously long sentences and more commas than you can shake a stick at.

The Turn of the Screw opens with friends gathered in front of a roaring fire and sharing ghost stories on Christmas Eve as was tradition during the Victorian era.  Douglas has received a manuscript from his sister's governess upon her death and during this gathering he shares her bizarre and frightening story.

The governess was hired to care for two children, Miles, who is ten and his sister, Flora, who is eight.  Their parents are dead and their uncle basically has no interest in their day to day existence.  Both children are extremely well behaved and attractive so at first glance the position of governess doesn't appear to be a particularly taxing one.  That is until we find out that Miles has been expelled from school for an unspeakable crime which no one will relay anything about.  And then there is the appearance of two figures, Peter Quint, a valet and Miss Jessel, the former governess.  They really shouldn't be showing up at the house as they are quite dead.

The fun bit of the story is trying to solve the riddle about whether or not the governess is absolutely stark raving mad, the children are evil or these three are being terrorized by ghosts.  My initial thought was that perhaps a sinister game was being played on the governess to drive her away.  After all, how many times does this plot present itself in fiction?  Quite regularly.  Further along in the story though, I began to feel the absolute horror and fear that Miles was desperately keen to hide.  So much so that he was making himself ill.

My theory, and there are a few out there, is that Miles could have witnessed something sexual between Quint and Miss Jessel and relayed the event to friends at school.  Given the nature of the story and the social mores of the time it would explain why no details were forthcoming from the school.  The ghosts were appearing to remind the children to keep quiet about what they knew.  Miles was being pressured by his governess to tell the truth and Quint was ever-present warning him not to.  Miss Jessel weeps with her head in her hands as though ashamed.  In the end, stress and fear kill Miles.

It is easy to see how analysing every sentence of this story could become an obsession for those desperate to reach a definitive conclusion.  I was tempted to turn back to the first page and start a spread sheet sorting out the episodes, conversations and comments myself.  A stack of books to read made me come to my senses but I'd really be interested in hearing from anyone who has their own theory about what James was getting at here. 

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James is my contribution to the RIP VI challenge.  I was also hoping to read The Woman in Black by Susan Hill but a customer at the library seems keen not to give up our lone copy.  I'm tempted to park a rocking chair outside of his front window...and if you're familiar with the story you know how frightening that would be.

Withdrawn Whipple

I've just risked life and limb at the mailbox and for what?  Nothing!  The sun is shining, children are screaming in the school playground and I was looking forward to my copy of Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple arriving any minute. 

Looking forward to a parcel stamped "Royal Mail" from The Book Depository, I was about to unlock my mailbox when I heard snarling.  Instinctively turning to the sound I looked up into the foaming jaws of a canine boxer looking down on me from his post on top of a hot tub.  It's peering down at us from above the owners' fence.  Deacon and I made our escape and didn't look back to check if the dog had leapt the fence.

Safely inside the house I turned on the computer only to find out my pre-order of Greenbanks from The Book Depository has been cancelled.  My credit card has been refunded.  It all sounds so final.  I'm at the back of the line, out of the latest Whipple release loop!

Has anyone else experienced the same feeling of utter disappointment today due to an email sent by The Book Depository?  A support group might make me feel better.

The Carlyles at Home by Thea Holme

"One day Fanny Kemble the actress 'bolted in' to see Carlyle.  Jane did not take to her: 'she is Green-room all over, and with a heart all tossed up into blank verse...The longer I live, the more I want naturalness in people.'  On this occassion the actress was dressed in a riding habit and flourishing a whip--'but no shadow of a horse,' said Jane drily, 'only a carriage, the whip, I suppose, being to whip the cushions with, for the purpose of keeping her hand in practice'."

With that paragraph from The Carlyles at Home I was keen to discover more about the lady behind the tired eyes and simple dress.  Her husband may have been hugely popular amongst other eminent Victorians of the day such as Dickens and Darwin but there is no doubt about who steals the story in Thea Holme's book.  Jane's battle with illness, her dependancy upon opiates, being a clever woman in a man's world and oh, that wit.  I couldn't get enough of reading whatever it was she had to say!

Going about things completely backwards, I visited 24 Cheyne Row knowing nothing at all about Thomas and Jane.  Eyeing the details in the house I could have been viewing a potential home to purchase for all I knew about its former occupants.  The rooms were cosy and the stairs creaked in a charming way.  But when I started reading The Carlyles at Home I was thrilled to be able to visualize Thomas in his study, Jane in her bed, maid-of-all-work, Helen, staggering drunkenly around the kitchen and Nero curled up on the sofa.

When the Carlyles took possession of their home in 1834, Chelsea was hardly desirable.  The street was full of the sound of horse hooves and carriages, vendors peddling wares, cocks crowing, and spectators gathering to listen to organ grinders.  And the Thames, which was just a short stroll away, stank.  The rent was a bargain though and being Scottish, Thomas and Jane were willing to put up with such things for the value.  And this was a sentiment they repeated about themselves quite often.

This book works well as an introduction to this famous couple and their writings but also as a social history of the Victorian era.  I was fascinated by how Jane dealt with a long string of domestic help.  Some became a great comfort to her when she was bedridden with her terrible headaches and others were not to be trusted.  Jane's refusal to wear a corset went against the fashion of the day and she quite happily ran errands at times without a bonnet on her head.  Evidence of bedbugs was cause to send bed curtains to be boiled and for carpenters to disassemble bed frames.  Mealtimes and indigestion were frequent topics of conversation between man and wife.  To read the letter that Jane wrote to Thomas justifying the increase in her household spending is, well, I could have cheered for her.

The Carlyles at Home is my thirty-fifth Persephone title.  I bought it with no expectation other than as a reminder of a day out in Chelsea, hoping it would be somewhat of an extension of my tour around the house.  It has turned out to be so much more than that and I can honestly say that it is now firmly one of my favourite Persephone titles.

My Treat

At the library we have a tradition that if it's your birthday, it's your treat.  That date has come and gone but everyone indulges so much during Thanksgiving that I've waited a bit to dole out more sugar.

I was up just after 5 am to warm up the oven and get out the mixing bowls.  My Primrose Bakery recipe book arrived yesterday and I chose the Chocolate and Banana Cupcakes to bake for my colleagues.  They are frosted with a chocolate buttercream icing and the whole package is really just too divinely rich.  The icing was used sparingly as I envisioned the staff dragging their heels once the sugar buzz had passed.  Hope everyone likes them!