Weather report

It's been raining cats and dogs here in Oxford (and most of the country, I shouldn't wonder) but I don't care, because on checking BBC weather earlier, I discovered it was going to be 37 degrees C in New York on Friday. Anyone want me to fry an egg?

On board reading

Apart from deciding what clothes I'm taking, I'm having a hard time choosing the books I'm going to take.

If I were just going to New York, I'd take some short stories and a book of poems, and I might slip '84 Charing Cross Road' in as well, because letters are wonderful to read.

Having six days traversing the Atlantic thrown into the mix has set me wondering what I'm going to bring with me.

I'm certainly taking some Daphne du Maurier with me. I've found 'The Parasites' and I want to read 'The Rendezvous and Other Stories' too. With any luck 'Letters from Menabilly' will arrive before I leave.

As for others, I think I should take some Sebastian Faulks, for which I will have to raid my Father's bookshelf, and perhaps some Evelyn Waugh will be good to set the mood with.

I'm also taking my novel with me, because if I can't write on a ship, I can't write anywhere! Port Eliot has given me some good ideas for scene settings!

Does anyone have any recommendations? I want to wrap myself in other worlds as I slip slowly through the sea, passing over the mouldering wreck of Titanic, two miles below me.

Human Traces

I have long been a Sebastian Faulks fan. When I was fifteen I gave my English teacher ‘Birdsong’ and then thought I would read it myself. I remember being horrified that I’d given her a book with sex(!) in it, but for myself I was hooked from the beginning by the powerful writing and the emotive way Faulks conjured up the First World War and the way in which people, then and now, dealt with their feelings for the catastrophe. I quickly swallowed up ‘The Girl at the Lion D’or’ and ‘Charlotte Grey’ too.

I wrote my A level coursework on Birdsong, comparing it with All quiet on the western front and enjoyed it again on a different level.

Since then I have been preoccupied by reading what I was told to read by my University professors, and by the time ‘Human Traces’ came out I was chomping at the bit to read it. Dad read it, proclaimed it wonderful and begged me to read it right then and there so we could talk about it.

The problem was I was deeply immersed in my Masters dissertation, and could read nothing that wasn’t to do with Joyce Grenfell and Christian Science. I did start it on the train to Norwich for a meeting with my supervisor, but for a small part of the journey, a woman who had very clearly lost a link or two in her brain was sat next to me, and the parallel between fiction and real life was too much for me to be able to bear reading the book.

So, it wasn’t until February this year that I finally picked it up and started to read.

Four years had served to make me forget the lucidity of Faulks’ style. He writes of complex issues, but we swim through the words with such ease that the complexity does not seem a chore.

The general premise of ‘Human Traces’ is this: that madness is an essential human characteristic and therefore is inherent in all of us.

It sounds simple, but the scope Faulks uses to explore this idea is so wide that we quickly realise that it is not something to be taken lightly. Normally content to span a few years for his plot, with ‘Human Traces’ Faulks turns epic, starting in the 1870s and treading the decades of discovery and failure way past the First World War.

I found myself utterly immersed, I couldn’t put it down. A book that took the author five years to write, I devoured in five days, not talking to anyone, spending every spare minute of the day reading this wonderfully powerful and beautifully written novel. It will come as no surprise that I was utterly exhausted once finished, and couldn’t settle to any book after the grandeur of the writing.

His characters are fallible – more so because the science they devote their lives to is imperfect and prone just as much to false readings as true ones. What starts as a Utopian dream of curing the mentally ill quickly becomes a stumbling block for the two doctors who start out so close in their thinking, but allow their own motives to push them further apart. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I shall say merely this: I rarely cry when I’m reading, but the events that serve to reconcile the two main characters is one of the most moving passages I’ve ever read.

Five years in the writing, five days in the reading – this novel is one of the best I’ve ever read, and I think it’s Faulks’ masterpiece. Everyone should read it.

Poem of the week

The Conclusion

EVEN such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wander'd all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.


Sir Walter Raleigh

My first meme

I have been tagged by stuckinabook - so here we go!

1. Who’s your all-time favourite author, and why?
Oh dear - Jane Austen is my earliest love, but I think she is in a tie with Henry James, Sebastian Faulks and Evelyn Waugh. They all make comments on the social scene - but in such different ways!

2. Who was your first favourite author, and why? Do you still consider him or her among your favourites?
Oh, I used to adore Enid Blyton. It's because of her I went to boarding school. I couldn't possibly read her now!

3. Who’s the most recent addition to your list of favourite authors, and why?
I went to a literary event in March on 'Daphne' by Justine Picardie, read it, loved it, searched out all her other works and think she's a very talented and honest writer. Daphne du Maurier is also fast becoming someone whose work I love.

4. If someone asked you who your favourite authors were right now, which authors would first pop out of your mouth? Are there any you’d add on a moment of further reflection?
Right now? How long have you got? Ok - Jane Austen, Daphne du Maurier, Justine Picardie, L.M. Alcott, Colm Toibin, Ian McEwan, Sebastian Faulks. I could go one, but this list would go on all night, and I have to unstack the dishwasher and go to bed!

I tag the following people to do this too, but join in if you want, even if I haven't tagged you!
Dovegreyreader
The Bookling
Geranium Cat's Bookshelf
Juliet

I don't want to go to bed - the magic of the weekend will really have finished by tomorrow morning!

Port Eliot Pictures

These are not the best pictures, I'm afraid, as the battery was going. They do convey a sense of the house though, even in the rain, which is evident in some of them!


This is the church - beautiful, and larger than I supposed it would be for the amount of people in the village.


As you walk down the path from the church, you see this view - although hopefully without the rain!

That's the main part of the house.

This is the house from the back. I'm just about to disappear into the trees. You can see the church on the left. The river - before it was damned - used to come up to the steps on the right, so that the monks could have their deliveries right to the door!

And there is Justine signing books, with the mural behind her - see the dragon seemingly coming out of the lamp!

Port Eliot with Elegance at night

Part two - also written in the pub, only five hours later:

Evening, and with a Cornish dusk wrapping its folds around the day, I made my way back to the house, by way of the church, which allows you to come across it in even more arresting a way than the drive. Having been through the house already, I was struck by the difference preparing for darkness made. How can lights increase the romance of a place? It happened, nevertheless.
With a champagne cocktail in one hand, and nibbling on a few canapes, I made my way through the house, admiring, with Lord St Germans beside me, the armoire in one room. I don't know why, but I have a real thing for beautiful furniture.
So I meandered around, imprinting the house on my memory and going to look at the mural again. I've changed my mind. It's extraordinary. I prefer some parts to others (the middle, for instance, is wonderful and so intricate) I wonder what Daphne would have made of it.
Justine was in conversation with Catherine again, but was also joined by Dr Jessica Gardner, the currator of the literature archive at Exeter University, where Justine did a lot of her research.
The conversation ranged over a great number of subjects - archives; researching; lost manuscripts; letters. Secrets and magic wove their subtle way through the themes of conversation. Things that would ordinarily seem like mere coincidence became the proof by which Justine was destined to write this novel. 'Do you think Daphne wanted you to write this novel?' asked an audience member - and it certainly feels like the spirit of Daphne was making things happen - spurred on, no doubt, by other Justine friendly spirits.

After the talk there was just time to get one last look at the house, say goodbye to Justine and venture down into the basement, where - lit by candles at odd intervals (staged by Michael Howells) we explored the no doubt haunted underbelly of Port Eliot. The wine cellar was fantastic. Perfectly round, with an inner sanctum in the middle, I walked all the way round in gloomy blackness, feeling the ice cold hand of evening must at my neck. A further surprise awaited in the housekeeper's room, where the voice of Mrs Danvers echoed. On peeping round the door of the butler's pantry I got a great shock where I discovered a rocking figure draped in black. My companion gave a little scream, which merited the rather Cornish response of 'Oh, you didn't half give me a turn!'

Home time, and off I wandered up the path, stopping in the middle to take one last look at the house, and then to one of the stewards houses, as Jo had saved my life and was putting me up. There, greeted by two huge Scottish deerhounds, we sat and chatted about the event.

In the morning the sun shone brightly and I sat on the platform drinking it in and walking through Port Eliot once more. That is until Justine arrived! Now [now being at 11am] I'm sitting opposite her (having discovered the train goes to Reading) in first class, waiting for the ticket collector to demand my £10 upgrade.
Once again the countryside is flashing past and my weekend of Daphne related euphoria is at an end, with only the estuary and then the sea to remind me.


Pictures will be up once Dad has given me the disc.

Cornwall - now with added Oranges

I am back from the best weekend in quite some time, and I'm going to write up all that happened. I wrote most of it last night, and then finished it off whilst on the train, opposite the woman who inspired my going at all - Justine.

Part one:

I am currently in the Eliot Arms. No - I've not managed to find a quiet place by the fire (which was blazing all day), I'm in the pub. The afternoon event has finished, and as I've found a very kind person to put me up for the night, I'm waiting for the evening to kick off.
It was beautiful weather all the way up on the train - light blue skies with large fluffy white clouds on the horizon. Fields whizzed by with beautiful old churches, charming cottages and intriguing castles and manor houses nestled in between the trees. I drank it in, rejoicing in the greatly rolling hills (although I heard an Irish woman exclaim, just past Reading, 'My, isn't it flat!'. She has clearly never been to Peterborough! So I had high hopes that the sacrifices Justine and I had made (health and shoes) had been duly noted and the God of Weather had determined to be kind.
Not so. I got off the train and the heavens opened. I walked into the village, marvelling in the quiet, past the entrance to Port Eliot and went to see if the pub had any rooms. No. So that seemed to be an end to the idea of my staying for the evening. Back I walked to the entrance of Port Eliot and meandered down the winding drive.

And there was the house. A beautiful grey brick building, nestled in a valley with the family church set right beside it.
The house itself is a wonder and here I quote Lord St Germans from the guide 'Like most houses, Port Eliot has a front door and about there the similarity ends. There are 11 staircases, 15 back doors and 82 chimneys. The roof covers half an acre and not once in living memory has it been completely watertight. The contents of the house reflect the accumulation, over 400 years, of an ever-prospering family who have lived in the same house. Being a large house, there has never been any reason to throw things away. There are several pieces of museum-quality furniture, including an early Boule armoire, and among the many pictures there are several masterpieces by Sir Joshua Reynolds.'
It's a magical place. One could imagine great Deerhounds romping through the halls, past men in breeches and women in harlequin dresses, like the portrait of Hester Booth in the main hall. No Deerhounds in actuality - just one very friendly grey whippet, Roo.
Like Lord St Germans says, nothing has been thrown away and there were lots of little things to see that added a unique charm to the house. Between two old paintings, a half surfboard with a portrait of the current owners; a dog toy by a door; and in the furnishings arsenic based wallpaper!
The Lenkiewicz mural was - and here I struggle for the right words - well, I think interesting yet disturbing might well fit. It's certainly powerful. But I don't know whether I like it! In the big dining room was something else intriguing. A mannequin in Victorian dress with black lace mantilla was sat on the table, with a great variety of odds and ends surrounding her. Designed by Michael Howells ( resident designer for the Ballet Rambert), the tableau was put together to show off the beautiful pieces of lace that had been found in the house.

It was still raining, so Justine's talk was moved from the secret garden to the Orangery, a lovely conservatory with a boxed in garden to one side. Off came my suede shoes, on went my equally unsuitable, but rain worthy, sandals. I think I changed shoes more times than Cinderella. Justine and Catherine, Lady St Germans, sat at one end and talked all things Daphne - her air of mystery, the menace in her Cornwall descriptions - which when coupled with Justine's explanation of menace as a code for sexual attraction within the du Maurier, struck me as an interesting way to read some of the novels.
Justine read the opening of her novel, and it's strange, but although I've heard her read it four times now, with each reading the nuances change and I get more wrapped up in the despairing world of Daphne in the late 50s.

Then tea! And the sun came out! Catherine had read the description of Manderlay tea in 'Rebecca' which had our mouths properly watering, and what a spread it was. Proper tea, ginger beer for those not inclined to drink hot water, daintily cut sandwiches of cucumber and some of fish, tiny scones and great slabs of wonderful cake. And then I met Dovegreyreader! I was sitting chatting to a couple of women I had met in the tea queue, when someone asked 'are you Oxford Reader?' And thus the Internet and real life merged! Lynne encouraged me to go to the Dartington Way with Words festival. Tempting me with talks that she was doing both with and without Justine. Erm - oh dear!

It was lovely sitting in the garden, spotting Robert Fox in the distance, although I didn't have the courage to go and suggest Emma Thompson as the lead if and when he makes a film out of 'Daphne'. I suspect he will be eternally grateful subconsciously for my lack of courage! Bookends of Fowey were there, and had one copy of 'My Mother's Wedding Dress' left. I simply couldn't leave it there, so it came home with me. I think I've got enough reading material for America now! I got chatting to the owner, Ann, and she said she'd been reading my blog - Hello Ann!

I went for one last walk around the grounds, and at one point I thought I'd entered another world. Walking down one of the tracks, with the rain beating on my umbrella, I caught the scent of wild garlic. The air was humid, and the light darkly dappled. No one else was near and a bird rustled its wings and shrilled. At that moment I truly knew what drew Daphne there and why the link between Port Eliot and 'Rebecca' was so strong. I thought of the passage Catherine had read, not an hour before ....'That corner in the drive, too, where the trees encroach upon the gravel, is not a place in which to pause, not after the sun has set. When the leaves rustle, they sound very much like the stealthy movement of a woman in evening dress, and when they shiver suddenly, and fall, and scatter away along the ground, they might be the patter, patter, of a woman's hurrying footstep, and the mark in the gravel the imprint of a high-heeled satin shoe.'

More later