The Book of Margery Kempe

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The earliest autobiography in English and by that most marginalised section of the population in historical texts (especially medieval history) a woman.  The book is a remarkable document all the more so from the fact that it was ‘lost’ for many centuries. It was known to have existed because of a seven page extract published by Wynkyn de Worde circa 1501 but the original manuscript which dates back to the 1430’s was believed to no longer exist. However in 1934 a copy was found in the collection of an old Catholic family the Butler-Bowdens, it is not the original dictated by Margery (as she could neither read nor write) but certainly a very early copy and a remarkable survivor. The book was first published in 1936 and the manuscript was acquired by the British Library in 1980. It is split into two books, the first has eighty nine chapters but it turns out that the person she dictated that to had such terrible handwriting that nobody could read it. In the four years it took to find somebody to rewrite this main section she dictated another ten chapters that were added as book two.

My copy is the first Folio Society edition of 2004 and uses the edited, and updated from medieval English, version by professor Windeatt, which was first published by Penguin Books in 1980, it has a lovely cover by Chris Daunt who also provided a dozen engravings included within the text.

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In the medieval period a woman was effectively the property of her husband and this is illustrated many times in the book such as within chapter 51 when Margery is in York

Then the worthy doctor said to her “Woman, what are you doing here in this part of the country?”
“Sir, I come on pilgrimage to offer here at St William’s shrine”
Then he went on “Do you have a husband?”
She said “Yes”
“Do you have a letter recording his permission?”
“Sir” she said “my husband gave me permission with his own mouth”

As well as the need to have permission we see here Margery’s habit of referring to herself in the third person, when she is not doing so then she uses ‘this creature’ as the usual term regarding herself. Margery had by this time travelled to Rome, Jerusalem and Santiago (Spain) on a couple of trips all without her husband. In fact he was probably enjoying the breaks from her presence as she has to be the most annoying person I have ever read about and frankly like a lot of her travelling companions I would also have spent a lot of time trying to get away from her.  On her way to Jerusalem from England her companions had abandoned her several times or insisted that she ate separately from them when she was present and in Italy they went so far as to book a ship across the Mediterranean and leave their lodgings without telling her in a desperate attempt to get away.

So why was she so irritating? Well Margery started having visions after her first child was born and would very loudly express them, calling out to all the members of the Holy Trinity and speaking to them as well as quite a few saints in churches dedicated to them. That she clearly believed that she was having these conversations is beyond doubt and she was no longer interested in anything else but aspects of her faith.

And those who knew of her behaviour previously and now heard her talk so much of the bliss of heaven said to her. “Why do you talk so of the joy that is in heaven? You don’t know it, and you haven’t been there any more than we have.” And they were angry with her because she would not hear or talk of worldly things as they did, and as she did previously.
And after this time she never had any desire to have sexual intercourse with her husband, for paying the debt of matrimony was so abominable to her that she would rather, she thought, have eaten and drunk the ooze and muck in the gutter than consent to intercourse, except out of obedience.
And so she said to her husband; “I may not deny you my body, but all the love and affection of my heart is withdrawn from all earthly creatures and set on God alone.

Alongside the visions she also took to weeping and crying whenever she was in a holy place or with a religious person regardless of rank and this would also be loud often involving throwing herself to the ground to bawl like a toddler. This naturally made her a difficult person to be around especially if you are trying to observe the peace of a holy site. When she got back from her pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Rome she would cry around fourteen times a day as she ‘remembered the passion’ as during a vision there she had seen herself with the body of Christ on the cross as though she had actually been present at the crucifixion.

For me, one of her most irritating features though is the total fixation on herself during the book. She travelled across Europe to Rome and onto Jerusalem taking well over eighteen months from late 1413 to Easter 1415 yet she records nothing of the places she went to or the trip itself. This journey alone would have made a fascinating book, she would certainly had a vast number of interesting experiences and a first hand record of Europe and the Holy Land from six centuries ago by an ‘ordinary’ woman as opposed to nobles and royalty would be invaluable to historians. She mentions that she spent twelve weeks in Venice before taking the boat to Jerusalem but that is it, who she met, where she went and what she saw during that time we learn nothing.

But that is not to say that book does not have a lot to recommend it, Margery’s responses to being challenged, even by the highest authority show a quick wit and can be quite funny and despite being frustrating at times to a modern reader, especially the passages where she is conversing with God I’m glad I read it. I’ll finish with a passage from chapter sixty which shows her at her feisty best…

There was a lady who wanted to have the said creature to a meal. And therefore, as decency required, she went to the church where this lady heard her service and where this creature saw a beautiful image of our lady called a pieta. And through looking at that pieta her mind was wholly occupied with the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and with the compassion of our Lady, St. Mary, by which she was compelled to cry out very loudly and weep very bitterly, as though she would have died.
Then the lady’s priest came to her, saying “Woman, Jesus is long since dead.”
When her crying had ceased, she said to the priest, “Sir, his death is as fresh to me as if he had died this same day, and so, I think, it ought to be to you and all Christian people, We ought always to remember his kindness, and always to think of the doleful death that he died for us.”

and that told him.

The Eyre Affair – Jasper Fforde

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Jasper Fforde’s first novel also introduces his main protagonist, Thursday Next, an agent for LiteraTec Special Operations who has now appeared in seven books by Fforde. The books exists in an alternate history where, in the case of this book, the year is 1985 and the Crimean War is now into its 135th year, there are companies commercially genetically engineering extinct species so a popular pet is a dodo and Special Operations includes division 27 which looks after works of literature. In fact literature seems to dominate society with people changing their names to that of famous authors to such an extent that they are legally obliged to have a number tattooed on them to identify which John Milton you are talking to for example. There is also the Goliath Corporation a firm that has made billions in financing the Crimean War and seems to have various shadowy sidelines of it’s own which are strictly for the good of the corporation.

A running trope through this book is “Who wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare?” sometimes there are short discussions regarding Bacon or Marlowe and in one tedious section which ruins the flow of the plot a whole series of pages are dedicated to this discussion for no good reason whatsoever.

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The book after all is theoretically about Jane Eyre, although in fact for almost half the story it is about Martin Chuzzlewit. The basic conceit of the book is that there is a master criminal who obtains a machine invented by Thursday’s uncle Mycroft which allows people to travel in and out of works of literature. Archeron Hades steals the original manuscript of Charles Dickens’ work, removes one of the minor characters and has him killed in the present day. This changes all copies of the book, even those already printed, and he threatens to do the same to Chuzzlewit himself unless a ransom is paid.

For various reasons the plot is foiled and the ransom not paid but Hades escapes to the fiercely independent Republic of Wales where he cannot be followed by English justice, only to try again by this time stealing the original manuscript of Jane Eyre and kidnapping Jane herself immediately before she rescues Mr Rochester from his flaming bed. All copies of the book are therefore much shorter and there is uproar. Thursday Next is sent to get Jane and the book back together.

As implied above there are numerous sub plots, in fact far too many sub plots, as the book is overly complicated by them. You get the feeling that Fford is trying to show off his literary erudition at the expense of just telling a good story and there is definitely a good story to be found in there if you work at it. I’m inclined to forgive him as this is his first published work and I will definitely read at least the next volume about Thursday Next entitled “Lost in a Good Book” which is set a few months after “The Eyre Affair”.

The book cover by the way is printed to look as though it is rather dog-eared, my copy is brand new.

Chapter 13

There is an ongoing joke in Fforde’s books regarding chapter thirteen or rather the lack of one. If there are numbered chapters then there is always one listed in the contents at the start but in fact chapter 14 always immediately follows chapter 12 and the page given for chapter 13 to start is either blank or part way through chapter 12. They do however have titles:

  • The Eyre Affair – The church at Capel-y-ffin
  • Lost in a Good Book – Mount Pleasant
  • The Well of Lost Plots – Reservoir near the church of St Stephen
  • Something Rotten – Milton
  • First Amongst Sequels – Cross Lewis’ number
  • One of Our Thursdays is Missing – 14th May 1931
  • The Woman Who Died a Lot – A Penguin
  • The Big Over Easy – First on the right
  • The Fourth Bear – 111110000

Note: assuming 111110000 is binary then the decimal equivalent is 496, it is anyone’s guess if this is significant or if there is any meaning to the choice of titles for the missing chapters; although the 14th May 1931 was a Thursday.

Flatland – Edwin A. Abbott

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I asked my friend, Catalan booktuber Anna, best known under her nom de plume of Mixa, to choose this weeks read from a random group of titles I provided and she selected Flatland because she had never heard of it and was intrigued by the idea of a mathematical classic combined with social parody. Written in 1884 by an English headmaster who specialised in ‘classics’ i.e. Greek and Latin; this is as an unlikely cornerstone of multi-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry as can really be imagined. I first read it in my teens and although the copy on my shelves is from my mid twenties I probably haven’t read it in over two decades so it is well worth revisiting.

The book is split into two sections, the first describes Flatland and it’s inhabitants whilst the second deals with one of it’s inhabitants A. Square and his perspective of several other lands. Initially Lineland, then what is called Spaceland which is our own set of dimensions and finally Pointland before he finally returns to his own two dimensional world and the prison that we find him in at the start of the narrative.

But let us begin with a description of Flatland because it is with an understanding of this two dimensional land that we will start to see the effects of an extra dimension which is not apparent to the inhabitants. Our narrator A. Square is as you might expect a square and as such is a lawyer, the number of sides that each character has denotes his status in society as follows:

Our Middle Class consists of Equilateral or Equal-Sided Triangles. Our Professional Men and Gentlemen are Squares (to which class I myself belong) and Five-Sided
Figures or Pentagons. Next above these come the Nobility, of whom there are several degrees, beginning at Six-Sided Figures, or Hexagons, and from thence rising in the number of their sides till they receive the honourable title of Polygonal, or many-sided. Finally when the number of the sides becomes so numerous, and the sides themselves so small, that the figure cannot be distinguished from a circle, he is included in the Circular or Priestly order; and this is the highest class of all.

It is a Law of Nature with us that a male child shall have one more side than his father, so that each generation shall rise (as a rule) one step in the scale of development and nobility. Thus the son of a Square is a Pentagon; the son of a Pentagon, a Hexagon; and so on.

Below the Equilateral triangles are the ranks of workers and soldiers who are Isosceles and as the size of the smallest angle contained within a figure is an indication of intelligence clearly the more ‘pointed’ such a triangle is the lower the intellect and (bearing in mind this is a Victorian book) the more violent and criminal the individual is assumed to be. Rather than increasing sides with each generation Isosceles triangles gain half a degree to their smallest angle each time until they are finally assessed to be Equilateral and the family can then start to rise through society.

Now it should be noted that as indicated in the quote above this only applies to sons, so what about the females, well they are all just straight lines and this is where Edwin Abbott Abbott (yes the A. in his name really was Abbott as well) hit accusations of misogyny even in the 1880’s. Something he attempted to address in a preface added to the second and revised edition but without much success, one of the more offending sections being below…

Not that it must be for a moment supposed that our Women are destitute of affection. But unfortunately the passion of the moment predominates, in the Frail Sex, over every other consideration. This is, of course, a necessity arising from their unfortunate conformation. For as they have no pretensions to an angle, being inferior in this respect to the very lowest of the Isosceles, they are consequently wholly devoid of brain-power, and have neither reflection, judgement nor forethought, and hardly any memory.

Still enough of the first half of the book, there are lots of details given as to how houses are constructed, how the people recognise each other and various social mores which whilst interesting in the way Abbott has tried to give life to his creation do not really impinge on the main object of the book which is contained in part two. The important section is in the remainder where A Square visits other lands and learns about dimensions other than the North/South, East/West directions he is currently familiar with. The first of these is described as a dream where he perceives Lineland a place of just one dimension with all the inhabitants travelling over a single line with him floating over it so that he can see along the line.

 

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As A. Square interacts with the King of Lineland at first he is simply a disembodied voice coming from nowhere along the line and therefore not perceptible as a figure to his majesty. He therefore lowers himself onto (and through the line) revealing himself as a line as that is all he can be in just one dimension, but a line that can appear and disappear at will. This understanding is vitally important for him to grasp the concept of Spaceland later on in the book when a sphere visits him in his home.

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As can be seen from the diagram to A. Square the sphere is merely a circle within Flatland and one that can change size and also appear and disappear just as he could in Lineland but even though he had his dream he still struggles to comprehend what it is that he is seeing until the sphere lifts him off the plane of Flatland and shows him his world from above. Suddenly he can see inside his house and not only that but everyone and everything in it simultaneously. He can even see inside his sons, grandsons and servants and also his wife panicking because he has suddenly vanished.

 

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This is revelatory to him and at this point he grasps a logical progression that had eluded the sphere himself

I. Nay, gracious Teacher, deny me not what I know it is in thy power to perform. Grant me but one glimpse of thine interior, and I am satisfied for ever, remaining henceforth thy docile pupil, thy unemancipable slave, ready to receive all thy teachings and to feed upon the words that fall from thy lips.

Sphere. Well, then, to content and silence you, let me say at once, I would shew you what you wish if I could; but I cannot. Would you have me turn my stomach inside out to oblige you?

I. But my Lord has shewn me the intestines of all my countrymen in the Land of Two Dimensions by taking me with him into the Land of Three. What therefore more easy than now to take his servant on a second journey into the blessed region of the Fourth Dimension, where I shall look down with him once more upon this land of Three Dimensions, and see the inside of every three-dimensioned house, the secrets of the solid earth, the treasures of the mines in Spaceland, and the intestines of every solid living creature, even of the noble and adorable Spheres.

Sphere. But where is this land of Four Dimensions?

I. I know not; but doubtless my Teacher knows.

Sphere. Not I. There is no such land. The very idea of it is utterly inconceivable.

I. Not inconceivable, my Lord, to me, and therefore still less inconceivable to my Master. Nay, I despair not that, even here, in this region of Three Dimensions, your Lordship’s art may make the Fourth Dimension visible to me; just as in the Land of Two Dimensions my Teacher’s skill would fain have opened the eyes of his blind servant to the invisible presence of a Third Dimension, though I saw it not. Let me recall the past. Was I not taught below that when I saw a Line and inferred a Plane, I in reality saw a Third unrecognised Dimension, not the same as brightness, called “height”? And does it not now follow that, in this region, when I see a Plane and infer a Solid, I really see a Fourth unrecognised Dimension, not the same as colour, but existent, though infinitesimal and incapable of measurement? And besides this, there is the Argument from Analogy of Figures.

Sphere. Analogy! Nonsense: what analogy?

I. Your Lordship tempts his servant to see whether he remembers the revelations imparted to him. Trifle not with me, my Lord; I crave, I thirst, for more knowledge. Doubtless we cannot see that other higher Spaceland now, because we have no eye in our stomachs. But, just as there was the realm of Flatland, though the poor puny Lineland Monarch could neither turn to left nor right to discern it, and just as there was close at hand, and touching my frame, the land of Three Dimensions, though I, blind senseless wretch, had no power to touch it, no eye in my interior to discern it, so of a surety there is a Fourth Dimension, which my Lord perceives with the inner eye of thought. And that it must exist my Lord himself has taught me. Or can he have forgotten what he himself imparted to his servant?
In One Dimension, did not a moving Point produce a Line with two terminal points?
In Two Dimensions, did not a moving Line produce a Square with four terminal points?
In Three Dimensions, did not a moving Square produce – did not this eye of mine behold it – that blessed Being, a Cube, with eight terminal points?
And in Four Dimensions shall not a moving Cube – alas, for Analogy, and alas for the Progress of Truth, if it be not so – shall not, I say, the motion of a divine Cube result in a still more divine Organization with sixteen terminal points?
Behold the infallible confirmation of the Series 2, 4, 8, 16; is not this a Geometrical Progression? Is not this – if I might quote my Lord’s own words – “strictly according to Analogy”?
Again, was I not taught by my Lord that as in a Line there are two bounding Points, and in a Square there are four bounding Lines, so in a Cube there must be six bounding Squares? Behold once more the confirming Series, 2, 4, 6; is not this an Arithmetical Progression? And consequently does it not of necessity follow that the more divine offspring of the divine Cube in the Land of Four Dimensions, must
have 8 bounding Cubes; and is not this also, as my Lord has taught me to believe, “strictly according to Analogy”?

Sorry for quoting such a large section but this really is the whole crux of the book as we see that logically there must be a fourth direction that is no more visible to us as up/down was to the square in Flatland and north/south was to the inhabitants of Lineland stuck as they are in their eternal east/west line.

We leave Flatland as we began with A Square in prison for having committed the heresy of declaring of what he calls ‘upward not northward’ and trying to spread these ‘lies’ in Flatland. He is being visited by a priest, as he has been for seven years to try to get him to recant from his madness but instead he determines to write this book.

Flatland has never been out of print since it’s original publication over 130 years ago and it remains one of the great primers in understanding multidimensional geometry so important after the work of Einstein, I heartily recommend it and have thoroughly enjoyed rereading it so thank you Anna.

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White Horses – Eric Ravilious

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Puffin Picture Books, an imprint of Penguin Books intended for children, started in December 1940 and ran until March 1965, although by then you were lucky to get one new title a year. In all 119 titles were published out of 120 that were given numbers, the missing title was 116 assigned to Life Histories by Paxton Chadwick and this was eventually printed by the Penguin Collectors Society in March 1996 under the guidance of Steve Hare. The story of the series appeared to be complete, but there were in the archives references to other titles that never even got as far down the path to publication that Life Histories had. One of these was Eric Ravilious’s White Horses. The beautiful watercolours of chalk figures and hills on the English chalk Downs intended for the book did exist but there appeared to be nothing more.

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Ravilious had been approached by Noel Carrington, editor of the Puffin Picture Book series to produce illustrations for a thirty two page landscape book of Downland figures back in 1939 and he was originally very enthusiastic about the project working of watercolours straight away. By the beginning of 1941 he had produced a dummy which showed the planned layout but by then commitments to the War Ministry left him no time to do more. Sadly on 28th August 1942 Ravilious was killed in an air crash whilst working as war artist in Iceland, the dummy of Downland Man (as Carrington referred to it)  disappeared and the planned book appeared to have died with him.

The story leaps to 2010 and the rediscovery of the dummy tucked away with other papers in the possession of Roland Collins. This critical evidence is now held at The Wiltshire Museum in Devizes and it is with their permission to make use of the document that the book I now have in front of me exists. Step forward Joe Pearson, owner of a small printing company in London, book and illustration collector and Penguin Books expert.

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Design For Today has, since its launch in 2015, already built up a reputation for producing fine examples of illustrated books based on Joe’s love of mid 20th century design, either reprints or more often using contemporary artists as inspired by the period as Joe is. As their website says…

Design For Today’s artists’ books are all designed, crafted and printed in the UK, using quality, sustainable materials and printed using the traditional processes of lithography, letterpress, screenprint, or linocut.  Editions are small, from 500 – 1500

Joe had been hinting throughout 2018 that White Horses (as Ravilious titled the dummy) was a project he was working on; with Alice Pattullo commissioned to produce the black and white illustrations needed to complete the artwork as Ravilious had only ever done the colour pictures and Puffin Picture Books are a mix of both. The text of the final book is by Joe himself.

On the 31st December 2018 disaster struck, as the warehouse holding all of DFT’s stock, along with part of Joe’s own book collection and personal items, was burnt to the ground and nothing could be saved. White Horses is the first book to be launched after that loss of all of the back stock from the first years of the business and members of the Penguin Collectors Society are to receive a copy of the standard edition with their June mailing.

My copy of the limited edition version, which also includes a signed A3 print of one of the pictures by Alice, arrived the other day and it is an excellent piece of work not just well printed as I expected having quite a few of DFT’s products already, but entirely in the spirit of the Puffin Picture Book series.

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The double page spread above shows the sort of village that the creators of the earliest chalk carvings would have lived in at about 1500BC and this is the illustration that comes as the print with the limited edition book. The limited edition appears to have sold out already but standard copies of this beautiful book are available for £15 plus postage from Design For Today, anyone who like me loves Puffin Picture Books and/or the works of Eric Ravilious is sure to want one.

The Antipope – Robert Rankin

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The first in the increasingly inaccurately titled Brentford Trilogy (currently eleven books with at least one more to come, which is claimed to be the last of the series) The Antipope also has the most straight forward title. Rankin has a passion for punning titles but as this was also his first ever book, originally published in 1981, maybe he felt something more mainstream was required. My copy is the 35th anniversary limited edition privately published by Rankin and signed by him, it is also the first time the book has appeared in hardback. Rankin himself describes his work as far fetched fiction, indeed his privately published volumes are by Far Fetched Books, at the time of writing the limited edition of The Antipope was still available and is illustrated internally by the author, the cover is by the brilliant Josh Kirby

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The full list of Brentford Trilogy books so far is as follows; and from this you can see his love of wordplay with other book titles and songs:

  1. The Antipope (1981)
  2. The Brentford Triangle (1983)
  3. East of Ealing (1984)
  4. The Sprouts of Wrath (1988)
  5. The Brentford Chainsaw Massacre (1997)
  6. Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls (1999)
  7. Knees Up Mother Earth (2004)
  8. The Brightonomicon (2005)
  9. Retromancer (2009)
  10. The Lord of the Ring Roads (2017)
  11. The Chronicles of Banarnia (2018)

The Brightonomicon and Retromancer (2009) are included above although they aren’t in the list of Brentford Trilogy books at the front of this book which only has the first seven but equally on the dust wrapper it says:

The Antipope was the first book in the Brentford Trilogy which now includes at least nine books and will feature one more with the launch of The Lord of the Ring Roads – the first book in a new Brentford Trilogy – some time in the not too distant future.

The reason for the confusion in the number of books to be officially counted in the series is probably due to the appearance of several characters from the set appearing in other books by Rankin which means that those may, or may not, be part of the canon. The books also do not appear to have a specific reading order; things that happen in one book are ignored in later volumes, characters even reappear when they were apparently killed off or written out in earlier books and never with any explanation. Individual volumes are consistent within themselves however just don’t expect a sweeping narrative across them all.

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Brentford itself is one of the least eventful places in the UK and certainly contests strongly for the top spot for this amongst towns within Greater London. Looking on the time line on the wikipedia page reveals that the only act worthy of mention in the last ninety years is the 1965 opening of the elevated section of the M4 motorway, an opportunity the express road took to bypass Brentford entirely. This makes the location all the funnier for the ‘far fetched fiction’ that Rankin has take place there and the cast of odd characters that populate the books. Chief amongst these are John Omally and Jim Pooley who are the reluctant, and frequently drunk, heroes of the book. They are never happier than when enjoying a pint of large in The Flying Swan served by Neville the part time barman at that establishment. It should be noted that Neville appears to be the only barman at the Flying Swan so he does seem to be full time although is always described as the part time barman. The other main characters for this tale are Professor Slocombe who understands more than most what is going on and guides the characters to the ultimate defeat of the Antipope; Norman Hartnell (always described as not to be confused with the other Norman Hartnell) who is a mad inventor and runs the newsagents; Soap Distant explorer of the inner Earth; Captain Carson from the Seaman’s Mission and Archroy who, at least at the start of the book, is working at the local rubber factory.

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The plot starts with the arrival in the Flying Swan of

a beggar of dreadful aspect and sorry footwear

All those who encounter him feel compelled to cross themselves even if they are not Catholic and he slowly encounters most of the main protagonists most especially Captain Carson as he moves in and then takes over the Mission house. Quite what a seaman’s mission is doing in Brentford is also a mystery, the town is on the Thames but a long way from the sea. The plot gets odder and odder with each flight of fantasy by Rankin including ‘magic’ beans, vast underground chambers, an attempt to wade the English Channel and a cowboy night nobody will ever forget amongst other things.

Now I’m going to have to read the others in the series…

To conclude with Robert Rankin’s own explanation of Far Fetched Fiction from a 1999 interview in Dublin

 I’ve said this before, when I went into writing I wanted to create a new genre of fiction that wasn’t like anybody else’s. It was going to be called Far Fetched Fiction, I would have my own book shelf in Smiths, with just my books in them and it would be bliss. But it didn’t quite work out like that, I ended up in a general fiction section, and then they realised that I didn’t write general fiction and I ended up in science fiction, which I feel a bit of a fraud for being there. Because people who write science fiction don’t know what I write, and… I’ve forgotten what I was going to say, what was I going to say?

The Beach of Falesá – Robert Louis Stevenson

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I saw that island first when it was neither night nor morning.  The moon was to the west, setting, but still broad and bright.  To the east, and right amidships of the dawn, which was all pink, the daystar sparkled like a diamond.  The land breeze blew in our faces, and smelt strong of wild lime and vanilla: other things besides, but these were the most plain

So begins The Beach of Falesá one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s lesser known tales which is set in his beloved South Pacific where he lived from 1888 until his sudden death in 1894 aged just forty four. He is buried in Samoa.

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My edition of this book was published by The Folio Society in 1959 and is illustrated by the wonderful Clarke Hutton who also illustrated many of the Penguin and Puffin books on my shelves. At just under twenty nine thousand words it is more of a novella than a novel, although the Folio edition stretches it to 129 pages including a ten page introduction by H E Bates. The story was originally printed in the Illustrated London News and is normally published along with two much shorter stories (The Bottle Imp and The Isle of Voices) under the title of Island Nights Entertainments. The tale concerns the arrival of John Wiltshire to take up his post as a trader on the island to replace John Adams who had died in mysterious circumstances and how he finds out what is really going on.

Large parts of the book, specifically conversations between the Europeans and the natives are written in Pidgin English which can be off putting at first and it is also assumed that you know what several words that Stevenson would have understood actually mean. For example the main product that the trader is there to collect in payment for his goods is copra – the dried white meat of a coconut used to produce coconut oil. He also refers to the natives as Kanaka which is here used as a generic term for Pacific island workers but originally derives from the indigenous peoples of New Caledonia. Coconut is also spelt throughout as cocoanut which is now an archaic spelling.

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On arrival Wiltshire meets another trader called Case who it turns out will be the main protagonist of the story and it is decided that Wiltshire should have a ‘wife’ to look after him on the island and a native girl Uma is tricked into the role by Case. Because she cannot read English the document that she treasures actually reads…

This is to certify that Uma, daughter of Fa’avao of Falesá, Island of —, is illegally married to Mr. John Wiltshire for one week, and Mr. John Wiltshire is at liberty to send her to hell when he pleases.

John Blackamoar.
Chaplain to the hulks.

Extracted from the Register
by William T. Randall,
Master Mariner.

This clearly indicates the contempt that the white people already on the island hold for the natives, Wiltshire, to his credit, quickly regrets the nature of this and when he meets the missionary gets him to do the marriage properly as he realises that he does love Uma.

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One of the main problems with the book to modern readers is the casual racism which was so common at the time the book was written. The natives are looked upon as little more than children, in fact at one point Stevenson makes this explicit

It’s easy to find out what Kanakas think.  Just go back to yourself any way round from ten to fifteen years old, and there’s an average Kanaka.  There are some pious, just as there are pious boys; and the most of them, like the boys again, are middling honest and yet think it rather larks to steal, and are easy scared and rather like to be so.

Having said that Stevenson doesn’t portray any of the white men in a particularly positive way, Case is a particularly nasty piece of work and Captain Randall is a gin sodden wreck. The missionary is a reasonable character but Stevenson (through Wiltshire) makes it clear that he doesn’t approve of the work of the missionaries in the islands.

Stevenson nowadays is regarded more as a childrens’ author, with Kidnapped and Treasure Island being his best known works along with a book I still have from my early library A Child’s Garden of Verses. But this at least is definitely aimed at an adult readership.

Island Nights’ Entertainments is available to read on Project Guttenberg via this link

Where’s Wumpus – Elleston Trevor

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Nowadays if Elleston Trevor is remembered at all it is for his 1964 novel The Flight of the Phoenix about a plane crash in the Libyan desert where the survivors eventually manage to build a new plane out of the wreckage of the old and fly to safety. The book has been turned into a film twice, once in 1965 starring James Stewart and Richard Attenborough and remade in 2004 starring Dennis Quaid. Born Trevor Dudley-Smith he eventually changed his name to Elleston Trevor which until then was one of his eleven pen names (including his real name) for his various books such as the nineteen volumes about the spy Quiller which he wrote under the name of Adam Hall written from 1965 with the last one published in 1996 one year after his death.

However I want to go back to 1948, as I have a couple of the children’s books he wrote then which were actually originally my mothers and specifically the third (and final) book in the Wumpus series, Where’s Wumpus.

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This has been my favourite book from childhood and it has been a joy rereading it this week. As you can see from the opening page the font is lovely and the spelling wonderfully eccentric and there are also several typesetting jokes later in the book to emphasise action. Wumpus is a koala living in a wood with his various friends Ole Bill Mole, Flip, or maybe Flap, the penguin (it depends on the day, if he is Flip today then he will be Flap tomorrow and vice versa), Hare-With-the-Careless-Air and Chipmunk (who first appears in this final book). The eight colour and forty eight black and white charming illustrations are by John McCail with the colour pages on higher quality paper and inset into the book. This is probably due to paper restrictions still applying after the war meaning that the paper used for the rest of the book isn’t suitable for colour printing.

In the first part of the book Wumpus goes to visit Ole Bill Mole and after partaking of a large amount of ‘swish-roll’ is persuaded to help with the decorating that Bill had started. Unfortunately he had the only ladder so Wumpus ends up balanced precariously on the umbrella stand

But a Wumpus was now doing all he knew now to stay on top of the Brolly-stand which was trying to do a Rhumba while he did the Tango and the Bucket was going into an old-fashioned Waltz

At which point Flap (it being Tuesday) arrived and he tried to get down again…

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In a later story Wumpus discovers the joy of swinging between trees on a rope and the typesetting joins in the fun and games

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It was established early on in the book that there was a rung missing from the ladder leading down from The Wumpus Tree to the ground

So down he went, with a heigh and a ho (according to which rung of the ladder he was on) and when he came to the rung that wasn’t (because he’d forgotten to put a new one in yet) he murmured: “Careful Wump,” in a cautioning way, and managed to reach the ground without taking a run at it from half-way up the ladder (which would have been bouncy, not to mention most uncomfortablesome).

and about two thirds of the way through the book he decides to fix this particular problem even though it had started to rain leading to what appears to be a nasty accident…

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Instead it turns out that the umbrella acted like a parachute and so they all had a go at jumping off the balcony and floating to the ground, unfortunately Bill Mole, being the lightest, floated rather further than the rest and initially landed badly

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Later on it turns out that a gust of wind took him flying over the wood.

The whimsical nature of the book is just as much fun now as an adult as when I first read it aged about eight or nine, the Wumpus books are difficult to find nowadays but there is a copy of Where’s Wumpus available at the time of writing from a shop in Australia.

I do have another of Elleston Trevor’s children’s books which is also a first edition from 1948 and this is aimed at slightly older readers, probably early teens. This is illustrated with line drawings by David Williams and again printed by Gerald G. Swan. The tale is about a group of anthropomorphic animals that decide to go exploring and features an otter (called Potter), a badger (Old Stripe) and a squirrel (Skip). They try to interest other animals in the wood about coming with them but in the end it is just the three that head off down the river.

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They have all sorts of adventures on the trip including meeting up with a church mouse who joins them for a large part of the journey. As can be seen below the drawings are just as captivating as the ones in Where’s Wumpus but have a much more naturalistic style.

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The Secret Travellers is book five in the fifteen book series with the same characters which have become known as the Happy Glade (from the title of the first book) or Deep Wood (from the title of the third) series, confusingly the first two were written under the name of Trevor Dudley-Smith with the other thirteen being as Elleston Trevor hence the two different names for the series. These are all unfortunately also long out of print and difficult to find. I would love to see these available again as I’m sure they would find a readership but in the meantime I will enjoy my mother’s books and maybe I will find some of the other titles one day.

An Unsung Hero: the remarkable story of Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorer – Michael Smith

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Roald Amundsen, Robert Scott, Ernest Shackleton, Tom Crean. The first three Antarctic explorers listed are household names but Tom Crean is, as the title of the book implies, largely unknown. But he should be celebrated, as he took part in three of the main British Antarctic expeditions during what became known as The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration during the first two decades of the 20th century.  He  was with Scott and Shackleton on the Discovery Expedition from 1901 to 1904 which at the time set the record for furthest south at 82° 17′. He was then with Scott on his ill-fated Terra Nova expedition from 1910 to 1913 and Scott’s attempt on the South Pole, where he was beaten to it by Amundson and died on his way back to the ship. Crean was later with Shackleton on his failed Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition on the Endurance from 1914 to 1917 where the Endurance sank early in the venture. Shackleton walked his men to Elephant island and then chose four to go with him for help in an open boat across over eight hundred miles of the South Atlantic to South Georgia and Crean was one of those who was part of possibly the greatest feat of seamanship seen in the last hundred years.

So why is he so barely known, apart from those of us with a fascination with Polar exploration? Well part of the reason is that Crean was really only semi-literate, so he left no diaries or any other documentation for posterity; he also never gave any interviews and the four medals he earned in the Antarctic weren’t displayed. Apparently he never even told his daughters about his exploits in Antarctica. The sole hint that here was a man with his background in exploration was that when he left the navy in 1920 he opened a pub in his home town of Annascaul in Southern Ireland which he called The South Pole Inn. The pub is still called that and in 2003 a statue of Crean was erected in the town, so maybe wider recognition is finally happening for this quiet and self-assuming man and it may well have been helped by this excellent book which was originally printed in 2001, my copy is the first paperback edition from 2002 also published by Headline.

Despite the lack of much documentary evidence from Crean himself Michael Smith has done an excellent job of research to piece together his life from lots of sources. Sixty six books are listed in the bibliography, quite a few I already have in my small Polar library and this list has pointed me to others that sound worth adding to my collection. There are also numerous letters, unpublished diaries and other documents that have been consulted. All this has made a beautifully illustrated book of over three hundred pages which tells not only the story of Tom Crean but also the expeditions that he took part in.  He was in the group of the last eight men on the Beardmore with Scott when he chose the last five to make the final push for the pole. That Scott decided not to chose him may well have been an error as Crean was still fit and strong unlike Oates who had an injured leg and Taffy Evans’ badly cut hand, both of which for reasons of his own Scott decided to take with him. That this undoubtedly saved Crean’s life and allowed him to continue his polar explorations with Shackleton a few years later. What can only be wondered is if Scott had taken the fitter Crean then would his party made it back to the food depot they were aiming for when they died on the ice. We will never know, Michael Smith makes it quite clear where his opinion lies:

Scott, it must be said, made two basic mistakes in selecting his final party to reach the pole. First, he chose the men at the wrong time and second he chose the wrong men.

Shackleton on the other hand greatly valued the taciturn and powerful Irishman, not only selecting him for the crew of the Endurance but picking him as one of the four to go for help with him in that open boat when the expedition became a rescue mission. I’ll cover this in a later blog as I have been in awe of that journey since first reading about it as a child. After returning from the expedition Crean joined the war effort and Shackleton encouraged him to get promotion, along with writing to the First Lord of the Admiralty personally recommending his promotion. This he duly got and after the war ended up with a reasonable pension, which along with money sent to him by Shackleton enabled him to open the South Pole Inn. Shackleton tried to convince Crean to join him again on a trip south but by this time he was a family man with two daughters and declined, his exploring days were behind him.

Michael Smith has written a hugely enjoyable book about one of the lesser known great Polar explorers and even if you know nothing about the history of the time it is well worth reading.

Relativity – Albert Einstein

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If you are going to read a book about relativity then why not go for the man who created the theories, after all as Einstein says himself in his preface…

The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of relativity for those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. The work presumes a standard of education corresponding to that of a university matriculation and despite the shortness of the book, a fair amount of patience and force of will on the part of the reader.

Consider yourself warned.

The edition I have was published by The Folio Society in 2004 and has an introduction by Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University Roger Penrose.  Einstein originally wrote the book in 1916, just a year after he published his main paper on his General Theory of Relativity and eleven years after he had formulated his Special Theory of Relativity. Originally in German the translation is by Robert W. Lawson and he does an excellent job especially considering the complexities of the subject. Put simply the two theories deal with different things, the special theory is concerned with resolving issues between the laws of electromagnetism (specifically Maxwell’s equations) and those of motion as described in Newtonian mechanics, this becomes especially problematic as speeds approach the speed of light and time ceases to behave the way you would expect it to. The general theory on the other hand deals with gravitation and the forces between bodies caused by this. This is where the concept of warped space-time comes into place and the highly satisfying rubber sheet model which can easily demonstrate the basics of the idea and has become largely familiar to most students over the last century. It should be noted for anyone who watches the video is that the reason that the objects ultimately collide is due to friction between the balls and sheet, without that elliptical orbits would continue as we are familiar with planetary motion so this can only ever be a rough approximation of space-time curvature.

There are two ways of approaching an explanation of the theories of relativity, one book which I read several years ago does it very successfully and that is Why Does E=mc²? (And Why Should We Care?) by Professors Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw which takes eight chapters and roughly 250 pages (depending on the edition) to cover the subject including the derivation of E=mc². Yes there is quite a lot of mathematics but there is also a large number of diagrams and descriptions in simpler terms in order to expand the readers understanding over a extended period and a short appendix in later editions to add more detail to a section that readers had queried. Einstein takes the other approach, with thirty two chapters over 132 pages (in this edition) so you approach quite complex theories and mathematics in small bite size chunks and you can reread the short chapters until you have grasped the concept being covered. There are also five appendices in a further fifty four pages which go into significantly more detail of the mathematical models and theories underpinning the two theories which are not needed by the casual reader but are there largely for completeness. In his introduction Penrose explains that part of the calculations done by Einstein in the book are no longer done that way as expressing time with a fourth dimensional axis based on imaginary numbers is seen as an unnecessary complexity when it can be done by clocks instead. This negates the need for one of the appendices which deals with Minkowski’s four dimensional space model using the square root of -1, other than as an example of Einstein’s thinking at the time.

There is no denying that some of the chapters can be difficult to get your head around the first time of reading, especially if like me you haven’t done theoretical physics at this level for over thirty five years, but it definitely worth the effort as Einstein gradually takes you through the maths. Starting with Euclidean Geometry (the first chapter which also looks at the concept of ‘truth’ for a mathematical axiom) and then pushing your understanding through relative movement of co-ordinate systems until you hit the Lorentz Transformation less than thirty pages later which gives you the basics needed to understand relativity by comparisons of motion within relative co-ordinates systems.

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With the introduction of Gaussian co-ordinates later on we can finally approach non-Euclidean geometry, which combined with Minkowski’s four dimensional space leads to the mathematics behind the general theory and warped space-time, which for now is how we understand gravity. The book is complex, but not unreasonably so, and the short sharp sections work as a way for the reader to grasp the overall concept in practical chunks. A century on this work still underpins our understanding of the cosmos and reading this book or the one by professors Cox and Forshaw, whichever you get on best with, is a good way to exercise the brain.

Of course there is still a lot of work to go before physics hits its ultimate goal of ‘the theory of everything’. Relativity is very good at explaining the very large but when you hit the realms of the very small quantum mechanics is just plain strange to the layman and even Einstein for a long time refused to believe most of the concepts behind that branch of physics. I do have a very good book on that subject as well which I will look at later this year.

Storm – George R Stewart

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Way out here they got a name
For rain and wind and fire
The rain is Tess, the fire’s Joe
And they call the wind Maria

Maria blows the stars around
And sends the clouds a-flyin’
Maria makes the mountain sound
Like folks were up there dyin’

Maria, Maria
They call the wind Maria

Lyrics from probably the best known song from Paint your Wagon, the 1951 musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and the song was inspired by the book that is the subject of this review. For Stewart names his storm Maria and gave rise to the whole idea of naming cyclones and hurricanes. In a later edition Stewart addresses the issue of how to pronounce Maria, originally he was thinking of Ma-Ree-Ah but changed his mind as he though she needed the harder sound of Ma-Rye-Ah so Lerner and Loewe were correct in rhyming the name with ‘fire’. Maria is very much the heroine of the book, to such an extent that the usual disclaimer at the start of a novel is in this case:-

The characters of this book – including Maria – are imaginary.

The book was first published in 1941 by Random House in the US, my copy is the Fighting Forces Penguin Special numbered S238 printed in June 1944 part of a series of books printed for American troops during WWII in a collaboration between The American Infantry Journal and the British Penguin Books. Almost all of the titles from this joint venture were factual and dealt with aspects of the war such as aircraft recognition, army handbooks, military history and exploits during the conflict. There were a total of three novels included though

  • S211 The Good Soldier Schweik by Jaroslav Hasek
  • S219 The Moon is down by John Steinbeck
  • S238 Storm by George R Stewart

An excellent selection of titles and one I will probably come back to in future articles for this site.

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The structure of the novel is unusual, there are twelve chapters, one for each day of the storm and within the chapters there are numbered sections each of which follow a particular group of characters. These range from the meteorologists, to the telephone company repair crews, the dispatcher at air traffic control, railway workers and for myself the most interesting group which is the snow plough crews charged with keeping route 40 over the Donner Pass clear of snow.  Theirs is probably the best written story in the book and you really get to feel for their struggle to keep the road open. There are also various groups of travellers on roads, ships and trains that we keep track of and sometimes a section just deals with one incident on one day so we never hear of the characters involved again. Some of these people survive the storm, some don’t, but we follow their story in their own episodes as the book progresses, it’s like watching numerous daily soap operas before the days of binge-watching where you have to wait until the next day to find out what happens but meantime here is another story to keep track of. At the peak of the storm, through days six to nine, there are fourteen or fifteen separate stories being told in this manner for each day.

Stewart casually mentions small incidents at the beginning of the book that later become major hazards like a piece of wood falling off the back of a lorry, or somebody shooting at a junction box for a bit of fun and these later on are shown to have consequences far beyond their initial triviality. Likewise we follow Maria from a small squall off the coast of Japan across the Pacific and see her interacting with other weather systems some of which divert her route others of which strengthen and then after twelve days ultimately destroy her. During the time she gives birth to other storms and affects places right across North and Central America. One issue with the book is that in order to make sense of it you really do need a good functional knowledge of the geography of the US to follow what is going on and this may be one reason for the apparent lack of an edition in print at the moment. Fortunately I have travelled extensively across America so do know the relationship between most of the places mentioned but it could be confusing if you don’t have that knowledge. The book was a best seller in the 1940’s and 50’s so it’s a pity that it is now largely forgotten especially considering its two influences on contemprary culture beyond the books own boundaries.

As stated at the start of this blog when Stewart decided to have one of his characters (the Junior Meteorologist) name the storm this was not something that was done at the time. The JM, as he is referred to throughout the book, is somewhat ashamed of his habit of naming storms and when halfway through the story he accidentally calls the storm Maria whilst talking to his boss he is mortified. His boss however quite likes the idea and the book is cited as the main influence on the decision of the United States Weather Bureau to start naming storms using women’s names in 1953. Maria was not part of the original series of names but was added in tribute to the book and is now officially retired after Hurricane Maria killed over 3000 people in 2017.

As for its impact on music you can hear Bryn Terfel singing They Call the Wind Maria by clicking here.