A Painter's Lot was not a happy one.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell - Oxford University Press

 

 

I have been meaning to read this book for a long time. It is probably seven years since I purchased a copy so as to facilitate my intention but it is only in the past fortnight that I have opened it's pages. It was bought at what was one of Northern Ireland's independent booksellers. That bookshop is no more. Robert Tressell, (the pen name of Robert Noonan, christened Robert Croaker), would most definitely have had something to say about that.

Noonan was born in Dublin in 1870 to a Mary Noonan who had her infant son christened with his father's surname. His father was a retired senior police officer and magistrate. Noonan died of TB in 1911 with his book unpublished.

Noonan was a socialist and trade unionist. He was much influenced by the writings of William Morris. That said this novel does not represent the writings of a rabid individual. It is clever, it is amusing and it is thought provoking. There are several early references to the, "living wage." The book follows the lives and tribulations of a group of painters and decorators employed by the money grasping firm of Rushton & Co. This was a world which Noonan inhabited and there are most certainly elements of autobiography in the character of Frank Owen. The dread of the workhouse was clearly ever present in the mind of the Edwardian working man whose health was the only thing keeping him and his family from the clutches of the precursor of the welfare state.

 

EU Referendum - a fictional result

Head of State. - Andrew Marr - Fourth Estate

I suppose that one would describe this book as a political thriller. The events are set against the backdrop of a referendum to determine whether the UK should or should not exit the EU. It is set in the near future.

I didn't buy this book and having read it I can safely say that I wouldn't have. That said I plodded through its three hundred and sixty seven pages manfully and at least initially I would hope with an open and receptive mind.

I found the characters to be rather stereotypical. Very definitely two dimensional. The behaviour of politicians and civil servants alike was very cliched, when it wasn't fantastical. A right wing individual with the surname of Panzer! At least his forename was not Gengiss. The prime minister dies on the eve of the referendum. This fact is not released but rather Rory Bremner is brought in by the political mandarins to imitate the prime minister's voice. Very believable! Meanwhile his corpse is decapitated and his hands hacked off. The balance of the cadaver is then moved through secret passages and its ultimate disposal is left to the tender ministrations of three Poles.

If Mr. Marr wishes to be known as a novelist then this effort will not assist his cause unless he wishes to be known as a very poor novelist.

 

 

A Contested Settlement

One Family - A Tale of Division, Devotion and Restitution - Henry Macrory - Curly Burn Books

I bought my father this book for his last birthday. Whilst it contains something of the generational history of the McCausland family of Drenagh its emphasis is on the inter family court case and the preamble to same that threatened to divide the family for most of the 1940's. The prize was not insubstantial, the Drenagh Estate with the Lanyon designed five bay mansion house at its centre.

The basic facts of the case were familiar to me. The estate was entailed and when it was resettled upon Connolly McCausland's twenty first birthday in 1927 his father, (Maurice), caused a forfeiture clause to be inserted which became operative should a successor become a Roman Catholic or indeed profess that religion. Such an eventuality would, as drafted, not only disinherit the successor but also his heirs even if they did not profess to be Roman Catholics. This clause was repeated in Connolly's marriage settlement in 1932. Maurice was to die in 1938. In 1940 Connolly converted to the Roman Catholic faith. By virtue of the terms of the forfeiture clause Drenagh passed to Connolly's elder sister Helen and her family. Initially Connolly seemed to accept the situation but eventuality prodded by his wife he instigated proceedings that aimed to cause the forfeiture clause to be declared null and void.

Macrory says in his introduction that he has been at pains not to take sides. That being the case Helen and in particular her husband Lucius Thompson - McCausland come across as very reasonable and honourable individuals. The author's portrayal of Connolly and his wife Peggy is not descriptive of individuals who are quite as personable as the Thompson-McCaulands.

Mention is made of mole hills on the lawns of Drenagh. A bit of a zoological faux pas that. Thankfully moles are absent from the fauna of Northern Ireland.

 

Notes on The Place Names of The Parishes and Townlands of the County of Londonderry - Alfred Moore Munn

Not a snappy title for a book but it certainly tells you exactly what is between the covers. This book was first published in 1925. Sixty years later in 1985 it was reprinted by Ballinascreen Historical Society. I don't know how many copies were in the original printing but the 1985 print run ran to five hundred copies. The original print run was probably no larger.

 

It is not a book that one reads from page one et seq. Rather it is a book that one will dip into and refer to for information on the nomenclature of the parishes and townlands of the County. It also provides information on the size of the townlands. I spent an enjoyable couple of hours flipping through it.

 

The author, Alfred Moore Munn was a solicitor by profession and by 1925 he had been appointed Clerk of the Crown & Peace for the City and County of Londonderry. He had married Blanche Oulton Brady in Dublin in 1879. Their daughter, Blanche Moore Munn, (born 1881), married Captain Samuel Alexander Watt in 1900. The latter was a son of Andrew Alexander Watt of Thornhill, Londonderry.

 

Not for Reading

The Dark Palace - R. N, Morris - Severn House Publushers Ltd.

I like to support the local library. If people don't make use of their libraries they will be an easy casualty of Government cutbacks.

 

Unfortunately I lifted this book by Roger Morris when I last entered the portals of my nearest repository of the written word. It was a real effort to read this detective novel. From page two onwards I was tempted to desist from the task. I cannot remember when I was so disappointed with a book. Maybe there are some readers out there who found this story riveting but if there are I don't think that I would want to meet them.

 

I found the storyline unconvincing, ditto the main protagonist, (DI Silas Quinn). The characters were shallow, two dimensional caricatures who inhabited a world of melodrama. If the price hadn't read £19.99 I might have called it a penny dreadful. It was - dreadful.

 

 

Case of Portstewart Infanticide Remembered

Over the last week or so I have been listening to, "The Butterfly Cabinet," by Bernie McGill whilst undertaking my vehicular peregrinations. I suppose it was the Northern Ireland setting of the novel that caused me to select it. The story revolves around the death of a girl, 'Charlotte," in the Big House and the culpability of her mother, 'Harriett." The mother is convicted of manslaughter and receives a sentence of penal servitude despite being, "en ventre," with her second daughter.

 

Whilst this may be a novel the events which are portrayed by Ms McGill unashamemedly take their origin from the the 1892 death of the daughter of Robert Montagu of Cromore, Portstewart and his wife Annie Margaret McMicking. Mrs Montagu was convicted of manslaughter. Crown Counsel was Edward Carson.

 

Several decades have passed since the Montagu's lived at Cromore although they certainly had property interests in the Portstewart area until at least the nineteen nineties. I seem to remember that they sold Cromore railway station in the early1980's.

 

Granchester Mysteries on the small Screen

 

Spending quite a lot of time in the old horseless carriage as I do I often wile away the time listening to an audio book. About a week ago I borrowed three such books from one of the local libraries. I have to concede that I didn't spend a lot of time on my selection. A quick scan of the titles on offer and the advertising blurbs resulted in me exiting with a thriller and two books from the detective genre.

 

The title which I selected for initial listening was, "The Shadow of Death," by James Runcie. There are six short stories on the disc and they are collectively entitled, "The Granchester Mysteries." They are set in 1950's Britain. The late war is still a dominant force in peoples' lives.

 

The main character is amateur detective Canon Sidney Chambers who assists his friend Detective Inspector Geordie Keating. Runcie paints a very believable picture of clerical life. That is perhaps not unsurprising. I have just discovered that James Runcie is the son of Robert Runcie the former Archbishop of Canterbury.

 

What I have also noted is that the Granchester Mysteries are now the subject of a new television series and the first episode is being televised tonight on ITV. If you don't want to know who the murderer is in the first episode look away now. If however you want to know who, "done it," pay careful attention to the deceased's secretary!

 

 

 

Individuals brought together.

Mrs. Dalloway. - Virginia Woolfe. - Oxford World's Classics

 

This is the first of Woolf's novels that I have read. I don't suppose that I would have ever got round to pulling it from the bookshelves if it had not been the selection for June's book club.

 

It is not a long novel and by no means could you describe it as a yarn. It is novel of themes and of comparisons. The two principal characters are Septimus Warren Smith and Clarissa Dalloway. Although the clerk and the socialite wife of an MP are very different individuals yet there are aspects of their lives which are similarly coloured and clouded. Both of them are survivors. Septimus is severely shell shocked and is a survivor of war. His mental illness reflects Woolf's own struggles of the mind which like her fictional character would ultimately result in her taking her own life. Clarissa is a survivor of the influenza pandemic which swept across Europe at the end of the Great War and she too has been left scarred. Clarissa definitely and Septimus probably have experienced incidents of, " the love that dares not speak its name." Yet another example of Woolf's own life being introduced into her writing.

A Ripping Good Yarn

The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childers - Oxford World's Classics

I have been reading this book over the last couple of weeks. It was strange therefore, almost a trifle diconcerting, when I paged through Saturday's Telegraph magazine and came upon an article that had borrowed the title of the book for its own banner headline. One of those collisions of coincidence I suppose.

 

Childers' gentle spy novel reminded me of Buchan's writings. They aren't separated by that many years and their heroes are from the same Oxbridge stratum with very similar views towards King and Country. Public school, Trinity College Cambridge, service in the Boer War Childers was initially very much a son of Empire and a believer in it. I wonder what damascene event resulted in his political volte face and led him inexorably to his early death on the wrong side of a firing squad?

 

Childers draws extensively on his knowledge of yachting and the Fresian Islands in this his only novel. There is no doubt that this is an author who wrote well about what he knew. He didn't have to swot up on the subject. There is a deftness in his use of nautical terms. Perhaps the denouement is a trifle weak and predictable but the author navigates the reader through the sinuos channels towards the conclusion with more than a degree of competency. Not a spiffing yarn but a jolly good one.

 

Holiday Read.

The Frozen Dead - Bernard Minier - Mulholland Books

 

Most of us will read more books whilst on holiday than we normally do. I certainly fall within this category. One of the books which I read during my recent lazy hazy sojourn was a translation of Bernard Minier's debut novel, "The Frozen Dead." What I can still remember of my O- level French forty years after the event would not be adequate to read this book in Minier's native tongue.

 

If one has to allocate a book to a specific genre and I suppose one must, then I think the best description for this one is probably, "crime thriller."

 

The backdrop for the novel is the French Pyrenees. The opening scenes involve the discovery of the decapitated body of a horse owned by a well connected local industrialist. This prompts a Toulouse police officer by the name of Servaz being sent to take charge of the resultant enquiry. The story is related through this Latin quoting character and a psychologist by the name of Diane Berg. This latter individual has just commenced work in an institution for the criminally insane which happens to be in the same valley as the equine remains were discovered in. Servaz comes across as a believable character, Diane Berg less so.

 

Two murders follow and there is the disturbing discovery at all three crime scenes of the DNA of one of the, "residents," of the secure unit. A nearby and now abandoned children's summer school will prove to have a connection to the deaths.

 

The build up to the denouement is well paced although I did find the actual climax of the novel slightly weak. However perhaps that is being rather churlish because as a holiday read it was enjoyable, - good escapism. I believe that Minier has now brought out a second novel and I would be tempted to add it to my reading list.

 

Time and Memory

Austerlitz. - W. G. Sebald. - Penguin Books

 

A friend gave me this book to read. He thought that I would enjoy the quiet meditative quality of its prose and its slightly melancholy attachment to time and memory. I did.

 

The Austerlitz of the story is Jacques Austerlitz who as a five year old is put on a Kinder-transport by his mother, Agáta and sent to England. He is placed with foster parents and brought up by them in a cold Methodist manse in Wales. He becomes Dafydd Elias and his formative identity is erased from him just as unbeknownst to him his parents are being literally erased as a result of die Endlösung. It is only after the death of his foster mother and the mental decline of his foster father that the then teenage schoolboy first discovers his true name.

 

Slowly, almost imperceptibly half forgotten memories flutter across his memory. He ignores these little signposts of recollection, consciously blanking out what may be his past, but with age he is inexorably drawn backwards to his heritage and the future that was taken from him.

 

As Sebald so presciently states, time is the executioner of our future. With incessant regularity it slices away at what is yet to come.

 

Is Jekyll Hyde Bound?

 

This month's book for discussion at the classic book reading group was Robert Louis Stevenson's, "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. To call this a novel is probably stretching the term somewhat, but yet it is something more than a short story. Maybe it is the first example of a novella?

 

The last assemblage of the group only attracted four members and one of those appeared to announce that she was returning to her homeland, the Kingdom of Alba. Would there be sufficient attendees today to enable the term , "group," to be applied to the gathering? Well just about I think. Five of us arrived clutching our much thumbed books.

I suppose we all have our Edward Hyde side and we all have to ensure that we control the dark side of our personalities. Jekyll became addicted to his alter ego and ultimately could not keep those tendencies in rein. The descent to moral decrepitude could not be halted.

 

Bulldog wins again!!

Escapism is I think one of the most alluring features of the novel. From the perspective of 2013 the Bulldog Drummond novels of Herman Cyril McNeile, (aka Sapper), are certainly escapism. The world they portray never really existed although the precepts and social mores displayed in Sapper's writings were undoubtedly a feature of a certain stratum of British society.

 

They are, "Boys Own," adventure stories, rattling good yarns. Spiffing tales of daring do. You know from the outset that Hugh Drummond MC will be successful in his fight against his protagonists, no matter what the odds. Perhaps therein lies some of the joy of these novels. Some might say that they are not politically correct in our increasingly sanitised world, but echoing what I am sure Bulldog Drummond would have retorted I would say to that, tommy rot!

 

I must have been nine or ten whenever I started to read these books, moving on to them from the works of W. E. Johns. I seem to remember unearthing a few from a box stored under a bed in my paternal grandmother's house. Presumably they must have been bought for my father or his brother in the 1930's.

 

Recently I saw an audio copy of , "The Third Round," in the local library. I could not resist borrowing it and dipping in to its cocoon of comforting escapism. It did not disappoint.

 

Prehen House and the German Connection

I purchased a copy of the booklet concerning Prehen House which has been published recently. It is by no means a weighty intellectual tome, but it does what it is meant to do very well. It is something which a visitor to the house will buy and I think retain. The photographs are clearly not just snaps and they have not been diminished by the use of inferior paper. Obviously the potted history of the house and its owners includes reference to "Half Hanged McNaghten," but the story of the confiscation of the house and estate after the outbreak of the 1914-18 war is also well told. When Lieut-Col. George Knox died in 1910 he left his estate to his German born grandson, Baron George Carl Otto Louis Von Scheffler-Knox , (the Kaiser had permitted the addition of Knox to his name).

I never met the Baron, although I do remember his funeral in 1966 when his ashes were interred in the Knox family vault in Londonderry's City Cemetery. I did however meet his widow, Baroness Kathryn Von Scheffler-Knox and his son Johann Ludwig Prehen Von Scheffler-Knox. Both of them were very typically Germanic and both of them walked with sticks, she because of age related infirmity, he because of leg wounds sustained on the Russian front. It must have been in the early 1980's that the Baroness passed away. Johann died in 2011, the last of his line.

Three Copies of Framley Parsonage

I do enjoy Trollope's novels, but that doesn't explain why I have ended up with three copies of, "Framley Parsonage. A totally satisfactory explanation evades me for the moment. I suppose that one of the duplicates may have been included in a boxed set of, "classics," but what of the other? Maybe a £1 price tag was just too attractive, or maybe I had a very early, "senior moment," and I forgot that this book was already contained within my personal library.

 

How did I discover that I was the proud possessor of a superfluity of Trollope? Well I had invested in one of these app things. This one goes by the name of Book Crawler and it allows you to scan details of your books and CDs onto your tablet thingy. It really is quite surprising what these pieces of computer tech can now do. I remember when the sliderule was the zenith of tech chic!

 

Anyhow this app thing turns your tablet into a scanner which reads the bar code on the back of your book. If your book is a pre barcode edition then you can still enter details manually. You end up with a record of all of your books. My computer record told me that I had three copies of this particular novel. It also informed me that I had two copies of Martin Chuzzlewit! Another senior moment! Zut alors!

 

A Walk up England.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. - Rachel Joyce. - Doubleday

Harold Fry is recently retired. He and his wife Maureen live in the same house they had purchased as a young married couple. Neither of them is happy. Both of them are tormented by their memories and experiences. They reside together, but they do not live together. Although the book contains early hints of the main reason for their unhappiness, it is several chapters in before we realise fully that their only son, David, to whom Maureen is always talking, is dead. He had committed suicide.

The book commences with Harold receiving a note from Queenie Hennessy, an old workmate, telling him that she is in a hospice in Berwick-Upon-Tweed and that she is dying. Prompted by the words of a girl assistant in a garage he decides that he will walk the 627 miles to Queenie. He will give her a reason to cling to life.

There are certainly allegorical aspects to this novel. The quotation from, "The Pilgrim's Progress," immediately before the first chapter and the very title of the book are highly suggestive of how the author wants us to interpret her work. Harold's pilgrimage allows him to confront his son's death and the shrivelled relationship with his wife. It is also what prompts Maureen to be jolted out of her mourning and appreciate her husband's good qualities and her own faults.

At times the writing is rather sentimental and, although the book ends with Harold and Maureen laughing together I wouldn't say that it is a happy or inspiring read. Being told of someone else's regrets, disappointments, failures and despair, even if that someone is fictional, does little to raise ones spirits.

A Watery Grave

The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot. - Oxford World's Classics

George Eliot's (aka Mary Ann Evans), at times sylvan story of Maggie & Tom Tulliver was the selection for May's meeting of the Classics Reading Group. The waters of the Ripple and Floss feature large in the lives of both brother and sister. An idyllic childhood is spent at Dorlcote Mill, before the tribulations of adolescence and the poverty and sibling separation that follows their father's ill judged court case concerning riparian rights and his ultimate death. Eventually it is the same Floss that reunites brother and sister, but only in death.

 

As with Dickens' , David Copperfield there is much of the autobiography in Evans's novel. Like Maggie she grew up in the country. Like Maggie she adored her brother and like Maggie she would become estranged from her brother. Evans's elopement with George Henry Lewes is mirrored in Maggie's aborted elopement with Stephen Guest. Both authoress and character suffer social obloquy as a consequence of their, "racey," actions. Maggie ultimately retrieves the relationship with her brother unlike her creator.

 

 

A Yarn from the Raj.- Only If!

Kim. - Rudyard Kipling - Penguin Popular Classics

Kim, what many regard as Kipling's literary masterpiece, was the novel which was most recently dissected at the reading group which I attend. It is one of those books which I have always meant to read, but which I never got round to doing . That is how it should have remained.

 

I suppose that I was expecting a fast moving yarn of daring do in the Raj, a precursor of Bulldog Drummond and his ilk. Instead I found myself wading through a stultifyingly boring walk in the North West Frontier with Kim O'Hara and his Tibetan lama friend. With the introduction to the plot of what is referred to as, "The Great Game," there was ample opportunity to rack up the pace of the story, but Kipling seems unable to move from him ambulatory style.

 

Maybe it was a daring selection for an Edwardian spinster aunt to give her nephew at Christmas but the years have not been kind to it.

 

Foyle College - The First Four Hundred Years

Last night saw the official launch of the tome," A View the Foyle Commanding," which relates the history of Foyle College since its foundation in 1617. I won't pretend that I was the youngest person in attendance, but I certainly fell within the youngest quartile. Not unsurprising I suppose. History, reminiscence and memory tend to be the métier of the grizzled and follicly challenged.

 

The venue for the event was the old Lawrence Hill premises of the School. Opened in 1814 it was only in 1967 that the School vacated its portals and moved to the angular Springtown building. I cannot imagine that that edifice will survive to see its two hundredth birthday nor I expect will the planned modular monstrosity which is to be the new home of the School. Maybe I am more grizzled than I imagine!

 

There were a total of six speeches. Initially we were assured that the speakers were limited to five minutes each. However we had just congratulated ourselves following this announcement when the MC did warn us that one of the speakers was a cleric and he feared the worst. His fears were not ill founded. This was not just a cleric, but a retired one. He had a captive congregation or at least a captive audience. He had a lectern in front of him and he was not going to loose his opportunity. He didn't. He seemed very happy with his allusions , they just weren't very apposite.

 

What then of the book itself? It is certainly a more professional production than those other School histories which I have seen. To date I have only dipped into the book so I am as yet unable to comment on the content in much detail. On a cursory glance I would probably suggest more socio-historical data and rather less emphasis on rugby and cricket.

 

A Classic Reading Group

I paddled off to my local book club this afternoon. This month's read was Thackery's, "Vanity Fair." Everyone seemed to have enjoyed this book of manners in Regency Britain.

There was much discussion as to the relative merits of the two principal female characters, Rebecca Sharp and Amelia Sedley. The gentlemen of the group were of the view that Rebecca was the girl to go out with for the night, but that Amelia was good wife material to have waiting at home. The females of the group purported to be aghast at this view (one could almost see the fluttering fans!), but the red blooded males were adamant in their views. Rebecca was vivacious, albeit a scheming hussy, and Amelia was rather insipid.

The notes to classic novels can often provide interesting historical snippets. One of our number adverted to the reference to the Red (Blood) Hand of Ulster. Apparently every Baronet is entited to have the "Red Hand" in their coat of arms in reflection of the reason for the creation of the baronetage, namely the provision of soldiers to fight in Ulster.

Vanity Fair was a long read but we now have to read the 1082 pages of, The Count of Monte Cristo, by 5th February. I suspect that this will not be as easy a read.