An abominable sight of monks

Tags

English peculiarities

Why are collective nouns standby questions in a Zoom quiz? And why do they never stick in the memory even if the same question came up two weeks ago? And we’re not thinking of a gaggle of geese (or women) or a pride of lions. No, we’re talking of the esoteric. Does anyone in everyday speech talk of a busyness of ferrets or a tabernacle of bakers?
I thought they might have been something to torment children in an age when they had no electronic devices to entertain them.

However, having Backrubbed – that’s the old name for Google (quiz question) – collective nouns, I learnt that the ones we use today date from the late Middle Ages. Monks were looked on as abominable because they had an easier life than the peasants, who would have preferred their old religions.

Nor were “terms of venery” – that’s the old name for collective nouns (putting that in the next time I am quizmaster) – something for children to learn by rote. They were hunting terms “intended as a mark of erudition of the gentleman able to use them correctly”. Hence a murder of crows, an unkindness of ravens and a richesse of martens – the pine marten having the most highly-prized pelt. The Book of Saint Albans (1486) was a collection of advice and information on hawking, hunting, and heraldry. Dame Juliana Berners, the prioress of an abbey near St Albans was a contributor. She allocated “nouns of assembly” according to the rank of the owner. Hence a cast of hawks denoted nobility, but a flight of goshawks indicated that they were owned by a yeoman.

A superfluity of nuns? The nunneries were overcrowded with unsupported females, widows and unmarriageable daughters.

Later came modern expressions, light-hearted and humorous, for occupations. A misbelief of painters, a shuffle of bureaucrats, a shush of librarians.

There are several choices for a group of writers. Perhaps we would favour an excellence of authors but more accurate is likely to be a procrastination of authors.

An ingratitude of children was probably coined by Adam.

Let’s tidy the toy cupboard

Tags

Poetry

The words used to fill this mother with dread. The intention was good but when everything was pulled out, long-forgotten treasures would be found and played with. Later the good housekeeping would be forgotten and I would be left with a messy pile on the floor.
I’ve just had my own “toy cupboard” experience, but in this instance it was four shelves in a glass-fronted bookcase.

All my books, poetry and classics, and so himself would have no say in the operation. Then he decided that he was going to read Pathfinder by Fenimore Cooper. He won’t – he’s already declared that it’s old-fashioned. He has also picked out My Lady of the Chimney Corner, solely because it is dedicated to “Lady Gregory and the Players of the Abbey Theatre Dublin.”(He has since declared that it’s awful with stage Irish dialogue.)
“There’s a gey good smell from yer pot, Anna, what haave ye in it th’day?
Oh, jist a few sheep’s trotters and a when of nettles.
Who gathered th’nettles?
Did th’ sting bad, me baughal?
Dis no, not aany. I put m’ Dah’s socks on m’ hans.”

However, the toy cupboard revealed its treasures, some long forgotten.

In Sheridan’s plays I learn that The Rivals was first performed at Covent Garden Theatre in 1775 and the performance lasted five hours. Presumably there were no long queues for the loos in those days as there were no loos. I also see that I have the best binding, leather, round corners and gilt top, that the publishers of Everyman’s Library, J M Dent, offer.

My all-time favourite has to be The thousand best poems in the world. True there are contributions from Browning, Tennyson, Southey, etc, but the rest? Many angel babies and weeping mothers. Over the hill to the poor house tells of the old woman (she’s seventy) unwanted by the children she’d reared with such devotion. There is a sequel Over the hill from the poor house in which the black-sheep son, having made his fortune, rescues his mother. In There’s but one pair of stockings to mend tonight the stockings belong to the husband, but his wife remembers with sadness when the work basket was full with the children’s hosiery, all gone, some as angels. I see these poems were appreciated by a previous owner who has listed them in the back.

In the Classical Dictionary, my grandfather’s I see, I learn that Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, was slain my Achilles. I doubt she’ll come up in a Zoom quiz.

The volume of G K Chesterton’s poems falls open at Outline of History: “I have seen a statue in a London square/ One whose long-winded lies are long forgot.” No comment.

Then there are the slips of paper that fall out of the books: a postcard from Guernsey posted in 1979; a list of books on reincarnation; a card made for a sick mother from, as if she didn’t know, her son.

Inside. I hope you are better soon from your son, Liam

So, yes, I ended up with a messy pile on the floor. Again there was no one to help put my treasures back. The glass doors are closed. The good news: there’s not one pair of stockings to mend tonight for my lady of chimney corner.

It doesn’t have to have a happy ending

Tags

Born in Exile, George Gissing, H G Wells, John Halperin, New Grub Street, The Nether World, The Odd Women, Workers in the Dawn

And you don’t often get one in the novels of George Gissing.

“Writers’ lives are rarely as interesting as their books. The life of George Gissing (1857-1903) is an exception,” begins the introduction to Born in Exile, a book that was on my bookshelf and until recently unread.
I had read New Grub Street, surely required reading for any writer, many years ago and then a few other Gissing novels. They had made such an impression on me that I had also bought a biography Gissing, a life in books, by John Halperin, and so I knew a little of the author’s life. A life so frequently played out in his writing.

Gissing was born in Wakefield. A brilliant scholar he was expelled from college at the age of eighteen for stealing money from his fellow students to support his mistress, Nell, an alcoholic prostitute. He wanted to buy her a sewing machine to give her a respectable occupation. After the disgrace he went to America where he was kept from starvation by selling stories to Chicago newspapers. He returned to England but, no longer welcome at home, he left Wakefield for London. There he began writing while tutoring as a means of support and, disastrously, he met up with Nell again. They moved from lodging house to lodging house as Nell fell out with the landladies.

In 1879 Gissing’s first novel Workers in the Dawn was completed and, despite the misgivings he must have felt, he married Marianne Helen Harrison and contracted an exogamous marriage (yes, I had to look it up) that was to be a theme in so many of his novels. The well-educated, but poor, man marries a woman of low birth in the vain hope of elevating her to his standing. To a woman equal to him in intellect and rank he would be “unlovable”.

The marriage lasted until Nell’s death of drink and syphilis, cold and hunger in a miserable rented room in Lambeth in 1888. Gissing had not lived with his wife for several years but had provided her with an allowance. In the room he found many pawn tickets, the money she raised spent on drink. He redeemed her wedding ring. Less than three weeks later Gissing threw himself into writing The Nether World and finished it in July.
Reading the biography I am struck by the speed with which he completed his books, although corrections would come later at the proof stage. Between 1880 and 1903 he wrote 23 novels and 111 short stories, as well as non-fiction.

“Gissing’s subjects are sex, money, and class, and the three dovetail in most of his novels and stories into the single subject of marriage,” says Professor Halperin. To a friend Gissing wrote, ‘It is strange how many letters I get from women asking for sympathy and advice. I really can’t understand what it is in my work that attracts the female mind.”

Mr Gissing, you are not a light-hearted read. You eschew one word where six may be employed, and your novels are the three-volume tomes of the Victorian fashion. You are preoccupied with women’s lack of education that renders them unsuitable companions for their husbands. To your sister you wrote, “If you could know how much of the wretchedness of humanity is occasioned by the folly, pigheadedness, ignorance and incapacity of women you would rejoice to think of all these new opportunities for mental and moral training.” Yet women liked you and you liked them.

My battered copy of New Grub Street

In September 1890 when he was bemoaning his lonely life, “starved emotions made me a madman”, George Gissing met Edith Underwood, a respectable working class girl. Within a week of meeting her he began writing New Grub Street and finished it ten weeks later. Halperin comments that 1890 produced “both one of the greatest novels in the English language and one of the unhappiest marriages in English history.”
Gissing thought he could educate Edith to be a congenial spouse and a competent homemaker. He was sadly mistaken. She was incapable of ordering servants, quarrelling with them and smashing crockery. The domestic harmony Gissing hoped for was a dream, a nightmare when a crying baby was added to the scene. The son, Walter, Gissing often had to care for himself as Edith had little maternal feelings and nursemaids came and went. In 1896 second son, Alfred, was born. “Endless misery in the house,” Gissing reported in his diary.

The following year while the family was on holiday in Wensleydale midst more domestic strife, Gissing determined to leave his wife. Walter was to be sent to Wakefield under the care of his father’s sisters. Edith and Alfred were to go to lodgings and George was to go to Italy, where he wrote Charles Dickens: a Critical Study.

On his return to England in 1898 he was desperate that Edith should not find him. He took a house in Dorking. In June that year he received a letter from a Frenchwoman asking if she could have the rights to a French translation of New Grub Street. On 6 July Gabrielle Fleury, the respectable woman Gissing supposed he would never find, tracked him down at the home of his friend H G Wells.

Edith was continuing to cause trouble. In August she assaulted her landlady and had to be restrained by a policeman. Gissing longed to get Alfred from her, but Edith would only agree to a legal separation that provided her with a house and custody of both boys. There would be no divorce.

Gissing didn’t hide his marital status from Gabrielle. After a romance conducted mainly by letters to France, and for the sake of respectability, on 7 May 1899 George Gissing and Gabrielle Fleury were married in Rouen Cathedral. The “marriage” was not without its own ups and downs, hampered by Gissing’s failing health and the disagreement of Gabrielle and H G Wells over the best treatments.

George Gissing died on 28 December 1903 and was buried in the English cemetery at St. Jean de Luz.

There it is: a thumbnail sketch of the life of a Victorian novelist. I have not covered his struggle for funds – his first publishers treated him shabbily – his admiration for Charlotte Brontë also badly served by the same firm, his friends including the English writers of his time: George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, H G Wells among them.

I doubt there is much here to entice you to turn to George Gissing. The only person I have ever debated his work with is my daughter. It must be in the genes.

I’m off to read The Odd Women, borrowed from the said daughter. I think it might have a rare happy ending.

The naming of cats…. and dogs

Tags

Cats, Dogs, T.S. Eliot

 

As an associate member of ninevoices, known to make my cuddly presence unavoidable on sofa or lap, it was suggested it was about time I made a contribution to our scribbling.

“The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn’t just one of your holiday games;”

See how my involvement with you literary guys has rubbed off.

The naming of cats, dogs, pets: Mr Eliot was right. I am fortunate that I adopted a family who believes animals should not be given human names. It seems that every cute little puppy that joins the dogs’ parliament on the Common has a fashionable human name. I have met three Hugos, several Charlies, Betsy – my sister’s name by the way but she adopted another family – Susies, Lucys, Alfies, and an Olivia.

I am pleased to say ninevoices seem to be in step with my family. We have Bamber, Gizzy, Rumble, Streak, Snowy, Flax, Keiko and Yuki. The last two work if you’re not Japanese.

Then there are the fictional pets: Bullseye, Flush, Jumble, Crookshank, Ginger and Pickles, Greebo, Mog, Tab, Buck. You’ve probably spotted Flush, a real dog who belonged to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But my point is these are all distinctive names not borrowed by humans.

Queen Victoria’s childhood spaniel was Dash, but her great-great granddaughter chose Susan for her first corgi. Personally I think that let the side down.

“When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.”

That’s what we pets need, whether in the real or imagined world, an  inscrutable singular name.
Thanks for reading – Skipper   

In Love With Mr Darcy (and others…)

Tags

Coping with Rejection, In Love With Mr Darcy, Jane Austen, Mr Darcy's Love Letter, Pride and Prejudice, Superman, Val Wood

I must have been thirteen or fourteen when I fell in love for the first time – with Elizabeth’s Darcy. Warm feelings that have not greatly changed in the decades that have passed since.

For that reason I couldn’t resist entering last year’s Val Wood challenge (details of which you may have seen in our September blog): to write an imaginary love letter.

I learned in the fullness of time that my effort failed to either win or be shortlisted, though I was able to comfort myself that the ultimate winner had submitted a series of letters, with an unfolding story, which gave her more scope. Undaunted by this, I’m concentrating on the pleasure I had in composing Darcy’s imaginary words and the break that it provided from the hard graft of editing my novel. No writing is wasted. It’s like sketching is for an artist, the exercising of skills.

If you share my soft spot for Fitzwilliam Darcy, you might like to read my effort at putting myself into his shoes, and breeches…

Dearest, Loveliest, Elizabeth, 

You know – who better? – the difficulty I have always had in expressing my feelings. So, I take up my pen again, on this our first anniversary, to try and do better – and to explain how having you as my wife has transformed my life.

To begin with, I am no longer the man I was. Had my mother lived, she might have prevented me from becoming the self-satisfied prig you met at the Assembly Rooms at Meryton. She might have taught me that a living, breathing woman is so much more than a pair of fine eyes (entrancingly fine though yours are) and that knowledge of the fair sex should not be limited by lack of imagination.

When you promised to become my wife, it gave me pleasure to think of all that I could give you. Time, however, has shown me how obtuse that thought was – and what, instead, you have been able to gift to me. For you have become the teacher, and I the pupil.

Jealousy, of Wickham – and even of my excellent cousin, the Colonel, – helped to open my eyes to the value of things not material. And although I began by despising that opportunistic adventurer (an easy mistake, I fear), those feelings have changed to pity, for Wickham has always chosen pinchbeck over silver. Brass over gold. Transitory pleasure over lasting joy.

While you, my dearest, darling Lizzie, have taught me to be a man of sense and sensibility. Have taught me how to laugh. At your perceptive wit. At the nonsensical habits of society. At myself, and the fools we men so often make of ourselves.

When I now consider the marriages of my friends and acquaintances, I see too many wives transferred from the charge of their fathers into that of their husbands. The partnerships seem contented enough. But how blind they are to what might be – an alliance of equals, a communion of souls and bodies, a joint fortress against the vicissitudes of life.

For whenever I have my arms around you, my dearest heart, I am whole. You are the star in my night sky. My birdsong in the morning. And now that the two of us are so soon to become three, I cannot but observe that while my dear friend Bingley habitually smiles, I want to laugh out loud.

Your devoted husband,

Fitzwilliam

If, like the Val Wood judges, you weren’t seduced by my Darcy letter, you may prefer something in a more modern style, as composed by another member of ninevoices…

From: veb@bott.co.uk

To: wbrown@rcomptonchambers.com

29 February 2020 21.34

Superman

That’s what you’ll always be to me. Superman. I don’t suppose any of us would’ve thought that you would grow up to become a human rights lawyer. Getting that awful unelected, manipulative toad convicted was just so brilliant. Superman.

But then to me you were super boy, always taking on the world with your colander tin helmet and wooden sword, righting wrongs. You were the leader. The Outlaws followed wherever you led them. Outlaws, that was ironic, seeing that you became an upholder of the law.

I wanted so desperately to join your gang. I don’t blame you for not letting me. Thanks to Mummy I was never appropriately dressed for games in the woods. You were always kind to me and I like to think that was your genuine good nature and not because I was the brat who threatened to make myself sick by screaming. Actually, I couldn’t. You probably knew that. You were so clever. And obviously you still are.

A human rights lawyer. My hero. You know Hubert Lane is a hedge-fund manager. Fitting. We could’ve forecast that one, but did you know he wanted Daddy to register his company in the Caymans? But Daddy was having none of that. ‘I pay my taxes, he said, ‘besides I have my work cut out planning how to reduce the sugar content in Bott’s Table Sauce.’

I think my early hero worship of you was the basis of what became my love for you. I should be more like your sister Ethel and wait for a man’s proposal. That’s what this is, dearest Willyam – I always think of you like that because that’s how you used to say it. Look at the date, my darling. Please don’t make me wait another four years to take advantage.

Darling, I’m not asking for a ring, a white dress and all that pomp. We’re a modern couple and don’t need it. Sweetheart, isn’t it time that you and I moved in together? You could come to the Mayfair apartment Daddy bought for me. I somehow think that is not for you though. I’d be happy to come to yours in Islington.

What do you say, darling, darling Superman?

Yours for ever, Vi

If any of our followers fancy sending us their imaginary love letter, either for Valentine’s Day or as a celebration of Leap Year – just for the fun of it, no prizes, unfortunately – we’d love to see them. Sometimes we need to be reminded that writing is what we do to enrich and enliven our days. 

Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

 

 

Make a resolution

At ninevoices’ annual Christmas lunch we make writing resolutions for the coming year. Well, resolutions, like rules, are made to be broken as we find the following year.
However, that said, we shouldn’t be discouraged to start again. If your aim is to enter writing competitions in 2020, and perhaps you had a go at our 2019 Summer Competition, may we pass on some thoughts?
We settled down on a November day to discuss the stories that had received the most votes from our individual readings. Skipper was there as an impartial observer. What he learnt was that we did not agree. It has been said before we have varied reactions and likes.
The overwhelming consensus, however, was that we are lucky to belong to a group. Simple inconsistencies, spelling and grammar mistakes and typos are seized upon by our sharp-eyed colleagues.
So if you are setting out on the writer’s lonely path, we would persuade you to find the company of others to work with you. These others, and here we are unanimous, do not include your family and close friends.
A Happy New Year and good luck with your writing in 2020.

National Poetry Day

Tags

National Poetry Day, Richard Jago, William Shakespeare

 

 

With National Poetry Day in mind, we thought you might enjoy a poem from The Faber Book of Parodies, edited by Simon Brett, and written in tribute to our famous Bard.

 

HAMLET’S SOLILOQUY IMITATED

Richard Jago

To print, or not to print—that is the question.
Whether ‘tis better in a trunk to bury
The quirks and crotchets of outrageous fancy,
Or send a well-wrote copy to the press,
And by disclosing, end them? To print, to doubt
No more; and by one act to say we end
The head-ach, and a thousand natural shocks
Of scribbling frenzy—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To print—to beam
From the same shelf with Pope, in calf well bound!
To sleep, perchance, with Quarles—Ay there’s the rub –
For to what class a writer may be doom’d,
When he hath shuffled off some paltry stuff,
Must give us pause.—There’s the respect that makes
Th’ unwilling poet keep his piece nine years.
For who would bear th’ impatient thirst of fame,
The pride of conscious merit, and ‘bove all,
The tedious importunity of friends,
When as himself might his quietus make
With a bare inkhorn? Who would fardles bear?
To groan and sweat under a load of wit?
But that the tread of steep Parnassus’ hill,
That undiscover’d country, with whose bays
Few travellers return, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear to live unknown,
Than run the hazard to be known, and damn’d.
Thus critics do make cowards of us all.
And thus the healthful face of many a poem
Is sickly’d o’er with a pale manuscript;
And enterprisers of great fire, and spirit,
With this regard from Dodsley turn away,
And lose the name of authors.

 

Diversity

At a recent meeting one of our members (bless) suggested that we should have homework that we would bring to the next session. The first theme set was on being awoken by a galloping horse at 3am. Ghost stories, a wife’s revenge and a rant on royal pageantry followed. Maybe these will be developed into fully-fledged stories (not the rant). Is it a good idea? Or does it distract us from other writing?

There’s a PS to this. We’ve had two other “homeworks” since and one of our members has become a poet.

Lovelives affected by the Old Vic

Tags

Laurence Olivier, Memories, Old Vic, The Royal Hunt of the Sun

 

As part of its celebrations to mark its 200 years of existence the wonderful Old Vic theatre in London’s Waterloo has asked playgoers to send in personal memories of productions there.

Quite independently, two of the ninevoices have done so, Val and Ed. You can find us if you go to https://www.oldvictheatre.com/200/your-stories and scroll down.

The stories do rather give away our ages. More importantly, they show how going to the theatre can affect your love life, for better or worse ….

The Old Vic is still asking for more memories. So send them in – they don’t have to be amorous in content!

Eliza, Betty, Bess and Lizzie

Tags

Assington, family history

Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth and another. What’s with all these Elizabeths? Did godparents also promise that infant boys would always choose a bride called Elizabeth?

There was great, great grandfather John who managed to marry two Elizabeths.
Were the parents of Suffolk limited in their knowledge of other Christian names? Did they secretly yearn to call their daughters Karen, Kim or Kylie, but the parish clerk could only muster the noble Elizabeth in the register.

What did they call themselves? There must have been some variation with all these Elizabeths living in such a small village as Assington.
Then when the wives bore girls what did the Williams and Johns name them? If your mother is Elizabeth why not your daughter?

Just a smidgeen of information of these 18th and 19th century ancestors sends the mind into imagining Eliza, Betty, Bess and Lizzie sweeping their cottages, hanging out the washing, gossiping in the street, hastening on Sundays to St Edmund’s church. And perhaps dreaming of a wild card name for their next daughter.