On the margins

I was tidying up, sorting out, rearranging cataloguing several piles of books yesterday, and came across my old copy of Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point. It's a 1965 Penguin Modern Classics edition, one of those elegant pale grey and white ones, with a rather fine line drawing - by Leonard Rosoman in this case - on the front. Hadn't read it for years, probably circa 1975 when I was in my D H Lawrence period. . . and couldn't remember if I ever finished it.

So, I opened it up and realised that it was one of many hundreds of my secondhand bookshop buys, price 10p. Previous owner, one Charles D******** of Wimbedon Common, book purchased on 14 May 1966. I know because he'd written the date inside the front cover. And even before I could get past the flyleaf, it all came back to me. Mr D had been a compulsive margin scribbler. Not for academic purposes but more personal - agreeing and disagreeing with the author, lots of exclamation marks. All in green ink and occasionally with a word or two in French or Latin . . . not to mention the odd reference to his (Mr D's, that is) travels in Iran, which he almost certainly would have referred to as Persia.

Which is when I remembered that I had never finished the book because Mr D's counter points were gripping stuff. Probably more interesting than the book itself. And they tell us a great deal about Mr D.

He starts on the flyleaf, which has a brief author's biography and bibliography. Several of the titles have been heavily underlined in green and he has included a note stating 'signified read', just in case he forgot, I suppose. Here's a random selection:

"Only the uneducated, she knew, made scenes." (Yes!)

"In the spring of 1898 she was Lady Edward Tantamount." (Another Mrs Simpson!)

"She enjoyed herself but never to the detriment of her social position." (Clever woman.)

"Killing time with a book was not intrinsically much better than killing pheasants." (Rot! They're both excellent pastimes.)

" . . . the Jupiter Symphony." (Which I've just been playing!)

" . . .in an accent that had certainly not been formed in any of the ancient and expensive seats of learning." (Pity, damned pity!)

"John, you're incorrigible . . ." (Which I've just been called by Margie and Caroline.)

"But he should have commanded. he should simply have orderd the man to drive on, and taken her in his arms again.." (Clot!)

"'Superannuated from Harrow . . . passed out from Sandhurst . . ." (Impeccable so far.)

"Even when she planned to take a lover, it was still of him that she thought." (He's an absolute twit!)

"She would have known all about these young girls - their class, the sort of homes they came from, where they bought their clothes and how much they paid for them . . ." (Yes, their class despite the socialist view of the majority today. How I hate them.)

You can see why it was impossible to finish Point Counter Point. I could hardly take it seriously amid all Mr D's expostulations and rantings. (And to think, he was writing this stuff in 1966, while some of us were chilling out to the Byrds et al.) It also explains why, apart from using them in text books, I'm now slightly paranoid about writing marginal notes - and prefer those stick-on ones instead.

Comments

[Juliet]

Fascinating. I don't suppose he ever intended his notes to be seen by other eyes. Or perhaps he did, given the green ink (green! heavens!), which has a decisive permanence about it which pencil scribblings do not. Negotiating the annotations of previous owners is a perennial hazard of reading second-hand books, and one I don't usually mind - but there is a limit to how much of this kind of thing one can take and not be terminally distracted, and this one certainly seems to overstep the comfort mark!

Lovely pic, too.

[Janet]

He sounds like a lonely man, perhaps disappointed in love(the comment 'clot' and 'absolute twit') with a bit of a chip on his shoulder (the comments on 'uneducated' and 'class' and Harrow). Lets hope that Margie and Caroline cheered him up sometimes!

[Cybill]

And that is why I use post-it notes, though my notes certainly aren't as interesting as Mr D's.

[melanie]

Have you read Anne Fadiman's book, Ex Libris? It includes a wonderful essay on marginalia.

(I happen to like green ink!)

[60 Going on 16]

Hello Melanie - and welcome! Thank you for recommending Ex Libris; I've just had quick look via Amazon and it sounds fascinating, just the sort of thing many of us would enjoy.

On the subject of green ink, it can be wonderful but probably not for marginal notes!

Not too clever for hate mail either. My lovely, mild-mannered mother once wrote to The Times on a subject that she felt strongly about. It was the only occasion in her life when the strength of her views overcame her usual reticence and gave her sufficient confidence to write to a newspaper. Her letter was duly published but a few days later she received four pages of vitriol (green ink on pink paper) from a rather well-known woman who, at the time, was notorious for her extreme and intolerant views. Unfortunately, the green-on-pink response rather deterred my mother from writing to a newspaper again. And she never felt quite the same about green ink either . . .

Does green ink have the same connotation in the US as it does here, where it's viewed with some suspicion?!

[melanie]

Gracious - I didn't know that green ink had a connotation anywhere, but a quick Google revealed this :
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-gre5.htm

I'll have to tell my correspondents to be careful when they send a letter to someone in England. Don't want anyone to get the wrong ideas!

Personally, I'd consider the missive in green ink on pink paper as much a challenge to my vision as to my views.

[Juliet]

Oh yes, you will absolutely love Ex libris, D. I insist that you buy it immediately!

(Or at the risk of upsetting Ms Winterson, I'll lend you my copy when I finally venture westwards to Eat Cake.)