writing, not drowning

'You may have the universe, if I may have Italy'

Who am I to disagree with Giuseppe Verdi? I am, in fact, in total agreement and have been for, oh, more than half a century. And every year, usually in spring, I long to be there. These days, however, I don't manage to visit as often as I would like so have to settle for spending some time with my nose in a book, or books, about Italy. This year, the Italy-yearning surfaced in late September and certain books in the waiting-to-be-read pile beckoned . . .

The first, a novel set mainly in Rome and which had garnered enthusiastic reviews, was somewhat disappointing, with characters whose dialogue I never found wholly convincing. I won't name it, not least because I do appreciate the effort that goes into writing a novel and then actually having it published, although you may be able to work out the title from the 'Read 2015' list on the right.  

So I moved swiftly on to Elena Ferrante, for whom I had been saving myself - and I was holding my breath. There had been so much publicity and speculation about the reclusive author and so much praise heaped upon her novels that I could hardly bear the thought of a second disappointment. My relief, as soon as I started to read My Brilliant Friend was palpable. I loved it and have ordered the second, third and fourth of the Neapolitan novels from my local library; Ferrante, I feel sure, will carry me through an English winter.

I did have one or two qualms about the occasional Americanism in Ann Goldstein's translation but, having read this interview with her on Lizzy's Literary Life blog, I now appreciate the challenges she faced in translating Ferrante.

My Brilliant Friend is a wonderful evocation of adolescence - and adolescent friendships - in post-war Naples. Some of its themes are particular to the time and the place; others are universal and I can understand, completely, how Ferrante's work has suddenly captured the imagination of so many readers beyond Italy. 

Although I try to avoid too much self-referential thinking when reading, the setting for some of the most significant moments in the narrative - the shoeshop owned by Lila's father - took me straight back to a particular time in my own post-war adolescence. It was 1961, I was 14, staying in Liguria in northern Italy, and made friends with a girl of my age called Marisa. Her family owned a shoeshop in a narrow street in the centre of the town and I had visited the shop with my mother to buy some sandals. Marisa served us and we embarked on a  fractured conversation, she in her limited English and I my limited Italian. But the spark of friendship was there and I was soon spending every spare moment that I could with Marisa, initially at the shop, and then with some of her friends and family, including Alfredo, who worked at a nearby hotel and, a cousin, Giacomo, who was a student at the University of Turin. We went to an open-air cinema and although I can't remember what film we saw - and my Italian certainly wasn't up to the task of following the dialogue - it was all very heady romantic stuff for a impressionable young teenager from the west London suburbs . . . and it left an indelible mark.

I had grown up listening to fragments of Italian; my father had been a prisoner of war in Italy during WWII. He and his sergeant had escaped after bribing a guard, then lived a hand-to-mouth existence in the mountains, moving from safe house to safe house, sheltered by partisans for four months - until they sought shelter in a house that turned out not to be safe. (They ended up in another prisoner-of-war camp, this time in Germany.) It's amazing how proficient one can become in a foreign language when it is a matter of life or death.  

So, I was already familiar with a cluster of familiar words and phrases, although 'we're exhausted'; 'is there somewhere we can sleep?'; 'we are very, very hungry'; 'can you spare something to eat?', and 'we have nothing' were not going to get me very far on the Italian Riviera in 1961 . . .*

I learned more with Marisa and, at 16, I had the opportunity to study Italian O-level and A-level at school. If it is possible to fall in love with a language, I did; I'd already enjoyed studying French and Spanish but Italian was something else. It became a passion. Something similar happened to my daughter a couple of decades later when she spent a summer as an au pair in Florence and took Italian language classes; she went on to read Italian at university.

I try not to let my Italian turn to rust and, despite Ann Goldstein's mention of the challenges of Ferrante's language and sentence construction, I'd like, some day, to attempt to read Elena Ferrante in the original. 

Reading about Lila and her family and the calzature made me wonder what had happened to Marisa; we stayed in touch for a while, via postcards but, by the time my Italian was up to letter-writing standard, we had lost contact. However. . . it seems that the family still has a shoeshop in the same town but it is larger, grander and in a more fashionable location. A very smart sign hangs above the entrance to the shop. 

+++++++++++

*Although I was aware of the bare bones of my father's escape from the prisoner of war camp, I knew few of the details, and I certainly did not appreciate how gruelling those four months hiding out in the mountains would have been. Not until, that is, I read Iris Origo's War in Val d'Orcia: An Italian War Diary 1943-1944 a few years ago. I realised that I had had no idea but, by then, it was too late to ask the questions . . .

 

The London collection

If you take the girl or, in my case, the woman of a certain age, out of London, what happens? In this woman's case, London is not forgotten; the binding ties are still there and if someone should ask me how I define myself, geographically speaking, I would have no hesitation in saying, and with some degree of pride, that I am a Londoner, voluntary displacement to Devon almost sixteen years ago notwithstanding. And, in the same way that Italians identify primarily with their home city or town, I think of myself first as a Londoner rather than, say, as English or British. (This continuing connection to London by no means detracts from my affection for my adopted county, Devon, much of which I have grown to love, although some aspects of daily life here continue to perplex me.)

These days, however, time and cost preclude frequent visits back to the old home town and an exchange of messages earlier this summer with one of my favourite London bloggers, rus in urbis, reminded me that it is two years since I was there last . That can't be right, I tell myself. But it is; two whole years . . .

But if I cannot visit London, I can, at least, read about it and I do. On my bookshelves, there is a growing collection of books about London or that feature London, a collection that feeds my desire to remain connected. Thanks to Jerry White's magnificent three-volume history, London in the Eighteenth Century, London in the Nineteenth Century, and London in the Twentieth Century, which I finished reading in June, that connection is tighter than ever. If you want a sense of the many layers and strands, the cultures and nationalities, the politics and professions, the energy and the entertainment - and so much more - that have contributed to the making of London in the previous three centuries, these are the histories for you. 

From a personal perspective, I gained a much deeper understanding of some of my own London family history; my great-great-great-grandfather William Gaunt (born c1782) was a watchmaker, as was his son William, and possibly his father, Joseph, too. In the 1841 Post Office Directory, William was listed as a watchmaker at 2 Bridgewater Gardens, Clerkenwell, (where the Barbican now stands) in the City of London. He was, more precisely, a watchspring maker and, as Jerry White states, watchmaking was 'perhaps the finest example of divided labour in London'. More than a hundred people might be involved in the production of a single watch. Would this explain why, as a little girl, I would spend hours at the workbench in our garage, carefully prising apart old, discarded, family watches, to see how they worked? I was convinced that I could get them to work again; not surprisingly, perhaps, I achieved a solid 100 per cent failure rate.

The maiden name of William's mother, Ann, was Silva, which suggested that she was of Spanish or Portuguese descent but unless or until I can get to the London Metropolitan Archives , I have no way of confirming this. But I do so want to know.

Alongside Jerry White's histories are Peter Ackroyd's London: the Biography, and the psychogeography of Iain Sinclair - Lights Out for the Territory - and Rachel Lichtenstein, including Rodinsky's Room, On Brick Lane and Diamond Street. Ford Madox Ford's (or Ford Madox Hueffer as he was then) The Soul of London, published in 1905, made a temporary appearance on the shelf, courtesy of Devon County Libraries, but free copies are also available online. Then there are the London-based memoirs, such as This Boy, by former Home Secretary, Alan Johnson. It is both revealing and moving without once slipping into sentimentality. Alan grew up in extreme poverty in a part of London I knew well as a child: Notting Hill before it was taken over by the rich and famous. (If we had more MPs of Alan Johnson's calibre and awareness, the House of Commons would be a far better and more enlightened place than it is at present. Just a thought.)

If we consider London as a whole, that is Greater London, then we must include its suburbs, such as the one in which I grew up, at what was then one end of the Piccadilly Line. For memories of a 1950s suburban childhood and teenage years, look no further than Michele Hanson's excellent What the Grown-Ups Were Doing. Michele grew up in Ruislip, which is not that far from where we lived, and almost every page had me smiling in recognition, not least the references to dinner dances at the Orchard Hotel, where cocktails were served decked with tiny paper Chinese parasols. The Orchard Hotel is where our family reunions were always held. Adults only, sadly, although my mum always brought one of the paper parasols home for me, as a souvenir. My cousins and I all have black and white photos of one particular reunion in the early 1960s, organised to welcome home my Auntie Jess and Uncle Jack, who were in London on holiday, having emigrated to the USA after WWII. My blonde mum and sister-in-law and my ebony-haired aunts are all wearing slim-fitting sheath dresses (mostly black) and heavily-lacquered, helmet hairdos; the Brylcreemed, dark-suited menfolk are standing behind them. Everyone smiling for the camera, with not a hint of the sibling rivalries that simmered away just beneath more than one surface. The Orchard, which seemed impossibly glamorous in the 1960s, is now a Beefeater Grill. Enough said. Thanks for the memories, Michele.

But some books about or set in London do not hang around here for long. One doesn't need to be a Londoner to write welI about the city - and many have - and I was, initially, charmed by the quest to discover literary London by a well-known, prizewinning American writer. But the book contained so many factual errors about my city that I promptly recycled it. I'm not sure if anyone checked the text for geographical accuracy before it was published but, if so, they lacked the requisite knowledge of London. Such a shame. 

Still, let us end on a high note and give honourable bookshelf mentions to Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day, and  Hanover Square by Patrick Hamilton, all set in wartime London; Brick Lane by Monica Ali, Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins, the memoirs and many of the short stories of Julian Maclaren-Ross and, above all, to Charles Dickens, the great chronicler of Victorian London.

And lest you should think I have overlooked poetry, Poems on the Underground is a good place to start. Although by no means all of the poems are about London, every single poem it contains has been read by any number of London Underground's long-suffering passengers. Sweeteners to ease our subterranean pain and something else for us to look at apart from the shifty character sitting opposite.

Do you have a favourite London book? If so, do tell.

(I could not close without saying thank you to Spitalfields Life, the London blog par excellence, whose Gentle Author reminds me daily of where I am from and what made me. Spitalfields Life is four today and every single blogpost has been a gem. Here's to many, many more.)

The comfort of stories by the fireside - with Jackie Morris

I knew it would take something special to jolt me out of my seeming inability to write anything at all in recent weeks. I'd reached a point at which everything I thought of writing was dismissed almost immediately as trivial. Well, that is one of the stages of bereavement and one simply has to wait for the leaden feelings to lift and get on with life while waiting for them to move away from centre stage.

And, yesterday, there was something special.

It's five and a half years since I included one of Jackie Morris's exquisite paintings in this blogpost; discovering her work at that time was the source of immense pleasure. Since then I've followed and greatly enjoyed Jackie's delightful blog, We Three, Ginger Cats' Tales. There is now, sadly, only one ginger cat remaining - the redoubtable Elmo - but he and his elderly tabby companion, Max, have been joined by two Bengal kittens . . .

Apart from the feline tales, We Three and Jackie's other blog keep admirers of her work (her words are as inspriring as her paintings) up to date with what she is doing and, at the moment, she is very much on the road. As luck would have it, that road led yesterday to one of my favourite shops, the wonderful Number Seven, run by Jan, her daughter Davina and Davina's husband, Christopher, in nearby Dulverton. Jackie was spending the afternoon at Number Seven, giving readings, discussing her work, and signing copies of her books . . .

including the latest, East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

All of which explains why, an hour ahead of the first scheduled reading, two women of a certain age settled themselves by the fire in Jan's kitchen behind the shop, while Jackie read us The Seal Children, her first book*. I felt about five years old again, lost in the wonder of words and magical illustrations.

And we talked about books, painting, writing, children, travel, cats, the beauty of the Pembrokeshire coast, dragons . . .

and Tibetan bowls. I happened to mention cheetahs and told Jackie about the sanctuary I had visited in South Africa, where I spent time with an adult male cheetah and had fallen in love with these remarkable big cats.

'Have you seen my cheetahs and cherries paintings?' asked Jackie. She showed me one. That's it, I thought, I'm starting a cheetah painting fund.

If there had not been two dear dogs waiting patiently at home for their afternoon walk, I could happily have stayed by the fire listening to stories until teatime. 

As I left the shop, carrying a precious parcel of signed books, I saw Jackie's van parked outside Number Seven and just had to smile.

At four o'clock, the dogs and I walked up to the top of our hill and then had half an hour of what we call 'extreme retrieving' - the object being to tire out the seemingly tireless Miss P; even though it was wet and muddy, I didn't mind one jot. It had been such an uplifting day and a privilege to spend time with someone as gifted as Jackie. But not just gifted, warm, funny and approachable too.

By this morning, the emptiness of the past two and a half months had gone; the sun shone and the dogs and I enjoyed a long walk by the river. We went up to the hill again this afternoon and I stood in the top field and did a 360 degree turn, looking across to all the other hills, disappearing behind each other, in every direction and into the distance, just to remind myself of the beauty of this place. The dogs romped and rolled in the sun and were as happy as I was.

So, thank you Jackie and thanks also to Jan, Davina and Christopher for a memorable Saturday and for inspiring me to start writing again.

If you are visiting Exmoor, make a point of going to Dulverton and calling in at Number Seven - tell Jan I sent you - and don't miss Toy Ahoy!,their shop in Minehead.

*You can find a complete list of Jackie Morris's books here. And there's more to see on Facebook.

Decked out

Even the most die-hard republican would find it hard to avoid the gargantuan quantities of bunting that are currently smothering the country but at least the mood is jolly and, after a couple of years of general political and financial scariness and the cost of living on an ever- upwards trajectory, this comes as something of a welcome relief, even if - as we all know - it is only a temporary one . As Guardian journalist, Polly Toynbee tweeted today: 'I'm going to eat cake, jeer at the hats, enjoy myself on Sunday. I've paid for it, will have fun. Sorry.'

And I found myself nodding in agreement with this from Michele Grant: 'Jubilee cost 1m and feels like it belongs to everyone. Olympics cost 12bn and feels like it belongs to Coca Cola and Adidas.' (Thank you to author, Linda Grant, for retweeting her sister's wise words.)

But back to this Sunday . . . I confess that, as a Londoner in exile, I would LOVE to be standing beside the Thames to watch that pageant. There is frequent speculation as to what the true centre of London is - Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey? Ask a Londoner, however, and they will tell you that it is the river, the Thames, the city's great, pulsating, jugular vein, that is the true centre. And there is no better way to see London than from the Thames. More than 1,000 boats are taking part, from the surviving Dunkirk Little Ships to colourful narrowboats, from working boats to The Belem, a stately, three-masted 19th-century barque, built in Nantes and once a gift to Coco Chanel from her English lover. Sigh . . .

Circumstances dictate that I must remain here so the telly will have to do instead. Still, if I can't have London, I'll be happy to be in Dulverton, just a few miles from here, and which is definitely in a jolly mood, not least because its annual folk festival runs from today until 5 June. 

Dulverton Town hall (as seen in The Land Girls . . .)

Meanwhile, if you'd like to know what a small town on Exmoor has been doing to mark this rather special weekend, just take a look at some of Dulverton's shop windows, where irony and a sense of humour sit alongside the tasteful, the over-the-top, and the understated.

The dear old Queen has removed her crown and is having a well-earned rest at Acorn Antiques:

Mr and Mrs Queen give a whole new meaning to the term 'silver surfers' at the former site of the Courtyard Cafe (now for sale):

The crown, meanwhile, is on special high-security loan in the window at Rose Slee, purveyor of very fine upholstery fabrics:

Best friends are not forgotten at Dulverton Pet Supplies:

and the bunting is out at Bodmin House, where ace hairdressers, Ruth and Rosie (seen here), will do wonders for your barnet, at a fraction of what it would cost in the great metropolis:

There's nostalgia at the library:

and tri-colour twirls at White Horse Photography:

Everyone has been in raptures about this amazing creation at the Exclusive Cake Company:

but it's back to nostalgia at the antiquarian bookseller, Rothwell and Dunworth:

and at antiques dealer, Anthony Sampson - that's a Coronation Day issue of Country Life in the window:

It's no surprise that these two found their way into the window of Brimblecombe, whose owner, Jane, is something of a dog lover:

One of my favourite shops, Number Seven, has its own, unique, take on festive colours and artefacts. See more on their blogpost, Chapter Seven, here:

And if you are planning a tea party, you'll find just the thing at Louise's Antiques:

All these wonders within a few  yards of each other along Dulverton's main street:

But there was one more thing before I left. Something which gave my heart  a bit of a lurch:

We had one just like this once, about thirty years or so ago, but he (for it was a he) was stolen. His name was Jubilee Jim . . .

* * * * * 

Looking out of the window, as I write this, I can see my dear old neighbour across the road; he's now well advanced in years, a widower, and a highly decorated veteran of WWII. He is painstakingly hanging (equally elderly) bunting between the ancient yew trees that stand guard at the entrance of the driveway to his house. He and his late and much-loved wife raised their family here and his ancestors lived in this village, or close by, for many hundreds of years; the churchyard is full of his forebears.  And I discover that I have a lump in my throat. Sometimes, it doesn't pay to be too cynical.

The one I would have posted on May Day

I wrote this on May Day and intended to post it there and then. But somehow didn't . . .

I've had family guests staying so I gave them my bedroom, which is the largest in the house; meanwhile, I decamped to what we call the summer bedroom. I rather love it, despite the fact that it is the smallest bedroom and north facing; in summer it just about catches the farther reaches of the sunrise, to the east. To the north are hills and grazing sheep and the view is the best from the house.

And there are bookshelves. There are books in every room in the house (and on the stairs) but this room is one of only two that have their own proper, custom-made bookshelves. So I wake looking at books I have yet to read, books I have loved, and books I have almost but not quite forgotten.

This morning I picked up this

a limited edition, published in 1973, the year it was given to me and inscribed three years later, by the person who gave it to me, with the closing lines of the final poem in the collection known as The Passionate Pilgrim (Shakespeare et al). 

On reflection, I could have gone down the maudlin route as I took this book off the shelf on May Day, remembering that poem is set in the month of May and that the person who had inscribed my book all those years ago died on a May Day just 10 years later. And I could, had I allowed myself to do so, have reflected that even things, people, events, love affairs, marriages that somehow go horribly wrong were once - or at least once seemed - wonderfully right. But I decided not to go there and I tried to look at this book, that had once symbolised so much, with fresh eyes and was astonished at what I discovered. I didn't quite fall out of bed but my jaw dropped, visibly.

The book  is The Cry of a Gull, the journals kept by American writer, Alyse Gregory, between 1923 and 1948. It was published by Out of the Ark Press, or 'Out of the ARK PRESS' as it says on the cover.  In 1973, the press was located in Brushford a small village just few miles from here and which I drive past at least once a week on my way to Dulverton. Somehow, I had missed this connection completely since I moved here in 1998.

There is another Ark Press, which was founded in 2009, but I can find no details of what ultimately happened to Out of the Ark Press. It was founded by Michael Adam, known also as Kim Taylor, a self-taught printer who had joined the University of Texas in 1960 as director of its Book Arts Center. 

The journals chart the years of Gregory's life with the English writer, Llewelyn Powys, and after his death in 1939 until 1948. She had met Powys in New York, when she was managing editor of The Dial, then America's foremost literary journal. They married in 1924 and she remained with him for the rest of his life always devoted, immensely supportive of his work, and nursing him through bouts of tuberculosis, despite having to share his affections with his much younger mistress and muse, the poet, Gamel Woolsey.  (So Wild a Thing, also published by Out of the Ark Press, is a collection of Powys's letters to Woolsey and leave the reader in no doubt as to the depth of his passion. Alyse must have been the most unusually tolerant of wives; she and her husband had met Gamel Woolsey in 1927. Alyse, allegedly, encouraged their affair and Powys's last letter to Gamel Woolsey was written just a few days before his death. Hard to imagine the marital and extra-marital tensions, not least because Woolsey's attachment to Powys continued after her marriage to historian, Gerald Brenan, who had once had an affair with Dora Carrington. . .)

But there was something else I had missed too: The Cry of a Gull includes an afterword by Michael Adam, a summary of Alyse's final years. And rereading this earlier today, my jaw dropped again, for these years were spent in Morebath, another village I know well, not least because, like Brushford it is just a few miles from here. I have friends who live there; I went to yoga classes there for years; all those visits and I never knew. It was just like the Rebecca West discovery. Adam records that' 'Apart from Alyse's friends living on at Morebath, nothing remains there to tell of her.'

That was almost 40 years ago; they are probably there no longer but I think the cottage still stands . . .

(If you know what happened to Out of the Ark Press, do tell.)