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All Passion Spent Again

“How marvellous and strange’ writes Joanna Lumley in the introduction to our copies, ‘that a book which begins and ends with death should be so joyous and wickedly funny’. Joyous and wickedly funny the book is, and we all loved it, finding it a beautifully written, wonderfully sensitive often humorous portrayal of old age, written by Vita Sackville-West when she was only 38 herself.

Sometimes when all five of us in our group have all enjoyed the same book we find the ensuing discussion less stimulating – and probably rather shorter – than when opinions vary. Not so last night. There was so much to discuss and even when we stopped for a while we found ourselves returning to the book, again and again. So many themes, so much to discuss.

We all loved Vita S-W’s easy, artistic style: she conjures up such a vivid picture that you can actually see, vividly, what she is describing – her ghastly children with all their annoying mannerisms, Mr Bucktrout’s neat feet, always carefully arranged in ballet positions, Genoux, her faithful French maid, who crackles as she walks because until May is out she insists on wearing brown paper between her combinations and her petticoats, the unfashionable beauty of her house in Hampstead.

At the start of the book we meet Lady Slane, recently widowed and suddenly freed from all her obligations as an unquestioning appendage to her successful husband for seventy years. To the horror of her unpleasant children she rejects their reluctant offers of a home with them (for rent, of course), gives all her jewels to Mabel, the henpecked wife of the oldest son, and announces she will rent a house in Hampstead, which miraculously is still available thirty years after she first fell in love with it. And off she goes to Hampstead, by underground, aged 88, on her own to arrange her new life.

She and the faithful Genoux quickly settle in after everything is organised; she cuts herself off from her family who can’t imagine how poor dear mother can possibly manage without them to take charge of her every move. She is far from lonely however, because she is quickly befriended by three rather odd men. One of these, Fitzgeorge, instinctively understands her and unlocks her true feelings almost as a therapist might. He had fallen in love with the young and lovely Lady Slane in India, when he had seen her arranging flowers beside her young son’s crib. Both had been aware of an emotional current revealed by a glance but she was respectably married (and to the viceroy of India) and knew nothing must come of it. He tells her now, free at last to flirt if retrospectively, how he felt, that he had hated to see her ‘trapped’ and ‘denying her true nature’. Would Fitzgeorge have supplied to passion (too late now) that she never could enjoy with the very charming but self-controlled Henry, her husband? We’re not told but our bookclub group hoped so!

And as for her true nature, as a child she’d longed to be as unrestricted as a young boy, and cut her hair and run about freely but of course – as a well-brought up young girl in the (late) Victorian era – she could not. As an adult she had felt her true nature was to be a painter but this was never fulfilled either. Could she paint, we all wondered? Was it a genuinely thwarted dream or just a romantic fantasy? The author hints at the former when Lady Slane finds a complete understanding with her great granddaughter, also Deborah, who succeeds in freeing herself; to the horror of her family she has broken off a highly suitable engagement to the oldest son of a duke to follow a musical career and what is more, has cut her hair short! Triumph! Her great grandmother, rather dazed, feels she has achieved her own dream.

Midnight, and we did a quick round of any thwarted dreams/romantic fantasies of our book club members. We agreed that reality, that is personal commitments, earning a living, raising a family, must mean that not only women but men too are not free to do exactly what they want so one can’t feel too aggrieved about it. However, we discovered amongst us an artist – a realistic dream, that, a doctor and a wonderfully talented jazz and classical pianist. That was mine so I can truthfully say, not based on a jot of evidence and on another occasion i might well produce all sorts of equally unrealistic but quite different possibilities.

Finally, on a more serious note, if you haven’t read this book I do urge you to read it; if you’ve read it in the past, do read it again. It is short, easy to read, and quite charming, the sort of book that quickly becomes an old friend.

‘All Passion Spent’

Today, Tuesday 24th July, has been wondrously hot, the hottest day of the year, apparently.

I tore myself away from the computer (EQM re-assessment being an urgent priority, went outside complete with sun hat, Factor 50, and ‘All Passion Spent’ by Vita Sackville-West, my book for our book club meeting tomorrow night. I settled on one of our lovely wooden ‘loungers’. The air was still, the sun shone, the odd bee buzzed and in the far-off background one could hear our local farmers, frantically getting in their silage which has been such a worry over the last few wet weeks.

I lasted all of ten minutes – someone brought up in the tropics who used to play tennis in the midday tropical sun… It was too hot! Too hot to read, too hot to even think of taking a photograph. It was such a relief to come back into the cool of our lovely old house with its thick stone walls which mean it is never too hot, never too cold.

So back I went to the computer. And now rather late in the day I must tackle my second read of the book which, incidentally, I am loving. (I will report back after book club.)

The Scarlet Letter: A Good Read?

In our house we have more paintings and pictures than wall space. We have nothing valuable in money terms but all valuable in what each picture means to us; I could say the same about books. I put some of my favourite books on the bookshelves in the barns for our guests to enjoy and many of them tell us how much they do. We have bookshelves in every room in the house, with books lined two deep and in untidy piles everywhere. And they keep coming in as we buy them, get given them and the Parwich Five book club that four friends and I have belonged to for over 20 years means there has been at least one more new book every month which makes over 240 in all.

There are many joys about our book club. It is small so we all get a voice in; we all read voraciously and we all come at the books from a different angle. One of us is American, I was born and brought up (and educated) in central Africa, two of us had very strict convent type eductions, the youngest is the same age as the oldest’s daughter. We have very lively – fun and interesting – discussions and agree to disagree without hurt or reproach although funnily enough on the whole we seem to be in general agreement; the best discussions are when we don’t!

Usually, we all find that even if a book doesn’t appeal at first, after a certain number of pages (there’s meant to be a magical number) often to one’s surprise one begins to enjoy it and sometime by the end one is completely won over. Our latest read, chosen by American Deb in response to our request for an American classic, was the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. To our shame the rest of us had not read it and knew little about the background whereas to Debbie it was a familiar, well-loved classic, taught in every school and part of everyone’s background. Just as she had struggled with Trollope so well-known and familiar to us, so we all struggled with Hawthorne, and only partly because The Scarlet Letter was a deceptively tiny book with print as minute as a Bible’s so not relaxing to read at the end of a long day.

However, after our discussion and Debbie’s surprised reaction that we had not enjoyed it at all, at least two of us have decided we ought to read it again, trying to get beyond the ponderous style and very depressing 17C Puritanism and think more about the (equally depressing) underlying themes of guilt, remorse and redemption. On a more positive note, Hester Prynne, the heroine, is a very strong and courageous woman, and her daughter Pearl an almost alarmingly free ‘free spirit’ presumably because they had been set apart from society so did not have to obey its conventions. Pearl having been born out of wedlock her mother Hester narrowly escaped being executed for the social crime but instead had to live as an outcast, with a scarlet letter A pinned to her chest to mark her out as an adultress.

Our next book will be a complete change: ‘Call the Midwife’ by Jennifer Worth, which has recently been serialised very successfully on telly.

At last! Precious Bane… the promised book post

Let’s hope it is worth the wait because I’m not exactly ecstatic about the book in question, which is fairly unusual for me; the other four in our group all loved it so I was a bit out on my own but fortunately that never matters in our discussions.

The last choice for our book club was Precious Bane, by Mary Webb. It was written in the 1920s, but set at the time of Waterloo, over one hundred years before. The positive aspects were the resilience of the heroine, Prue Sarn whose life threatens to be blighted by a hare lip which leads the locals to view her as a witch but who learns to read and write (taught by the local wizard)  and eventually finds trues love with Kester the Weaver who sees beyond her disfigurement.

Most the other characters are less appealing, either ineffective, like her mother, or downright selfish and cruel like her brother Gideon. (If you’re wondering why we have a picture of the Deadly Nightshade here you’ll have to read the book.) Their life is hard and their surroundings largely bleak and inhospitable although the  Shropshire countryside is beautifully, poetically, described and obviously deeply loved by Mary Webb herself.

I read the book twice which I often do as I race through so fast the first time I return to savour things more slowly. I loved the descriptions and appreciated Mary Webb’s use of words, but it was all a bit melodramatic and a bit too reminiscent of Thomas Hardy for my real enjoyment. I longed for a bit of humour, and kept thinking longingly of Cold Comfort Farm, which so brilliantly parodies this style of book (and which we read as a group many years ago).

So now the next book we are all reading (again, for us all) is Jane Eyre. This was my choice, largely because the latest film, due for release in this country in August, was filmed at Haddon Hall. It is fun to have recently read a book before seeing the film, and particularly a flim shot in familiar surroundings – one can ponder over the changes made and where or even how each incident was filmed.

But there will be much more than that to discuss!

Of Reading and Book Clubs and Things

This may be rather rushed. I have made a date with myself (and John of course) to watch ‘Three in a Bed’ at 8.30. Apparently it is quite funny, about B&B owners… I shall know more next time.

Anyway, I promised that I would write about books today, having started yesterday but ended up interrupting the flow as it were. (I never know when I sit at the computer to write a post what I will end up with – it’s quite exciting!)

I have always loved reading, and have read copiously ever since my mother first taught me at a youngish age in a remote outstation in Central Africa where we were hundreds of miles from the nearest nursery schools or even play groups (and doctors, but that’s another story…). I still have some of my first books, patiently and repeatedly mended by my mother. We were hundrreds of miles from the nearest shops, but in those days one didn’t buy things, even books, with abandon. Our book collection is enormous, because John also has lots.

Early on in our time in Parwich we made many good friends. Five of us, who discovered we all shared this love of reading decided to start up an informal book group. That was well over 20 years ago and we still meet and enjoy our sessions as much as we ever did, and of course by now have read literally hundreds of books. Many of mine have found their way into the barns to be pounced upon and enjoyed by many of our guests, to our great pleasure.

So as well as the risk of Tom’s Barn Blog turning into a cookery blog, or a bird photographers’ gallery, there is a strong risk it may turn ever so slightly into a book readers’ blog as well. It is now 8.30 so I promised i will actually write about our lst Book Club choice, which rather awkwardly I didn’t even really enjoy very much. More of that later.


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