Cornflower

Sky lark

      We've had some quite severe weather over the last few days including the most powerful hail storm I've ever experienced and - just this morning - frequent snow showers. All this has meant interesting and dramatic skies. Above is a corner of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, while in the third picture down you can just see the clock tower of The Balmoral Hotel (formerly The North British and mentioned memorably in Eric Newby's book on his adventures in ladies' fashions Something Wholesale). All the rest were taken through our kitchen window!

Notes and queries

     Thankyou to everyone who took the trouble to respond to yesterday's post, and in such detail, too. It's clearly a complex subject and may well stand further exploration, but for now, thanks for all the excellent comments!

                                       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Alexander asked about the significance of the bee in some of the pictures I use here. My reply to his question was bounced back for some reason, so for Alexander and anyone else who's curious, the bee is superimposed by Bridgeman Art Library on all their pictures and is there, as far as I know, in order to stop unauthorised commercial reproduction of the images.

The borrowers

    

     Close friend and regular visitor to these pages Peter the Flautist (aka Dark Puss) tells me that he has tried in three libraries to get hold of a copy of They Came Like Swallows but without success, so he won't be taking part in this month's book group read. Before I go on I must say that I do have Peter's permission to write about him here, and I sought that as I thought library use might be an interesting subject to explore.

     Peter can be our model "borrower" since he prefers to borrow rather than buy books in order to support his local libraries and help to keep them going, and his motives are altruistic and to be commended because he feels that while he can obtain books from many sources, other people cannot and rely heavily on the libraries for their reading matter. I wonder if Peter's level of library use - relative to his book-buying - is unusually high, and I'm inviting him to expand on this in a comment if he cares to.

     We visited our local library a great deal when our children were younger as they got through many more books than we could reasonably buy for them. I found the adults' section quite disappointing  - certainly in terms of fiction - athough non-fiction was more interesting. I can't claim to share Peter's admirable social conscience on this; I would use the library for reference purposes or to find something that wasn't easily obtainable in the shops, but the vast bulk of my reading is books I have bought (or been given), thus I am a buyer rather than a borrower.

     I checked the catalogue of Edinburgh city libraries to see how well they would do on providing our book group titles and the results were: "All Passion Spent" - nil, "They came like swallows" - one, "Alias Grace" - too many to count. I have no idea how libraries determine their acquisition policy - is it based on supply and demand, or vice versa? - but the findings of that very basic straw poll were interesting.

    So, my questions to all you avid readers are: do you use libraries regularly and if so, for what? Would you never buy a book if you could get it at the library? Does that apply equally to fiction and non-fiction? Is it or isn't it important to keep the books we've read and loved or might want to refer to again? Given constraints of space for housing books and /or cash for buying them, what determines what - if anything - we buy?

(Apologies to anyone who thought this post was going to be about Mary Norton's classic The Borrowers, another time perhaps!)

Joie de vivre

     I mentioned Zola's The Ladies' Paradise a couple of days ago, but I have finished the book now and can mark it down as a simply super read. As I said before, it's about the rise of the great Parisian department stores and the consequent failure of the small specialist shops, but it's also a sharp portrait of the social and sexual mores of the time (late 19th. century) and above all, a Cinderella story  - all that and textiles by the thousands!

(Detail: Renoir - The Umbrellas)

     Our heroine, orphaned Denise Baudu, comes to Paris with her younger brothers and must find work to support them. She is taken on by The Ladies' Paradise, the opulent store owned by the seductive Octave Mouret which, through its size, revolutionary sales techniques and power to control prices, is threatening the livelihood of the small shopkeepers in the neighbourhood, one of whom is the girl's uncle.

     The self-possessed Denise, principled, hard-working, eventually proves her worth to the 'Paradise' which is expanding rapidly, but not before enduring harsh treatment and desperate times. Here's a typically melodramatic line: "She cried for a long time before finding a little courage with which to go on living" - oh woe!!

    The book is exuberant, sometimes frenzied, romantic, wonderfully detailed and all in all a bravura piece, hence the fun of it. Random Jottings felt about it as I do, and so did Dovegreyreader, so I'm in good company here.

(An illustration from the book, c.1895)

Quite apart from the story I found the information on the style and practices of the great shops utterly fascinating. They were "making luxury democratic", and in terms of their efficiency and level of service they would leave today's emporia standing. As to the descriptions of the building and its magnificent displays, our modern shops can't begin to compete.

(Printemps: the stained glass dome)

     Textile enthusiasts will find themselves in ... paradise amidst the 'Paradise's' stock :"cotton, dimity, pique, calico, madapollam, nainsook, muslin, tarlatan", never mind the "foulards as fine as a cloud, surahs lighter than the down blown from trees, satiny Peking fabrics as soft as the skin of a Chinese virgin....pongees from Japan, tussores and corahs from India....which conjured up visions of ladies in furbelows walking on May mornings beneath great trees in a park".

John Lewis has nothing on this!

Gentlemen prefer blondies

     In the earliest days of this website I posted the recipe for brownies as, of all the things I bake, they are probably the most often requested. Apologies for repeating myself so soon, but in case you missed it the other day, we've gone from dark and beguiling to pale and interesting, opting to try blondies instead of their densely chocolatey counterparts.

Ever since I made them, my family have been pleading for more, so yesterday Harriet and I produced a second batch.

You can find the recipe here, and it's quick and simple. You could substitute pecans or almonds for the macadamias, and although you do need the quantity of maple syrup specified they aren't too sweet. Also, because you melt the butter in a pan and just mix everything else in, there's very little washing-up to do!

I made one and a half times the quantity given in the recipe because that's what would fit my tin, and I baked them for 23 minutes as my cooker is quite fast, otherwise they were just as stated and work out at four each for the five of us - there was outrage last time when someone ate more than their share! I suppose that's as good a test as any of a successful recipe.

Retail therapy

Printemps: Central hall   

     I'm currently reading Zola's The Ladies' Paradise and shall write properly about the book soon, but wanted to mention it today and use these wonderful illustrations from Bridgeman Art Library. The book concerns the rise of the great Parisian department store, the eponymous "Ladies' Paradise" or "Au Bonheur des Dames" - based on the Bon Marche, - a temple to the art of shopping, to capitalism and to the mechanisms of commercial seduction.

    Putting such pressure on the small, independent specialist shops that they could scarcely survive, the vast bulk and power of the giant store spread through the district, attracting customers of all social strata, and constantly providing new and better delights with which to tempt them:-

"The crowd had reached the silk department....At the far end of the hall, around one of the small cast-iron columns which supported the glass roof, material was streaming down like a bubbling sheet of water, falling from above and spreading out on to the floor. First, pale satins and soft silks were gushing out: royal satins and renaissance satins, with the pearly shades of spring water; light silks as transparent as crystal - Nile green, turquoise, blossom pink, Danube blue. Next came ....the marvellous satins and the duchess silks, in warm shades, rolling in great waves. And at the bottom, as if in a fountain basin...the damasks, the brocades, the silver and gold silks, were sleeping on a deep bed of velvets....their shimmering flecks forming a still lake in which reflections of the sky and of the countryside seemed to dance. Women pale with desire were leaning over as if to look at themselves. Faced with this wild cataract, they all remained standing there, filled with the secret fear of being caught up in the over-flow of all this luxury and with an irresistible desire to throw themselves into it and be lost".

Magasins du Louvre

    There may not be anything subtle about it, but I'm enjoying it greatly!

And how have you spent your morning?

     I bet you haven't been trying to photograph a pair of ammonite cufflinks, have you?

The manual for our camera turned up the other day in a pile of equally obscure technical documents when we were trying to haul the computer back from the brink of death. Thanks to the ministrations of PC World, the machine lives to go wrong again another day, and thanks to finding the camera booklet I've been trying to be clever!

All I wanted to do was get a decent close-up shot of a small object, but the instructions don't make much sense to me - why can't they write them in simple steps like a recipe or a knitting pattern? I think I'll have to go back to my old "turn it on and press the button" method as the fancy stuff hasn't got me very far.

So, no claims of success here as I don't know my Spot AF from my Program Auto Shooting Mode,

but how have you spent your morning? (And if anyone can tell me how to get these cufflinks right, I'd be most grateful!)

Keep taking the tablets

     It's Burns' Day today, but the poet gets a mention here in a context other than his work. Though it's his birth that's celebrated with much stabbing of haggis and mashing of neeps and tatties, it was his death which cropped up in the comprehensive and informative The Healers: A History of Medicine in Scotland, which I've just read. In common with other famous men of his day such as Hume and Boswell, Burns turned to the 'intellectual' spa at Moffat for relaxation and therapy. He also sought the stimulating properties of sea-bathing and patronised a "shabby resort" at Brow Hill on the Solway Firth where during his final illness caused by a leaking heart valve, "he waded daily up to his armpits in the sea but died a week after finishing this treatment"!

    While the book is a scholarly account of its subject, it is also full of anecdote and fascinating facts. For instance, I didn't know that Robert the Bruce had leprosy, or that in the mid 18th. century one 'health holiday' in vogue was "retreating to a simple life in the country and drinking only the whey from goats' milk.....In 1740 in Glasgow in July it was recorded that all the ministers were absent, being 'at the goat's whey' ".

    As to drug treatment, although the use of extract of toad had been phased out, millipede powder (!) remained in the Pharmacopoeia until 1800, and the growth of patent medicines made by the forerunners of today's pharmaceutical industry meant that a gullible (or desperate) public bought such concoctions as Bell's Fairy Cure for pain relief, Dr. Collie's Ointment and Rollos Remedy for Piles "which on analysis showed 99% fat and 'a small quantity of very dark stuff' ".

     What I found particularly interesting and already knew something of was the rise and immense influence of the University of Edinburgh's Medical School. My grandfather studied there in the 1920s as did his uncle in the 1880s, but formal teaching went back to the 1600s and in a less regulated manner in the city to much earlier. From the Scottish capital the doctors went far out into the world: "the medical department of the College of Philadelphia [apparently the first in the US] was designed and staffed entirely by Edinburgh graduates.....The second....King's College New York, now Columbia University, opened in 1767. The moving spirit in this venture was an Edinburgh graduate...and four of the six founder professors were from Edinburgh". The list goes on. 

    Edinburgh was also the first medical school to admit a woman when Sophia Jex-Blake enrolled in 1869, though the lady students' path was not an easy one and it was to be much later before women enjoyed the same teaching as men.   

     By the way, the book is published by a local publisher, Mercat Press, and has a particularly striking cover and jacket design, don't you think?

500

   

     Cornflower's 500th. post!!          

     I began writing here with only a vague idea of how the site would look, what it would include and how it might evolve, but 500 small and seemingly insignificant steps later it has grown in all directions and taken on a life of its own. The positive and enthusiastic response of the readers has been immensely important in getting this far, so I must say thankyou to everyone who pops in to visit, who comes back, who leaves a comment, who links to these pages, and who has become a friend as a result - you're tremendous!

In development

 

 

I hope there will be a flower to show eventually!

Falling off the perch

     "Isn't the most reliable form of pleasure...the pleasure of anticipation? Who needs to burst into fulfilment's desolate attic?"

I should have heeded that line, which appears on page 4, and put this book back on the shelf. I risk being blackballed by the Serious Readers' Club for my views here, but as far as I am concerned Flaubert's Parrot is an ex-parrot, a late parrot, a dead parrot, it has ceased to be, it is bereft of life ! (and the Monty Python sketch is a lot funnier than this book is).

      My introduction to Julian Barnes was the marvellous Arthur and George so I was expecting similarly great things here. Yes, it is undoubtedly very clever and there are flashes of brilliance and passages which are beautifully done, and some exquisitely quotable lines, and ...and ....and...., but even so I found myself eagerly awaiting the last page so that I could put it down. Why did I continue if I was disappointed? I hoped that with all the conjuring tricks Barnes performs in this book he'd be pulling a rabbit out of the hat at the end; the few mangy feathers he produces weren't really worth waiting for.

      As an extended idea, a piece of literary flamboyance, a "train-spotter's guide to Flaubert" - as one chapter is called - it is great, but it's not a great novel. It's a book of layers, of coincidence, of irony and the nature of biography; it's technically very showy but its 'artificial colouring and flavouring' seem to devalue what might have been a nourishingly 'all natural ingredients' kind of story. I found myself irritated by its mannerisms, cheated by its unfulfilled promise, and even with the parallels and overlaps between the narrator Braithwaite's life and those of Flaubert and his characters, I couldn't have cared less about any of them.

     Despite my reservations I am open to persuasion on this, so if you loved it, please tell me what it is I have missed.

Ombrophilous

     I am ombrophilous: capable of withstanding heavy and continuous rain! That's just as well given today's weather forecast.

I didn't know there was a word I could apply to my rain-loving nature until Bloomsbury sent it to me as their "Word of the Day" last week. They'll also send you their Day in Literary History if you ask them to - I see today's is about the "New Yorker" which ties in with yesterday's post.

Whether wet or dry, have a good day!

Volume 3

     My reading over the past year has involved many discoveries: books I might not have come across had they not arrived here, unsolicited, or been recommended so strongly by people whose opinions I trust.

    One of the reasons for instigating a book group based around this site and its visitors is to continue that pattern of  finding new things, and our third title is by yet another writer I haven't read before. William Maxwell (1908-2000) was a "New Yorker" editor and the author of a distinguished body of work, and it's his short novel They Came Like Swallows which has been picked out of the hat to be read next.

     The title comes from these lines of W. B. Yeats's: "They came like swallows and like swallows went, And yet a woman's powerful character Could keep a swallow to its first intent; And half a dozen in formation there, That seem to whirl upon a compass-point, Found certainty upon the dreaming air..."

     The book's cover says this: "....Maxwell creates a portrait of an American family and the woman who is its emotional pillar. Deftly rendering the civilities and constraints of a vanished era, [the book] measures the unvoiced currents of love and need that run through all our lives. This novel...confirms William Maxwell's reputation as one of the twentieth century's finest novelists", while the "New York Herald Tribune" says "Rare...exquisite...a cameo-like perfection".

   So, what do you think? It sounds very promising to me. It should be readily available and is under 200 pages long, so let's reconvene to discuss it on Saturday, 16th. February.

Alias Grace

     "Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor."

      Our second Book Group book has been Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, a fictional version of the true story of a brutal and sensational double murder in nineteenth century Canada. Did she do it? Was Grace really guilty  - on the basis of Atwood's account - of the crime for which she was tried? And what do we think of the novel?

     I was impressed by the carefully detailed, astute writing, the book's controlled pace, the characterisation and the command with which everything is handled. Atwood gets completely under the skin of her main character (and others, too) and so Grace's telling of her story is both a very credible, plausible statement of the facts and a skillfully embroidered tale. There is a slyness to Grace which Atwood reveals occasionally and as if by accident, like a slip showing at the hem of a dress when a woman moves a certain way. Her attitude to Dr. Jordan gives us the hints we need here, e.g. "What should I tell him?....Some of it is all jumbled in my mind, but I could pick out this or that for him, some bits of whole cloth you might say, as when you go through the rag bag looking for something that will do, to supply a touch of colour".

    I was interested in the recurring needlework theme (there is much to that which we can't go into here) and I loved the evocation of places and scenes on the basis of smells, while the humour was unexpected - Mrs. Jordan's letters contain some very funny throwaway lines. What I felt wasn't sufficiently stated was McDermott's motives for premeditated murder: he was to be let go, so if bitter might seek to get his own back by stealing from Kinnear or slandering him and Nancy perhaps, but planning to kill them both seemed extreme, and this of course fundamentally affects Grace's position.

    My thanks to Donna for suggesting this book, the first of Margaret Atwood's novels I've read; I thought it was superb. What did you think?  Please leave your comments on this post and come back tomorrow to find out what our next title will be.

Lit. knit

     Diversions in a basket at my feet, all set for idle moments: another scarf like this one, and a good book.

    I'm only fifty or so pages into Flaubert's Parrot and because of numerous interruptions haven't got into my stride yet. So far, it has an uncollected, fragmentary feel, but I hear it shapes up well as it goes on, and with neat literary synchronicity is linking me back to Adam Thirlwell's Miss Herbert which I read before Christmas.

    The knitting is decidedly rhythmical, in contrast, and is progressing fast. The yarn is Posh Sophia 8-ply cashmere, and I have three skeins of it which should give a finished length of about 54".

                                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~

     Tomorrow is Alias Grace discussion day. How has this book fared with the Cornflower Critics? Will there be a clear male/female division of opinion? I can't wait to find out!