Scottish Colourists 1900-1930

30 March 2012 00:23

This is one of the books which I pick up and dip into every now and again, I suppose you’d call it a coffee table book. It has over a hundred illustrations of beautiful colourist paintings by F.C.B. Cadell
J.D. Fergusson
G.L. Hunter and
S.J. Peploe
who were the most famous artists of the Scottish colourist movement. You can see some images here of colourist paintings or art which has been influenced by them.

The paintings are gorgeous and I have the added excitement of recognising lots of the subjects in the paintings as most of the artists painted beaches and cottages in Fife and the east of Scotland, as well as rivers and hills in the west of Scotland.

They did get further afield though and there are plenty of paintings of places in France and various other places that attract artists.

If you ever get a chance to see an exhibition of their work you should jump at it as I don’t think you’d be disappointed. The museum in Kirkcaldy has a very good collection but sadly it’s closed at the moment whilst work is being done on the building.

The first time I went to a colourist exhibition as soon as I entered the gallery I saw a beach painting and I said that must be a beach in Scotland, because there were several people on the beach and they all had their coats on! A typical Scottish July probably. But we can’t complain this year because my closest beach has already had people sunbathing on it – in bikinis. In March – unheard of!

I might show you some photographic evidence of that soon – well maybe not the bikinis!

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The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart

26 March 2012 23:58

The Ivy Tree is Mary Stewart’s version of Josephine Tey’s vintage crime book Brat Farrar. I read that one last year and really liked it so I was a bit dubious about reading the Stewart take on the same sort of storyline.

It’s set in a farm in Northumberland in the north of England, Roman Wall country. The elderly owner is failing fast and there’s doubt as to who the property will be passed on to after his heir, his 18 year old grand-daughter Annabel, walked out after a row eight years previously, never to be seen or heard of again.

His great-nephew, Con, is desperate to get his hands on the farm and when one day he sees Annabel’s double, a young stranger from Canada, he and his half-sister Lisa cook up a plan to secure the farm with the help of the doppelganger.

Initially I thought it was a wee bit of a cheek on Mary Stewart’s part to so blatantly nick Josephine Tey’s idea but she mentions her several times in The Ivy Tree and I like to think of Stewart reading Brat Farrar and saying to herself “I could do better than that” – and she did!

There were unexpected twists and turns right to the end of The Ivy Tree, and you can’t say fairer than that.

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Augustus Carp Esq. by Himself

23 March 2012 13:59

This book was first published in 1924 and it’s the spoof autobiography of Augustus Carp who lives in Camberwell,London. He’s a humourless, religious pedant and a bufoon. A ghastly character all round really who resorts to blackmail to get on in the world but never sees his own behaviour as bad.

It is funny but I think it’s one of those books which is best shared with a friend(s) and read out aloud. There’s an introduction by Robert Robinson, the book was a family favourite, he was introduced to it by his father and it became a sort of touchstone for them, something which they communicated by.

It’s like a nasty version of Diary of a Nobody, the difference being that Mr Pooter is a harmless likeable chump, the opposite of Carp. The book has illustrations by Marjorie Blood who was also a cartoonist for Punch.

The author of the book was a mystery for years but it was discovered after his death that he was in fact Sir Henry Howarth Bashford an eminent Hampstead doctor who eventually became Hon. Physician to King George VI. He wrote numerous professional works but Augustus Carp was his only foray into comic fiction. He died in 1961.

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The Classics Club

22 March 2012 00:21

I read about The Classics Club on Anbolyn’s Gudrun’s Tights and decided to join in too. You can read about it here.

I’ve listed 55 books which I intend to read within the next five years although in truth I hope it won’t take me so long. These are all books which have been in my house for years, waiting for their moment in the sun but I just haven’t got around to them. Apart from the Freeman Wills Crofts books near the end, I’ll be able to borrow those ones from my library and those are the ones I’m looking forward to reading most because I so enjoyed The 12.30 from Croydon and I love reading vintage crime. I’m going to read The Scarlet Letter first because it’s one of the ones which I think I should have read absolutely yonks ago.

When I get to the end of the 55 I’m going to reward myself with – a pat on the back and more books!

1. Deerslayer by J. Fenimore Cooper
2. Uther and Igraine by Warwick Deeping
3. Heroes by Thomas Carlyle
4. The Lady of the Camelias by Alexandre Dumas
5. Swan Song by John Galsworthy
6. End of the Chapter by John Galsworthy
7. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
8. Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
9. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
10. The Talisman by Walter Scott
11. Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
12. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
13. Nana by Emile Zola
14. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
15. The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope
16. The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope
17. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
18. The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett
19. Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett
20. The Naulahka by Rudyard Kipling and W. Balestier
21. O Pioneer! by Willa Cather
22. Moby Dick by Hermann Melville
23. The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby
24. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
25. An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym
26. The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett
27. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
28. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
29. The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
30. Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
31. Witch Wood by John Buchan
32. The Courts of the Morning by John Buchan
33. The Gap in the Curtain by John Buchan
34. Love by Elizabeth von Arnim
35. The Corn King and the Spring Queen ny Naomi Mitchison
36. Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rhys
37. A Favourite of the Gods by Sybille Bedford
38. Poor Caroline by Winifred Holtby
39. The World my Wilderness by Rose Macaulay
40. Salem Chapel by Mrs Oliphant
41. The Republic by Pliny
42. The Harsh Voice by Rebecca West
43. Chatterton Square by E.H. Young
44. Not So Quite by Hellen Zenna Smith
45. The Tenth Man by Graham Greene
46. The Thirs Man by Graham Greene
47. Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
48. Felix Holt the Radical by George Eliot
49. The Box Office Murders by Freeman Wills Crofts
50. Inspector French’s Greatest Case by Freeman Wills Crofts
51. Mystery in the Channel by Freeman Wills Crofts
52. Man Overboard by Freeman Wills Crofts
53. Mystery on Southampton Water by Freeman Wills Crofts
54. The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts
55. Selected Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

I’m not really superstitious but I feel that as this challenge is such a prolonged one I really have to say that I intend finishing these books – and I’m borrowing a phrase from my late Mum here – If I’m Spared – and I’m saying it on behalf of everyone else taking part too because I just feel that these things shouldn’t be taken for granted. It’s bad luck. Do I sound a bit mental? Don’t answer that!

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Symposium by Muriel Spark

19 March 2012 23:39

This book was published in 1990 and it begins with the hereditary Lord Suzy shouting “This is Rape” – his home has been burgled during the night as they slept and he feels violated. He can’t stop talking about it and when he and his wife attend a dinner party soon afterwards he is still relating the experience.

It was an okay read but I was glad that it didn’t take long as it’s only 145 pages. I find Spark’s books to be very ‘curate’s eggish’ – I don’t normally rate books but if pushed I would give this one no more than 2 out of 5. The whole storyline is quite predictable. There are no likeable characters and it really annoyed me that she has a character with red hair who is evil and the fact that she has red hair is talked of by others – “…what malign vibes that girl gives out! That red hair – ”

I had thought that that Victorian habit of giving the bad guy red hair had died out but apparently not with Spark. It’s so lazy, just like giving the baddy in a western a black hat or making the evil person in a modern film a chain smoker. It gives sustenance to those idiots (and there are plenty of them around) who think that it’s acceptable to make denigrating remarks to people simply because of the colour of their hair. They wouldn’t get away with it if they were making remarks about the colour of a person’s skin, so I don’t see why it should be acceptable for hair colour. There are characters in this book who tell the police that a person’s red hair is natural -as if it means it’s a foregone conclusion that they are a murderer.

It all adds to the nonsense which redheads are expected to put up with. I’ve always just assumed that people who do that are sick with jealousy!

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The 12:30 from Croydon by Freeman Wills Crofts

16 March 2012 13:21

The 12.30 From Croydon

I had completely forgotten about Freeman Wills Crofts until I saw this book in my library. I had never read any before although I’d handled the books often enough in the past, I always got his name mixed up with that shoe shop chain – Freeman Hardy Willis, do they still exist? So I was quite surprised to find out that he is regarded as one of the ‘Big Four’ of the Golden Age of Crime Fiction.

First published in 1934, The 12:30 from Croydon is crime fiction with a difference because you know who the murderer is and how he has talked himself into committing murder. The mystery is – will he get off with it and if not how did he slip up?

I ended up thoroughly enjoying this one and I’m looking forward to reading more of his books which have been reprinted by House of Stratus. At first I was not at all sure I would like it because it begins with Rose Morley, her father and grandfather taking a flight to Paris. The whole experience is described in detail as obviously in 1934 very few of the readers would have been on an aeroplane and this would have been seen as an exciting start to the book. Nowadays it just isn’t and what was cutting edge when the book was first published is now charmingly old-fashioned. Apparently there was an air-station at Victoria,London which I’m presuming was just a part of the bus station where you boarded a bus for the airport.

Luckily Freeman Wills Crofts wrote quite a lot of books, so I’ll be tracking them down soon, hopefully via the library although I believe Peggy Ann has managed to get one from Project Gutenberg.

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The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe

13 March 2012 00:06

This is a book which I borrowed from my local library entirely because it’s one of those ‘cultural tumbleweed moments’ for me. Do you know what I mean? It’s something which is often referred to because we are all supposed to have experienced it and for some reason there are always things which have just passed me by – or I’ve passed them by, hence that feeling of complete ignorance whenever the subject comes up.

So I thought it was high time I got around to reading The Murders in the Rue Morgue especially as vintage crime is one of my favourite sorts of reading matter. There are two other short stories in the book – The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Purloined Letter.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809 and this short story was first published in 1841. It’s generally described as the first real detective story and Dupin the detective is a type similar to Sherlock Holmes. Poe seems to have set the pattern for the brilliantly observant detective with a helpful partner which so many other writers have copied. Conan Doyle described Dupin as the best detective in fiction, some Holmes fans might have argued with him on that one.

Anyway I enjoyed these short stories although I have to admit that it’s really 1930s crime fiction which is my favourite, for me that was really the golden age of crime fiction. Given that this is part of the history of the whole crime genre I’m really glad that I read them and I now know what people are talking about when they mention The Murders in the Rue Morgue. I think it must have been quite shocking when it was first published as it’s really quite gory and violent.

I’m sure I read somewher that Edgar Allan Poe was of Scottish descent but according to Wiki it was just his foster father who was Scottish. Poe did go to school in Irvine, in the west of Scotland, at one point before moving to England and then back to America. He also married his 13 year old cousin, so I’m not at all sure that we would want to claim him as a Scot!

Is there anything which you feel you should have read or experienced years ago and for some reason haven’t, resulting in those tumbleweed moments?

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Olivia in India by O. Douglas

9 March 2012 23:54

This is the first book which O.Douglas, sometimes known as Anna Buchan, had published (in 1912). It’s very autobiographical and it’s written in the form of a series of letters, the first of which is written from a ship in Liverpool which is ready to set off on the long voyage to India. Olivia is going to India to spend time with her bother, affectionately nicknamed Boggley. He is in India doing some sort of Empire related job.

We only read the letters which Olivia is writing and it’s very near the end before we learn who she’s actually writing them to. There are never any replies, although she sometimes alludes to something which has been mentioned in a letter to her. Obviously the early letters are all about the voyage and the other passengers but when Olivia reaches India she’s all over the place, experiencing as much of the life there as she can, taking trains across the country, visiting the Taj Mahal and meeting all sorts of people, good and bad.

So it’s all very different from her other books which are set in Scotland but she does write about home and reminisces about the past. She even mentions that she’s writing a book, encouraged by her brother John’s books’ good reviews.

So I started wondering how much of this book was fiction and I had a look at the index of O.Douglas’ biography “Unforgettable, Unforgotten” and sure enough she did go to India to visit one of her brothers. I’ll have to get around to reading that one soon.

I enjoyed Olivia in India and I think it is probably a realistic account of life in India for Anglo-Indians, the fear of mutinies and disease and the odd bomb or two being thrown as Indians became more and more dissatisfied with their position as part of the British Empire.

I borrowed “Olivia in India” from the library but I’ve promised myself that I’m not going to look at books when I return the ones I have out. Last week I went to two libraries in two different towns and apart from this book I also borrowed:

Symposium by Muriel Spark
The 12.30 from Croydon by Freeman Wills Crofts
Augustus Carp Esq. by Himself
The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe

The Poe book is one of those ones that I feel I should have read years ago and for some reason or other I haven’t.

So, with an eye on the due back dates I’m neglecting my own books and Mary Stewart’s The Ivy Tree in particular has been glowering at me from the top of a pile of books which are balanced on a cantilevered sewing box near my bedside. I’m banning myself from the library!

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A God and his Gifts by Ivy Compton-Burnett

3 March 2012 23:53

Well, it’ll be a good wee while before Ivy Compton-Burnett darkens my door again. I don’t think I have actually read anything by her before this one but I did see her mentioned on another blog, I can’t remember which one though. I had just about forgotten about her so when I saw this book in the Oxfam bookshop in Perth I thought I’d give her a go.

The blurb on the back says:
‘An acting out of powerful impulses that run counter to an accepted morality – brutal truth-telling, repressed family hatreds and loves’ – Storm Jameson in the Spectator.

and
‘One of the most brilliant and original novelists in the English language’ - Daily Telegraph.

A God and his Gifts really didn’t appeal to me at all and it was only the fact that it was just 173 pages long and the hope that a certain ghastly character would come to a very sticky end which enabled me to get to the end of the book.

It was published in 1963 but the setting is Edwardian upper-class family life. Hereward Egerton is the young arrogant son of Sir Michael and his wife Joanna and when Hereward’s proposal of marriage to Rosa is rejected he takes himself off and marries Ada because he feels it’s time he had a wife. Unfortunately for all the other characters Hereward is incapable of keeping his hands off all of the young female members of his family, including his daughters-in-law.

He is able to get off with it because as a successful author of novels he is keeping the entire family afloat with his earnings. Apart from the tacky subject matter I also didn’t like Compton-Burnett’s writing style. Almost the entire book is dialogue, probably as much as 95% of it. It was more like reading a play than a novel, there’s hardly any description in it and I like to be able to imagine the settings, clothes and such so that was a big drawback for me too.

I kept hoping that Hereward would be struck by lightning as being run over by a double decker bus obviously wasn’t going to happen – but no such luck!

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Fer de Lance by Rex Stout

2 March 2012 00:26

This is the first book in Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series which was handy for me as I haven’t read any of his books before. Fer de Lance was first published in 1934 and is set in New York. Given the time and place I thought it would be all prohibition, gangsters and speak-easies, which would have suited me fine but it was nothing like I expected it to be.

Luckily I did still enjoy it, the book is narrated by Archie Goodwin who is the private detective Nero Wolfe’s right hand man. Archie is a likeable character, he does all the running around town because Nero Wolfe rarely leaves his home. His vast bulk stops him from getting around much and puzzling over a mystery often takes a back seat when his love of good food and beer takes precedence. Fritz the Swiss chef is a very important member of the staff. Wolfe is always trying to limit himself to five quarts of beer a day, with no success.

Although this is the first in the series, you wouldn’t guess it because Archie is always mentioning things which happened in the past, old cases and people they helped out of trouble so you get the feeling of a long standing relationship, there’s a shared history.

The amount of booze consumed was a surprise to me, I think prohibition must have just made people more determined to get a hold of it.

In this story a golfer falls down dead on the course, supposedly it was a heart attack but Nero Wolfe knows differently and proves it. That’s as much as I’m saying about that!

However – I haven’t seen any dramatisations of Nero Wolfe, I suppose some must exist but we’re steeped in Poirot and Marple here and I don’t remember anything American apart from Ellery Queen way back in the year dot. I did wonder though if the person who wrote the 1960s/70s Ironside with Raymond Burr had based the whole thing as an updated version of Nero Wolfe. There are lots of similarities I think. Ironside didn’t get about much because he was confined to a wheelchair and he relied on his staff to do the leg work for him. As I recall, Ironside was rather fond of his food too, I seem to remember they were often all gathered around a dining table. Ironside didn’t have a penchant for orchids though, which is Wolfe’s other passion apart from food and beer.

I haven’t read much in the way of vintage American mystery/crime. Does anyone have any suggestions as to who else I should give a go?

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