WHO WROTE THAT? by HUBERT PHILLIPS

I have often wondered whether older books of general knowledge and quiz books were designed to inform and test their readers or to highlight the apparently superior intellect of the writer or compiler.  Certainly Hubert Phillips's contribution, Who Wrote That?, succeeds in making me feel tantamount to illiterate and while I would like to think that his quiz, "containing 400 well-known and not quite so well-known quotations" is merely difficult because times and tastes in writers change, I fear another response may be the more plausible. 

Who Wrote That? is, or was a Penguin yellow-back original published in 1948 and numbered PT5.  The author whose somewhat self-satisfied photograph adorns the back cover is described (or self-described) as, "one of the most versatile, as well as one of the most knowledgeable, of contemporary journalists."  As well as serving as bridge editor, crossword writer and quondam principal leader writer of the News Chronicle we are informed he had also been Head of the Economics Department in Bristol University and 'Theme Convener of the Lion and Unicorn Pavilion at the Festival of Britain Exhibition' (I assume the 1924/5 Wembley one).  Wikipedia sees him as primarily a bridge player.

So to the quiz itself.  Who, for example, wrote, "For all sad words of tongue or pen, The Saddest are these: 'It might have been'."  The answer, is John Greenleaf Whittier in something called Maud Muller.  Hmm.

Or how about, "The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it."  That's John Stuart Mill in Liberty. Fair enough.

Or again, "We carry within us the wonders, we seek without us.  There is all Africa, and her prodigies in us."  That's Sir Thomas Browne in Religio Medici.  I'm not convinced I even know what this means.

Well I suppose I might have got the Mill quotation but if you knew the other two, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din". (That's Kipling, by the way).



Who Wrote That? Published by Penguin, 1948.  148pp.

THE CONFESSIONS OF MYCROFT HOLMES by MARCEL THEROUX

The title led me astray.  I had expected Marcel Theroux's second novel to be one of the many that seeks to continue the Holmes saga.  After all, among top authors, Michael Chabon's done it, Michael Dibdin's done it and so, indeed, has Anthony Horowitz, so why not Theroux?  

Not so.  Theroux's tale is a story of brothers.  There are five pairs in The Confessions, the least of which are Mycroft and Sherlock particularly since Sherlock, first in a fragment and then in a subsequently discovered and 'reprinted' short story, 'The Death of Abel March' written by the narrator's uncle, is notable by his absence.

But to dwell on Holmesiana is to go in entirely the wrong direction.  The core of The Confessions is the relationship between the narrator - the Anglo American Damien March - his father and his recently dead but long forgotten paternal uncle Patrick.  And it's the announcement of Patrick's death and Damien's unexpected decision to attend the funeral in Cape Cod, the starts us off.

Patrick and his brother were close during Damien's youth but broke apart in during his adolescence.  The former was a briefly successful writer whose natural eccentricity becomes heavily edged with irascibility and whose later years were spent in a house on the fictional island of Ionia off the Cape.  The latter, the sort of Englishman best able to be English when in America, is a successful, somewhat anal lawyer.  Damien, on the other hand provides the counterpoint occupying a dead-end job in BBC News in London until the news that Patrick's will leaves him the house in Ionia, prompts him to quit and make the move across the Atlantic.

It is in the house, which Damien quickly discovers to be held in trust as a sort of museum of his uncle's bizarre and well-documented collections (ice cream scoops, egg weighers, vitamin pills, mechanical banks), that he finds the Mycroft Holmes story one of whose characters is named for the lost husband of his nearest neighbours.

And having found the story and thought, perhaps too long, about the linkage of the neighbour's name (Fernshaw) to a Victorian martial arts instructor, Damien begins to construct a picture of violence and unexpiated guilt believing that the murder that Mycroft undertakes in the story is a cypher for a murder he considers his uncle to have committed even though no evidence, nor even suspicion, of murder exists.

He's wrong.  The truth is at once (slightly) more prosaic and, at the same time unexpected - a fine twist to end an excellent novel.

In constructing this intelligent and clever tale, Theroux is massively indebted to his own impressive ability to describe unusual character and characters with a light touch.  Some examples:

Of Damien's father, "In a way, Dad could be properly English only in America, because in England, his kind of Englishness barely existed. Perhaps there is somewhere in the British Isles where people have afternoon tea, bag grouse and talk in Lord Haw-Haw accents but it wasn't in Wandsworth, SW18."

Of Patrick and his story-telling, "Patrick went into more detail about how he used Vitalis to sculpt his hair before a date than Homer did about the armour of the Trojan heroes."

Of his friend, Lloyd, "He always looked tired, like a prisoner who had been kept short of sleep and food to render him submissive.  It was as though Lloyd was afraid that if it were contented and well rested, his body might make plans to escape from him."

Oh, and I forgot to mention the quirky and unexplained phrase of Patrick's that echoes through the narrative at accented moments: 'Bolder than Mandingo'.  Follow that.



The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes, first published in 2001. A Harvest Book - Harcourt Inc.  216pp in paperback.

STORM by GEORGE R STEWART

OK, it's not a particularly short book but it is a thin one - published in my copy, in 1944 in a Penguin 'Infantry Edition' (original copyright 1941).

Not only is it not short but the publisher's description: 'A Novel', is open to debate.

Yes Storm is a work of fiction but the normal novelistic conceits, at base some sort of romantic engagement, are missing unless one accepts the relationship between the Junior Meteorologist and Maria, the nascent storm he identifies and tracks, "an incipient little whorl, come into being southeast of Japan" which provides the core of the narrative and the backbone of the 12 days (chapters) of the book.

Storm is a story of discovery and explanation not only for the reader but also, one feels, for the author.  The back cover blurb explains that, "... Stewart got the idea for Storm while on vacation in Mexico ...  and soon became interested in the development and movement of storm centers.  Before long he was gathering data for his book by traveling about studying the effects of storms in different climate areas and at different altitudes. ...".

Maria is the subject and the heroine of the tale.  Not a hurricane nor, indeed, a storm of epic proportion, her effects on the lives of millions of people and the work their leaders: the senior meteorologist, the San Francisco air traffic director, the man responsible for power distribution in that part of California, the road manager charged with keeping the traffic moving on the Donner Pass across the Rockies (he fails) and various others, have to undertake to maintain the status quo, are described in detail.

There's unsurprisingly a lot of weather here, and also a bucket-full of morality teaching wartime America that random, apparently trivial, acts may have appalling consequences.  A loose plank falls off a truck and, coupled with slurry spillage, causes the death of a salesman a couple of days later. Boys shooting at electricity distribution poles have effects nearly as catastrophic; and again motorists ignoring warnings about snow chains are badly hit.

The underlying message is, 'Pay attention America, everything everyone does is important and there are people working hard to keep things going who really need your help'. 

But above this (in all senses of the word), is the storm itself representing near-global interconnectedness: 'We are not an island'.  Some say this is a message America has still to learn.

'Storm' by George R Stewart. In my Penguin edition, published 1944 - pp 310.

QUEEN VICTORIA - A LIFE OF CONTRADICTIONS by MATTHEW DENNISON

In Queen Victoria, A Life of Contradictions, Matthew Dennison has written a fine biography and one that, to my mind, sets a standard of succinct clarity that other writers, whether describing Queen Victoria or another major figure, will do well to match.

Almost inevitably, biographies of one of Britain's great queens tend to run to great size but by focusing on Victoria the individual rather than 'Victorian' with all the latter implies, Dennison has condensed his subject's life into barely more than 150 pages (excluding notes and bibliography) gaining narrative pace without missing key detail.  As one who wanted to know more about Victoria than received ideas of pageantry and pomp, Prince Albert and John Brown, without having to embark on a quest to cut through the thickets of Britain's nineteenth century domestic history and foreign policy, this is a book I have long been hoping for.

The story contains many surprises.  I had not known, for example, how influential Prince Albert (and indeed, Leopold, first King of the Belgians) were in British politics.  Indeed, Dennison comes close to arguing that the organization and direction of mid-nineteenth century British government was a construct of Albert's. Victoria, apparently, always saw herself formally as Queen of England but was happy, in that role, to allow Albert actively to influence policy.

Equally, I had not understood that even 150 years ago - despite the absence of instant mass communication - the prevailing mood of the population could reverse so quickly and completely in response to news.  The important example Dennison gives of this took place in the period some ten to 12 years after Albert's death in 1861 when the British were getting somewhat bored by Victoria's withdrawal from public life in the long period of mourning she never entirely relinquished.  She often refused to open parliament, which went down badly, and frequently withdrew to Scotland rather than undertake ceremonial.  One such withdrawal took place at a time when she was actually ill when, moreover, it became clear that the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) - not usually a popular figure himself - was dangerously ill at the same time.

As the news of Bertie's medical condition filtered out, the strength of support for the royal family regrew very rapidly and led to prayers across the land, supportive leaders in the press, crowds at Buckingham Palace awaiting news and a collective gasp of relief when it became clear that mother and son were going to recover.  While not going so far as to suggest that the Prince of Wales' illness saved Victoria's reign, Dennison certainly implies that without it, the great ceremonies and celebrations of, for example, the Golden and Diamond Jubilees would not have had the impact on the English psyche leading to the 'God is an Englishman' self-righteousness of the pre-WW1 years, that they did.

(Amusingly, the author tells us in a lighter moment that the phrase 'Diamond Jubilee' had to be minted fresh and there were other suggestions 'Jubilissimee' was one). 

The contradictions referred to in the title, were many.  As stated, Victoria was Queen with a capital 'Q' and British with a capital 'B' but had to be coerced into the public appearances the population craved but then she almost always enjoyed them when they did take place.  She was Queen but despite her good or bad relationships with her various Prime Ministers, she was not as much of a ruler as her advisers turn out to be. Again, she took advice in great things but dug her heels in when obstructed in a domestic or court setting - a characteristic that caused problems throughout her long reign.

Long reign, short book, excellent history.  

Queen Victoria, A Life of Contradictions published by  William Collins, 2013.  My edition on Kindle.        

   

MAIGRET IN COURT by GEORGES SIMENON

Chief Inspector Maigret of the Quai des Orfèvres is, the first and, I would argue, still one of the best of the series of tired yet effective police detectives now known to us in the form of Donna Leon's Commisario Brunetti (Venice), Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano (Sicily) and going back, Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen (Venice), Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse (Oxford) and the estimable Van der Walk (Amsterdam) authored by Nicolas Freeling. There is also, of course, a growing band of Scandinavian models.

The backdrop to the Maigret stories, the first eleven of which according to the bibliography I have in front of me, made an appearance in 1931, is usually although not inevitably Paris, and the regular themes include almost consistent pipe-smoking not undertaken quite as furiously as Holmes was apt to do in an earlier generation, lunch (and dinner) at home prepared by the laconic Madam Maigret, and the failures of the heating system at the Quai des Orfèvres frequently leading to heat in summer and no heat in winter.

Unlike some of his more modern police procedural counterparts, Maigret usually has the support of senior members of the police department and of the judiciary whenever his methods shift towards unorthodoxy and Maigret in Court is a case in point.

The story has an unusual structure.  It begins with a long session in court focused on Maigret's evidence taken in the course of investigating a double murder.  The accused is a quiet frame maker, the deceased his aunt and her young ward, the motive robbery.  Despite the fact the case appears straightforward, it slowly becomes clear that Maigret is unsatisfied and has, via earlier chats with prosecution and judge, gained the opportunity to introduce evidence that casts strong doubt on what, pre-trial looked to be an obvious - guilty - verdict.  And, indeed, the accused is acquitted but surprisingly doesn't look too pleased with the outcome.

The tale then moves into a phase of standard police procedure with a platoon of detectives following the principal characters, in Paris, outside Paris and in the south of France.

It is here that Simenon's genius as a writer of fiction (and not just detective fiction) is displayed.  To Maigret, the real solution of the case is fairly obvious and has been so since the beginning of the trial. However for the frame maker and the reader, the answer is slower to underline itself although the former moves to resolution much more quickly than the latter (at least this reader).

At the end, we find the solution was clear and had always been, given the attested facts.  There is no Poirot-like twist here, no last minute fresh evidence of the kind so frequently revealed by Perry Mason.  Simenon is more subtle and less dramatic and as the last page is turned, one is left with a sense of the inevitability of Greek drama where what begins with death must also, as 'the Kindly Ones' take a hand, end with death.

Maigret in Court, published in 1960, is not the best Maigret novel I have read nor is it the one that I would recommend as an introduction to the oeuvre.  It is, however, to be commended for its construction and moreover for the fact it is a clever take on an ancient narrative tradition.



Maigret in Court (Maigret aux Assises), first published 1960; my edition - Penguin 2005 (first Penguin pub 1965)       

A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY by SERGE AKSAKOV (Aksakoff)

I came across Aksakov courtesy of George Borrow, whose book Wild Wales, I had just finished in an early twentieth century OUP edition.  Listed in the back of the Borrow were other OUP offerings of the time including, in the autobiography section, Aksakov's Days of Childhood.  I had never heard of the man and was intrigued that an apparently major author should have entirely escaped my attention; not that I had not read him, there are many I haven't read more famous than he (Charlotte Bronte to name just one), but that I had never even heard the name. 

This gap in my literary knowledge is now partially remedied - I've read the first two volumes of autobiography and will shortly address the third - a memoir of the author's grandfather which was, I believe, the first of the family trilogy to be published.  Never mind, I now know more than I did and I am exasperated by what I have found.

Aksakov is one of those writers whose quality of recollection I find astonishing primarily, I suppose, because this isn't a characteristic I share.  He remembers and narrates not only minor incident after minor incident but also the emotional response they prompt and all this in provincial Russia at a time - in A Russian Schoolboy - when the war with Napoleon had just begun.

Not that Aksakov was either interested by or responsive to grand events.  The only 'major news story' mentioned in Days of Childhood was the death of Catherine the Great which took place when Serge was five.  Napoleon (and General Bagration) get a mention - more than one - in A Russian Schoolboy - but, as I said, they elicit little interest from the author.

To quote some lines from the end of the book: 

"The year 1807 began, Russia was now definitely at war with Napoleon.  A militia was enrolled for the first time in our history; young men crowded into the army, and some of the students, especially the pensioners, asked permission of the Government to leave the University for active service against the enemy; among these were my friend, Panayev, and his elder brother, Ivan, our lyric poet.  I blush to confess that I never thought at that time of 'rushing sword in hand, to join the fray; ..."    

Aksakov was no Tolstoy although I now gather he is at least a figure, some would say an important figure, in Russia's literary hierarchy; he does, however, share many characteristics with Proust - the high emotional response to minor events, being an extreme mummy's boy; a highly developed literary sense.  He does not, however, share Proust's extraordinary ability to describe, even to caricature family, relatives, servants and friends nor does he share Proust's sense of narrative structure.  Aksakov's book(s) is too linear, too formally chronological to the extent he apologizes on the few occasions when he goes off-piste off the timeline.

I mentioned exasperation.  There are many occasions in the book when you feel all young Aksakov needs to bring him 'up to snuff' is a good slap.  Massive enthusiasms: for fishing, shooting, butterfly collecting, acting - the next driving out the former with never a middle way.  Huge fears: of being clasped by the hands of a corpse, of crossing a river whether or not in spate, of being parted from his home in the provinces, and above all, of earning his mother's displeasure or being separated from her - these and illness are the dominant themes.

Particularly his mother, always his mother.  

I didn't like Aksakov's mother and I don't think he ever really saw her as she was.   She was as terrified of being parted from him as he from her (despite the presence of a little sister and latterly, three other children). She hates the country (which he loves - one of their few areas of difference) and refuses ever to take part in running a household preferring to dream of 'society' and, when it suits her (so it seems to the reader) being ill to enforce her purposes.

Aksakov's description of first going to school in Kazam makes the point far more easily than I can. He is clever, well-read for his age and thus, despite being incapable of any concept of mathematics, is sent away to school despite his mother's major misgivings.  He has his hair cut:

"When my father saw me, he laughed and said, 'Well, one would hardly know Seryozha again!'  But my mother, who had failed to recognize me at the first moment, threw up her hands, cried out, and fell fainting to the floor.  I cried out wildly and fell at her feet. ..."

He's to be a boarder but she visits every day, twice a day.  Finally mother is persuaded to go home and, very quickly, he becomes ill - some thought it was epilepsy but the modern reader would be more likely to diagnose some form of acute anxiety syndrome - so mother returns (and these journeys are not short).  And finally, after various Russian episodes of long cold runs on sleighs, crossing rivers with recalcitrant ferrymen and fighting with the school authorities, she takes Serge home and that's that for another year.


A Russian Schoolboy by Serge Aksakov, first English translation in 1917 (trans by JD Duff); my edition on Kindle.    

84, CHARING CROSS ROAD by HELENE HANFF

Helene Hanff's 1970 book, 84, Charing Cross Road is an epistolary gem.  The correspondence, which has since formed the basis of a film, is largely between the acerbic Hanff, a struggling and periodically successful scriptwriter (usually for TV) based in New York and Frank Doel, one of the senior employees of a bookshop, Marks & Co., of the Charing Cross Road.

Hanff is remarkably literate enjoying, indeed needing, those books that would have appeared on a list of the 100 books one should have read, a century ago.  She also wants good copies and as each appears, throws out books she perceives as either poor or worthless never, apparently, expanding her collection beyond the one set of bookshelves she has in her apartment.

The story is lifted by three elements - the jokey, aggressive style that Miss Hanff employs when writing to Marks & Co. and the slow development of confidence in reply that the naturally polite and somewhat nervous Doel adopts; the building of the transAtlantic friendship, still by letter, between Hanff and members of Doel's family as well as other inmates of the bookshop; and, over this, the background of America and England just after the Second World War epitomized by the plenty enjoyed by the former and the still rationed restrictions afflicting the latter - these are brought into sharp focus by the food parcels (and nylons) that Hanff sends across either as a thank you for a first edition John Henry Newman, or for birthdays, Christmas or to help celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.

84 Charing Cross Road is very short and though I've read it at least four times, it was only on the last occasion that I genuinely understood the timescale it covers.  Hanff sends her first letter on 5th October, 1949 and receives her last, twenty years later as London has moved into the Swinging Sixties.  Also a lot of the correspondence is missing, lost or has been edited out to create pace and, if the latter, very successfully.

A continuing theme is the often long gaps between Hanff's request for specific books and the ability of Marks & Co to supply them.  These result in some sharp rebukes from the New York side of the relationship:

"SLOTH:  i could ROT over here before you'd send me anything to read. i oughta run straight down to brentano's which i would if anything i wanted was in print."

or

"Dear Speed - You dizzy me rushing Leigh Hunt and the Vulgate over here whizbang like that. You probably don't realize it, but it's hardly more than two years since I ordered them. You keep going at this rate and you're gonna give yourself a heart attack."

on the other hand, when something fine turns up, the pleasure is palpable:

"The Newman arrived almost a week ago and I'm just beginning to recover. I keep it on the table with me all day, every now and then I stop typing and reach over and touch it. Not because it's a first edition; I just never saw a book so beautiful. I feel vaguely guilty about owning it."

But woe betide Marks & Co if an edition is not up to scratch:

"WHAT KIND OF A PEPYS' DIARY DO YOU CALL THIS?  this is not pepys' diary, this is some busybody editor's miserable collection of EXCERPTS from pepys' diary may he rot.  i could just spit."

Only Hanff appears in the inverted commas above primarily because her prose is that much more quotable.  The English side of the equation, however, does supply a fine balance and one which is accented by the building desire that Hanff has to visit Charing Cross Road and to see literary London, and of the Marks & Co. family to accommodate her.

The visit never takes place - there's always some reason, a move to a new apartment, the cost of dentistry - but, in reality one begins to get the impression that Hanff is fearful of having her illusions broken. Friends of hers visit, and report back with enthusiasm, but never the lady herself.  And then it's too late:

"Dear Miss.  I have just come across the letter you wrote to Mr Doel on the 30th of September last, and it is with great regret that I have to tell you that he passed away on Sunday the 22nd of December [1968]. ... He had been with the firm for over forty years and his passing came as a very great shock to Mr Cohen, particularly coming so soon after the death of Mr Marks. ... Do you still wish us to try to obtain the Austens for you?"

I'll leave the last words (coming from the book's penultimate letter), to Helene Hanff writing to an American friend of hers about to embark for London. For me, at least, this is tear-jerking stuff:

"But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he nodded and said: 'It's there'.

"Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Looking around the rug one thing's for sure: it's here.

"The blessed man who sold me all my books died a few months ago. And Mr Marks who owned the shop is dead. But Marks & Co. is still there. If you  happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much."

So do I.




84 Charing Cross Road, originally pub by Grossman, 1970.  My copy pub by Penguin, 97pp.