Jane Brocket's Blog, page 37

orlando

[Vita Sackville-West by E.O. Hoppé, 1916]

Looking around to see what others were reading, I was definitely out on a limb with Orlando, my choice of pool-side reading in Cascais; most of the women were reading Fifty Shades of Grey in various languages (the Portuguese translation was piled high in the supermarket). Yet there was more overlap than some might imagine, as this is the most corporeal of Virginia Woolf's novels, and it contains plenty of sex and sexual desire, plus a brilliant treatment of gender. Of course, it is done very differently to your average bonkbuster, but the erotic element is there for all to read.

I was predisposed to dislike Orlando. Sometimes a novel is picked up by the media and boiled down to a Daily Mail-style headline; Orlando's would be '400 year old publishes book, but questions about his/her gender remain'. I was put off by the fact that I knew too much about the relationship between VW and Vita Sackville-West which underpins the novel, the fantasy element, and the chattering about the Sally Potter film starring Tilda Swinton.

But I wrong. From the tongue-in-cheek preface on, it is funny, piercing, witty, and sparkling. I marked dozens of sections with 'gt' and '!' to indicate humour and my laughter. It's brilliant, rich, playful, extravagant, with gorgeous descriptions and fantastic flourishes. It sweeps and swoops through centuries of history and literature, with larger-than-life set pieces, charting the icy depths of despair and the burning fires of passion. It's all brilliance, emotion, energy and physical vigour mixed with cruelty and drama.  The book is worth reading for the early scenes on the frozen Thames alone, and it seems that VW, too, is having a marvellous time skating and skimming through time, gliding and pirouetting and doing literary leaps and twirls. Her enjoyment is palpable in her inventiveness, wildly imaginative storyline, and wonderful parodies. When looking for paintings to go with this post, I thought of Brueghel winter scenes and paintings of the London frost fairs, but nothing came close to the images VW creates in the book (and I'll never forget the image of the plaid-wrapped apple-seller frozen whole in the ice). 

Orlando still feels ultra-modern, with its challenge to traditional gender division and the whole question of sexuality, its freedom and fluidity, and its remarkable playing with time (Orlando spans centuries while in Mrs Dalloway one day spans a lifetime). VW also questions the conventions of biography, wondering how any biographer can truly tell the story of someone's life - it should be required reading for anyone writing about VW's own life.

It's clever and crammed with all VW's favourite themes and motifs: London and St Paul's, tea tables, textiles, flowers, lighthouses, boats, seas and rivers, feminism. There is a fabulous taking-apart of Victorian life and everything VW stood against, with a potted history of clutter and darkness that contrasts dramatically with her early C20 modernism and clarity. And if you look carefully, you'll find that the novel contains many of her artist's/writer's statements, and an articulation of her tenets and her guiding literary principles.

[Vita Sackville-West photographed by John Gay at Sissinghurst, 1948]

I was quite surprised at just how daring and baring the novel is. At the time of publication, it was something of a private joke, the details of which are now so well known that it's hard to read without thinking about the real-life characters involved. But it seems to me that it could have been quite scandalous (again, if it was published today, the red-tops would have a field day), and I was quite surprised that VW was prepared not only to reveal V S-W's private life, but also her own. Angela Carter described the book as a 'slobbering valentine to an aristocrat', and although I also have reservations about the hero/heroine worship, I still enjoyed it enormously. Plus, there is a brilliant ending. And I'm just beginning to realise how good VW was at endings. 

 

fields of gold

In the first ballot, I managed to get four tickets for the preliminary round of the men's 3m springboard diving. When I let it be known, I've never heard so many 'shotguns' being called at the same time. So yesterday evening, I sat with Tom, Alice and Phoebe in the gods of the Aquatics centre, feeling dizzy just watching a practice session on the 10m board, and soaking up the very noisy, good-humoured, unashamedly partisan atmosphere.  

The 3m diving competition is tough and brutal, and we saw evidence of major nerves, some mistimed dives, and one really horrible landing. But it's quite incredible what some people can do with their bodies in mid-air and at tremendous speed, and we were astounded by the really brilliant dives. (And I as write this, I keep jumping up and down to find out how Chris Mears is doing in this morning's semis...yes, he's through to the final. Lots of cheering here.)

We had a walk round the Olympic Park which is vast and, in places, soulless and very temporary-looking. The highlights are not the Orbit (top) which we didn't like at all, or the vast McDonald's, or the Aquatics Centre whose true style will only be revealed after the additional wings have been removed, but the landscaping and planting by the River Lea which runs through the park.

The meadows are stunning, filled with a huge mix of gloriously tall, bright, healthy annuals, and the American prairie plantings are wonderful. (More here by Tom Stuart-Smith.). Wandering along the redeveloped river was the best outdoors part of the day, and Tom couldn't understand why the paths here were almost empty while the huge, featureless, open spaces were packed and the queues for the Olympic Megastore endless. Without doubt, there should be a gold medal for these fields of gold.

And now we've all called 'shotgun' for a place on the settee for tonight's diving final.

cotton perlé

My favourite thread. Mostly cotton perlé 8 which is brilliant for hand stitching and quilting when you want visible, colourful stitches. Beautiful sheen, and lots of beautiful shades. I used to think of it as an old-fashioned, almost obsolete, thread, but now I realise how wrong I was. I buy mine from Delicate Stitches in Kentish Town (DMC) and Tikki in Kew (Finca). I've used lots of it in The Gentle Art of Stitching which is out next month.

 

many happy returns

Happy birthday, Lucy, my favourite reader. 

[11"/28cm diameter chocolate chip cookie made by Phoebe for Lucy who is 16 today]

guardian

I have an article in today's Guardian Weekend Magazine food special. Here's the link, but the printed version looks lovely as it contains many more wonderful illustrations.

tresses

Alice's tresses as seen in the evening sunlight as we cooked tea together.* She is my kitchen conspirator and consultant when it comes to savoury cooking as she loves spice and heat as much as I do, and is a patient stirrer and accurate taster. It also means we can stand together and discuss her hair colour and what she plans to do next. I'm in awe of her boldness and confidence (I'm a classic mouse); this is the toned-down version of the amazing beetroot/aubergine colour she had done for her birthday, and something new and different is coming up soon, I'm told.

[Lady Lilith Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1866-68),  a painting with a story]

Alice's really are tresses, like the vast lengths of rippling auburn hair that belonged to the 'stunners' painted by the Pre-Raphaelites. Rossetti has plenty of wonderful tresses in his paintings, and although her hair might fit in, thankfully Alice doesn't look as bored as they do (as Simon once said after seeing a roomful of Rossetti's women).

*We always have tea, and never, ever 'supper' (unless it's the bedtime cocoa and a biscuit sort). Although I now say lunch for what was dinner when I was growing up, tea is still tea and I like the fact that our three southern teenagers still ask 'what's for tea?' even though they've never lived in the north.

rays of sunshine

The past week's real and metaphorical sunshine:

A long weekend in Cascais. A wonderful, scenic train journey along the coast to have custard tarts in Belém, but not a great deal else apart from appreciating the sun and warmth, reading  Woolf (me) and Andrew Williams (Simon), lazing, eating sardines, trying some lovely regional wines. We also saw the Paula Rego paintings in the ultra-modern museum in Cascais. Unsettling stuff, amazing building. 

Moonrise Kingdom at the cinema. Wonderful palette, beautiful styling, very funny. Just a little too hectic towards the end, but for the most part beautifully modulated.

Look forward to getting a copy of Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton - an appropriately wet subject for this summer.

to the lighthouse

[Still Life of Pears and Everlasting Flowers c1945 Vanessa Bell. There is an orchard in TL with a pear tree, and of course the many flowers in the book have become everlasting.]

I'm not sure why Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse are so often bracketed together (shades of A level questions and comparing and contrasting Mrs Dalloway and Mrs Ramsay maybe?), when in fact they are completely different. Even as I was reading TL, I kept stopping to admire, to check with myself just how much I was enjoying the fineness of the writing, the limpidity of the prose, the beautiful wash of light that suffuses the book. It's a very different reading experience to Mrs D..

The increase in Virginia Woolf's confidence in her writing and style is plain to see throughout (even before you read the diary entries that correpsond to the period of writing which reveal how well TL flowed for her). And you also realise how funny she could be, how witty and waspish (why is the humour in this book so often not mentioned?). It made me wonder how different her other novels could have been if she'd not been quite so writerly and controlled, but had allowed greater creative freedom to the VW we see in the much looser, more natural diaries and letters (the VW we get good glimpses of here).

[Studland Beach c1912 Vanessa bell. This was VB's breakthrough work and the image I had in mind when reading about Lily Briscoe's painting.]

This is also a very painterly novel. The shapes, the light, the rooms, the positioning of people, objects, passages, events, are like a series of  modernist/post-Impressionist paintings.  There is coolness and rhythm to the whole, and yet the undercurrents are tremendous. I was also astounded by VW's clever handling of changes in points of view, and her wonderful - often funny - cinematic cutting, editing, and tracking shots.

[Sea Treasures (1952) Winifred Nicholson. No animal skull, but painted in Scotland, and how I imagine the collections of the Ramsay children.]

Lest this all sound too abstract, TL is also a brilliant portrait of a family with eight children, a mother who knits throughout, an eccentric and demanding father, and practical worries about greenhouse bills and serving food on time. VW depicts the pell-mell of fanily life brilliantly and I loved the unruly, energetic mob of teenagers who are like mice scurrying around the attic or birds netted in fruit cages when finally in bed. She is remarkably perceptive when it comes to children, their experience of the world and how it differs from the adults around them. (I must have read TL before because I remember that I'd been struck by the way VW knew that it's possible to read a book aloud to child and think about something completely different at the same time, as Mrs Ramsay does when she reads a fairy tale to James).

[The sitting room at Monk's House, a much visited empty room.]

I also found many echoes of Chekhov, whom VW read and admired. Like Chekhov, she brings together a group of people in a soon-to-be-ended idyll (eg the cherry orchard, here a last summer before war and deaths) and like Chekhov she shows how little they reveal consciously of their true selves and feelings, how much they reveal despite this, how gauche and clumsy they are, how maddening, and how quickly their moods can change. She is also unafraid of pauses, gaps, and the empty stage; Chekhov dared to have silence on stage in his famous 'pauses' and even to allow all the actors to leave, just as VW does in the 'Time Passes' section.

TL is a book about evanescence and permanence, the broad passage of time set against minutely observed moments. It is experimental but readable, sad but funny, controlled but fluid. It is my favourite VW novel so far.

epic scale 2

This year we have some epic hollyhocks in the garden. There are pale yellow, frilly peach, soft pink and cerise varieties which rise as high as eight or nine feet. The only minor problem is that they have appeared in the most unlikely places in front of doors and windows, blocking the path the back door, in the centre of the gravel. But I don't care; I am so delighted to have them, that I simply walk round them, and everyone else is so used to these oddities and my gardening follies that they barely notice them.

I think this is an epic year for self-seeding. All that moisture has allowed seeds to germinate and thrive and grow to spectacular heights, whereas in many years they often fall metaphorically to the wayside (as in the Parable of the Sower and the Seed which made such an impression on me when I was little and wanting to grow flowers). At Tom Stuart-Smith's garden in June I saw these incredible self-seeded lemon verbascums which weren't there last year.

I love the way they've just been left to grow, a valued free gift from nature. Walking through and around them reminded me of columns of Roman ruins that seem to stand in the middle of the path/street because the four walls are no longer there to keep the walker signposted which makes them seem randomly placed (plus they are often now on gravel or shale).

And last week I came across these epic self-seeded verbascums and stipa grasses (below) that have taken over the paths at the eccentrically brilliant Waltham Place (organic, biodynamic, phenomenally tolerant of weeds and self-seeding, glorious hollyhocks too).

 

These verbascums seem to create a more formal structure, like these ruins,

 

and the grasses made me think of lower level Roman ruins of walls.

(They must be great to walk through with bare legs.)

This really is self-seeding on an epic scale, and I'm all for it.

 

i dream

At least Boots sells 'Mediterranean Sea' nail varnish* to match my wishful thinking. And I should be grateful for the fact that we could put our feet up and read the papers outside yesterday evening.

*Actually, it's 'Dreamer' by Revlon. Perfect for this country, this summer.