Part Three: Anne Blanchfleur's Tale

[[deleted user]]

I keep wanting to put and e on the end of Blanch....e! Did anyone else notice that her two twins seemed to have different fathers? I think even Anne was surprised to realize that her son was really the offspring of her husband not her lover.

What do you think? Going out of town soon and don't want to miss this point!

[Barbara]

I also think her twins had different fathers. Maude was Denis the routier's son and Walter was Richard's son. I think that is why she felt so ambivalent to Maude, and so loved Walter.

This, plus the terrible guilt about Denis' death ( and her affair with him anyway) is what made her turn to drink and to be so melancholy all the rest of her life. And made her feel that she was responsible for her own mothers death too.

Though Anne was Martins daughter-in-law and no actual blood kin to him she seems to me to be very akin to him in other ways. Martin too was empty and bereaved and had no consolation of religion - nor did Anne.

Anne (and her father) seem to me to represent the death of the chivalrous ancien regime and, again like Martin, to being borne along into into the merchant age. But Martin was a man and could and did take up work and commerce etc . Anne, being raised only to be a lady, was lost. As was her father, raised only to be a knight and an honourable man.

Had her mother lived, I think it would have been different, Lady Blanchfleur was practical and could have fitted well into the new era. She even said, before Anne's marriage that she would rather Anne was marrying Martin, old as he was, rather than the doomed and delicate Richard

[[deleted user]]

Yes, I had heard of this happening but it took me awhile to get it in the book. Maude was so healthy and practical like her father. I know some people are genetically prone to get TB and I wonder if Walter was. TB especially likes to eat lots of iron I read in Survival of the Sickest if I remember right.

That is a good point about Lady Blanchfleur. I think you are onto something there that I had not thought about. Anne tried to be so tough but really wasn't.

[Barbara]

Canary Alice wrote: "I know some people are genetically prone to get TB and I wonder..."

Yes, I agree- definitely TB or something with a genetically prone aspect. I haven't thought this through yet, so I may be way off, but I wonder if NL meant the genetic weakness to be somehow symbolic? I can't remember now, whose line does the TB come from?

[[deleted user]]

page 14 of Survival of the Sickest (more about iron) - "Hemochromatosis is caused by a genetic mutation. It predates the plague of course. Recent research has suggested that it originated with the Vikings and was spread throughout Northen Europe as the Vikings colonized the European coastline. It may have originally evolved as a mechanism to minimized iron deficiencies in poorly nourished populations living in harsh environments.
(There isn't any iron in cod!)
So I believe Maude was blond? She may have had some Viking blood which gave her immunity to TB?




Survival of the Sickest A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need DiseaseSalt A World History

[[deleted user]]

page 15 - Survival of the Sickest -
Then, in 1347, the plague begins its march across Europe. People who have the hemochromatosis mutation are especially resistant to infection because of their iron-starved macrophages. So, though it will kill them decades later, they are much more likely than people without hemochromatosis to survive the plague, reproduce, and pass the mutation on to their children. In a population where most people don't survive until middle age, a genetic trait that will kill you when you get there but increases your change of arriving is - well, something to ask for. Survival of the Sickest A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease

When I lived in Suffolk a Viking ship was dug up in an estuary there. I am sure that coast line would have had many Viking descendants. Maude was probably one. Her mother may have been too.

[Werner]

My impression when I read the book was that a genetic weakness came from Magda's side of the family. One of the characters made a comment which suggested that, but I'll have to hunt for it, since I'm not sure just where it is in the book. Barbara's suggestion that Lofts intended some symbolism with this makes sense, IMO.

Would all of the information about TB and iron that's now known, and imparted in Survival of the Sickest, necessarily have been known when Lofts wrote The Town House? And even if it was, would she have been apt to know it, given her lack of medical training? That kind of question is often a consideration in applying modern knowledge to the interpretation of older novels and other literature.

[[deleted user]]

Yes, I would agree a genetic weakness came from Magda for the TB. I was surprised that NL knew that a woman could have twins which had two different fathers. That really amazed and surprised me and I wondered if it was about 30 years ago when there was that surprising case of the woman who had one black baby and one white baby and that was when it was really figured out that this could happen. Well, doctors have known on some level about hemochromatosis for ages as they used to bleed people which saved the lives of many people who have it but of course they didn't know the things that have been learned today about microbes wanting to eat iron and that some really prefer a high iron diet. I have absolutely no medical training but I do read these type of books. I wonder if she did also but we will probably never know. I do feel she was very interested in genetics. I feel this most of all in her book I Met A Gypsy in which she traces a line down thru the centuries in which a family has strong gypsy blood which gives them....precognition? I think that is the right word. When I was reading Mary Stewart she also bought up this trait quite a bit but I don't recall her ever connecting it to gypsies. It was like a knowledge of things that a person shouldn't be able to know on any ordinary level. I am very amazed by NL which is one reason she is my favorite author.

[Barbara]

Thanks Werner, Magda's line for the possible TB inheritance. NL never actually says Magda is gypsy does she? - although it is certain that she is very different from the general run of people. And I guess the tabourine etc suggests gypsy . But she is described almost as if she were semi-oriental . The cheekbones etc and skin the 'colour of porridge' - not the thin brown faced gypsy you'd generally think of. Or at least that I would think of, in the North of England where I came from, gypsies, and they were not that uncommon , were dark and small and brown skinned. We all then believed that the term 'gypsy' was a corruption of 'Egyptian' and that they were a remnant of one of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel via Egypt.
We too accepted that they had 'second sight'.

Alice, is your idea of Maude as having Viking blood to do with it coming via both her parents ? -if we accept that Denis the Routier was her father that is. He was of Flemish descent and might have had Viking ancestry. Blanchfleurs, I assume, came with Norman Conquest,so may very well have had Viking ancestry.

( excuse my digression , but I very likely have Viking inheritance myself, my surname, Hoyland , is a place in Yorkshire , well known for it's invasion history . Anyplace in the UK with Hoy as a prefix does, I understand. Plus Hoyland with dots over the o is a common Norwegian name . End of dogression Sorry,couldn't resist)

I don't think NL or any ordinay person living and working in the forties and fifties would have had access to any of the technical stuff on illness etc that you supplied. I think NL had rather, an artistic/familial/historical view of inheritance and the passing down of gifts etc

[[deleted user]]

Very interesting about gypsies Barbara. I thought of them as dark but never really knew how they actually looked. I did happen to pick up a romance novel a few months back that was totally focused on Romanies near some island in the south of France with horses and it was very detailed about their life and habits. I never thought of Magda as oriental. That presents a whole new viewpoint. I thought gypsies came from Romania via India! I had heard that idea about Egyptian but never believed that. I still believe they have second sight altho I have never met one! LOL!

Actually, I thought Maude's "Viking" blood was probably from her father. Altho her mother probably has some it was probably very weak. I am sure I have some "Viking" blood. One thing that got me in Suffolk was the very curly hair I encountered there which I had as a small child. (leapin' lizards! as hubby says..Little Orphan Annie) I was always plagued about it and then when I saw it commmon in Suffolk I thought my ancestors must be from that area. That is very interesting about your name. I would be very proud to have Viking ancestry but not everyone is as I knew a realtor who got embarrassed when I asked her about her name. I didn't know that about Yorkshire, thanks for that info.

Well, NL must have known that twins could have different fathers. That is not something the average person knows about.

[Werner]

I think the most explicit suggestion that Magda is a gypsy comes from Pert Tom, when Agnes tells him about the cooked hedgehog, and he says "Thass real Romany... out of Pharaoh's Egypt, some say." She also has a gypsy name.

A very informative book on Rom culture is Jan Yoors' The Gypsies, based on his close first-hand contact, as a child and young man, with a traveling community of gypsies in Europe between the World Wars. While gypsies are traditionally a very superstitious people, they don't actually have the precognition or fortune-telling skills they're often reputed to have. Some of them do, however, take advantage of that reputation to make money from the "Gajo" (non-Rom) population, using skilled observation and psychological deduction to divine facts about their customers and guess what they want to hear. They don't consider this unethical; what they tell their customers often does the latter some good, even if it isn't really magically-derived. :-)

[[deleted user]]

Ah, the hedgehog! I had forgotten about her cooking hedgehogs. I always wanted to see one when I lived in Suffolk but never did. The woman in the English Patient loved them. I finally got to pet one a few months ago. It curled up in a ball as it was scared of me. It was at a fair and it had ms!! They were collecting money for ms and that is why it was there. So cute! I wouldn't want to eat one but I am sure Magda had to eat whatever she could get.

That is very interesting that gypsies do not have fortunte telling ability. The book I read about them was more about their ability with horses. Wish I could think of the title of it.

[Barbara]

Werner wrote: "says "Thass real Romany... out of Pharaoh's Egypt, some say." ..."
Ah yes, so he does. Interesting the Egypt thing, just as we believed in the North of England too.
I am now just into Nicholas Freeman, one of NL's nasty pieces of work , the embittered, somewhat sadistic sort. I would have posted a more intellectually significant comment except that my already fragile and elderly copy of the Town House suffered a drenching and has exploded to the size of a loaf of bread, with much the same consistency . I have it out in the sun as we speak.........

[[deleted user]]

Oh Barbara so sorry that happened to your book. Hope its OK now? That happened to a bird book of mine while we were traveling and it seems ok now as I put it on the dash in the baking sun. I bought another bird book while traveling partly as I saw a burrowing owl.

Nicholas was sure cold and calculating. I was so happy when he got his "surprise".

What should we read next? Should we continue on with the house trilogy?

[Werner]

I wouldn't be averse to seeing a discussion next month of the second book in the trilogy, The House at Old Vine, if the rest of you want to have one; it seems like a natural continuation of this past month's group read. Alice, now that you're back, you'll be able to lead that discussion yourself, but I've read the book and will gladly throw in comments, here and there as I can. :-)

[[deleted user]]

Sounds good to me Werner! I was reading it right after I finished the Town House but am currently reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle which is kinda depressing so far. I will have to feel lots better but hope to get back into The House at Old Vine.

Your thoughts on these books is very interesting so I appreciate it.

[Barbara]

Werner wrote: "I wouldn't be averse to seeing a discussion next month of the second book in the trilogy, The House at Old Vine, if the rest of you want to have one; ..."

Yes please, raring to go ....