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The Enchanted April
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The Enchanted April: a common reading and discussion?
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Yes Sixtine and I know one another from other listservs, face-book, and going years back I knew her aunt.Penelope Lively writes a "woman's sort of novel" and has won one Booker and been nominated for others. How it All Began reminded me of Miss Webster and Cherif by Patricia Dunckler. Here is Lively as described on wikipeda:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penelop...
With chapter nine, the point of view shifts again. It is now at last Mrs. Fisher's who has stand mostly opaque until then, except for the fact that she asked for references from her co-renters of the castle (that was back in London) when Mrs. Wilkins and Mrs. Arbuthnot visited her at her place out of deference and beause of "her stick" - she is handicapped by rheumatisms). Except for the fact that she arrived one day earlier before she was due and has ensured the best rooms of the castle. Except from the fact that she feels only natural to preside the meals at the head of the table and to pour tea and coffee at breakfast. (This pouring is always fascinating for a French person as tea is not as usual as it is in the UK - far from it! - but let us say that there may be tea for breakfast and tea in the afternoon with less fuss than in England).
We have glimpsed her past and now her rememberance of the past, of her childhood among the reat names of her past - and their more contempraary ones as she cited for her own references who would withstand her the Arshbishop of Canterbury, the President of the Royal Academy and the Governor of the Bank of England - all who "had known her when she was a child".
Mrs. Fisher now muses upon Mrs. Wilkins, definitely an "original to be curbed" who sees persons like Keats or sees through people, and upon Mrs. Arbuthnot who has the deplorable habit of answering a question by another question as if she wanted to overrule one. This was not the thing to do when one was young. And her musing proceeds to her past, her family, the poets and intellectuals (sorry for this term that is particularly French!!!!), The Past, and Great Names.
Mrs. Fisher is something of a snob but also a testimony of the Victorian and Edwardian times. Her way of life and her way of thinking are now outdated and she stands on her own terra firma that becomes more and more an island where she finds her alone.
These thoughts lead her to the hour of the luncheon.
When she arrives in the dining room she finds herself alone. She is quite shocked by the show of ill manners from "the originals" and fromLady Caroline. After a moment of waiting, she orders Francesca to serve her. This is a firm command.
Rose and Lottie arrive a little later without excusing themselves - bad manners again. No news from Lady Caroline.
"The originals" motion to look for her on the top garden where Scrap still lies resting. She would gladly be thought sleeping but as she cannot, she pretexts a headache for not comming in and joining the little party at lunch.
Rose and Lottie retreat tothe dining room where they have at last their meal - Mrs. Fisher has selfishly gone on eating -. They all discuss Lady Caroline's predicament that Lottie's refutes in all candour: Lady Caroline has no headache; she simply wishes to be left alone.
After lunch, we follow Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline, in chapter ten. Mrs. Fisher looks at her rooms for she has secured to herself the nicest bedroom, the nicest sitting room and part of the battlements althought she discovers that they could be shared by the originals through another entry she has overlooked. This is easily seen to and she has now a little personal "domaine" over which she will reign.
This is the opposite way of life and look over life that the other three characters practise: she encloses herself while the other "fling away" garments and habits more or less quickly. She also keeps close to her thoughts and heart her memories of the life that was. She is entranched in a strong castle that she creates mentally and physically - materially.
Scrap searches for a quiet place to herself too, but outside. The place she favoured earlier has been discovered by Rose and Lottie. She finds a sheletred spot in the upper garden and she rejoices in it.
However she smokes and alas cigarette smoke is guiding Mrs. Fisher to her nook. Remembering her beloved Browning, Thackeray and Tennyson (Mrs. Fisher seems to have had a long chilhood where she met almost all great names, almost all male), she looks down Lady Caroline and remembers her distrusts of beauty that Mr. Fisher did not seem to have shared.
Mrs. Fisher tries to induce Scrap into conversation and to get her to rest in bed. This leads Scrap to think about her parents who adore her and her whole life. She tells Mrs. Fisher thatshe has come to San Salvatore to come to conclusion of issues about her life. There is no great issue for Mrs. Fisher: Lady Caroline will marry and have children (Victorian morality) This is one point that she may consider says Scrap, but it is no conlusion.
Baffled and angry, Mrs. Fisher who has been also rebuked for her great friends goes away in a huff, from Charybde to Scylla as she finds Lottie and Rose in her sitting room. Lottie is even writing a letter with Mrs. Fisher's own pen.
This is a very fluid narrative with points of view changing swiftly and adroitely from character to another. It has something of a quality of colours than of drawing. I see it as an impressionist or fauvist sucession of paintings - I see it as the big room of the Nympheas in the musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, paintings making one great painting.It is full of subdued and sometimes wry humour while addressing essential issues of age, condition of women, culture, way of life, marriage, widowhood, money...
It stands well a re-reading.
I do like this book. Are you enjoying too?
Welcome Ellen! Please join us if you can? It is a small little reading place and, after all, April is a good month for reading this short dreamy novel. I have not yet read Penelope Lively, but thanks for the recommendation as I will definitely take a look at her books. Back to Elizabeth von Arnim!
We are keeping busy in this little group ! Already 57 posts! Tania, I hope you will give us your comments while we are reading, branching us to other points of view.
I am now at chapter fourteen, not moving much as I am engrossed in "The French Lieutenant's women and taking notes from an essay, "Intellectuals and the Masses". But today is holiday in France so I shall make progress with Gräffin von Arnim.
By the way, I have subscribed under a pseudonym: this is why Ellen calls me or talks about me as Sixtine which is my true name.
I'm a little late for this one, especially with the teaching and going to classes and I'm in two group reads; North and South on another Goodreads and The last man on my old Trollope listserv.I have to plan. So for example, after North and South ends, I could switch here. It seems what is wanted over on this Goodreads group is 19th century classics, which are often long, and by men. I mentioned Penelope Lively because it is the sort of book I long to try -- Quartet in Autumn. I'll try to read a chapter or so of Enchanted April tonight. I read it a long time ago and have seen the movie twice ....
Yes I like to use our real names for then we can better be friends.
Camille wrote: "In chapter 5, Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins arrive in Italy and more precisely in San Salvatore, under a pouring rain. It is the evening of the 31st of March and it is dark. Their fly leave them ..."A very gothic arrival in the darkness moving into the unknown surrounded by darkish strangers speaking an incomprehensible language. It is almost like some type of gateway into the unknown for these two ladies - a rebirth?
Camille wrote: "In chapter six, we are on the morrow and Lottie awakes from sleep inyo morning light. She enjoys the fact that she is alone in her bedroom and not with Mellersh. She luxuriates in her new freedom i..."Six
Such a delightful chapter! The author really allows us to get a feel for all four of the characters with masterful strokes of her pen. Besides, she really invokes such feeling of a sanctuary that they literally radiate from the pages of the book. Such peaceful and delightful reading - almost in the realm of poetry!
Lady Caroline invokes mystery in her beauty and inability to cause harm with looks and words. You are so right, Camille, it is a strange curse affecting her. At the same time she certainly is enchanting in terms of her background (who is she?). Or she she simply a symbol of an aristocrat that needs to reboot in a garden? Perhaps she is Elizabeth von Arnim herself returning to the garden sanctuary that she encountered when she first married? I wonder.....
Years ago I visited a friend of mine in Milano and she brought me to Lago Como. The book certainly brings back memories. Here are some images from the web. Von Arnim's descriptions fit these pretty well, don't you think?
Yes very much. Where they filmed the book tried to recreate a sweet version of this. I'm not sure where they filmed .I have a series of 8 acclaimed films from Miramax where the settings are so redolent of beautiful places in the British Isles, the Mediterranean sea.What I have to find out is how one goes about taking such trips. I've never done it by myself. My husband did all arranging so this is a totally unknown new experience for me. A friend has given me the name of a travel agent, and I think sometime this week I will contact this person to begin to try to find out.
Ellen wrote: "What I have to find out is how one goes about taking such trips. I've never done it by myself. My husband did all arranging so this is a totally unknown new experience for me. A friend has given me the name of a travel agent, and I think sometime this week I will contact this person to begin to try to find out. "What a wonderful idea, Ellen! A good agent would simply take care of it all and help you create an amazing journey & stay. Ah, temptress!
These photos do look beautiful, tempted to go there myself this summer, I was thinking of going to Italy anyway for a long weekend, but perhaps I'll make it a bit longer. I am putting the film on now and will look out in the credits to see if I can find out where it is filmed.
I loved the description of them arriving and their first day. They almost needed that arrival to fully feel the contrast of where they will be spending their month. It makes it seem even more wonderful.
It is interesting that this thread (currently) has 31 views but only 4 participants.....?
Thank you for endorsing the travel agent. First thing Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon. I've never taken a trip on my own in this way before, either small or large ones. I've visited friends, gone to conferences, and Jim, my husband, made travel and lodging arrangements for us. How he found them I don't know.I tried last night to read The Enchanted April, but it's a book too much.
Don't feel bad about just 4. Nowadays in my experience group reads on average have at most 4 regulars and a few occasional contributors.
You are right Ellen! A core of four goes a long way! Definitely! :)In regards to travel there must be tons of agents arranging group trips of this kind in the UK (you are close to London, right, if I recall a previous message correctly?). Word of mouth would be good, but there must be reviews somewhere. A group trip can be go both ways. Seems like some groups are in a hurry to always go somewhere, step out for a few hours and then keep going. I wouldn't like that. I would prefer a snail's pace travel group that stops for at least a few days (or ideally a week or more) at a few specific location. What kind of traveller are you, Ellen?
*dreams about Lake Como*
Chapter eleven continues the action initiated in chapter ten: Mrs Fisher rebukes the presence of Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot in the sitting room she has chosen for herself. She is outraged by their insolence in trespassing over her own privacy. By the fact that Mrs Wilkins is using her letter paper and her pen.Mrs Arbuthnot is ready for an unchristian fight but Lottie is now flooded by love gratuitely given by the place and she fininshes her letter to Mellersh (her husband) and whirls her friend out of the room with excuses to Mrs Fisher.
They go down toward the village, talking and thinking at the same time. Lottie has invited her husband to join her at San Salvatore in the letter she will post. Rose develops "unchristian" feelings - which are more un-church-doctrine feelings. And she yearns for her husband, knowing that would she invite him to come he would didmiss the invitation.
Reflections about marriage by both friends.
In chapter eleven, the afternoon has flown by and it is dinner time. All four protagonists are around the dinner table - all four together for the first time of the day.If we keep strictly to the action, we see that the onversation is mainly about the invitation by Mrs Wilkins of her husband to come and stay at San Salvatore. Where to lodge him? There is but one other free room remaining.
Mrs Fisher claims the right for all of them to invite someone if Mrs Wilkins does so. Therefore Mr Wilkins had better sleep in the spare bed in Mrs Wilkins' room. And she announces her wish to invite a friend of ours who will take the spare room - eventually.
But as always there are many undercurrents going under the conversation with shifts of points of view from character to character, showing their inner feelings.
These are worthy of discussion here.
The landscape makes me think of the whereabouts of La Spezia (where Shelley met his death: http://www.historyinanhour.com/2013/0...)I was lucky to stay there a few years ago during spring and I remember the early morning on the balcony of the hotel, with flowers cascading from the slopes of the Ligurian hills into the sea. A riot of flowers and colours. That was intoxicating and the place definitely had a influence over me after the greyness of a winter in Paris. I felt reborn in a way.
How do you put pictures here? I would gladly post some photos.
Camille wrote: "How do you put pictures here? I would gladly post some photos."Camille,
You need to use html code as well as know the URL of your image. Click on the (some html is ok) in the right corner of the reply box. Look at the information for img.
It will look like this but without the space after the <
< img src="URL">
Thank you, Haaze. :)
You're most welcome, Camille. HTML code is a bit archaic, but after a while one forgets and it is simply a tool. I guess languages overall can be like that?
Spezia is where Mary and Percy Shelley stayed too. Shelley gave her a hard life, and her babies died, but they were in beautiful surroundings :) I have to dream of such places.
La Spezia is where Shelley died. I was reminded of that while looking at the Mediterranean blue sea from my balcony.Languages are very odd. My native language is French but sometimes I turn to English to express emotions and feelings I cannot put into French - even in dreams.
Oh, that is beautifully put Camille. Sometimes I think that dreams are beyond languages..I never sense the language I speak in my dreams - just the meaning. But that is of course just my own perception.
Haaze wrote: "Oh, that is beautifully put Camille. Sometimes I think that dreams are beyond languages..I never sense the language I speak in my dreams - just the meaning. But that is of course just my own percep..."I sometimes dream in English or in another non native language - Italian, German and Spanish. I do not know why.
I love both French and Italian as ways to express thoughts that English seems not to accommodate. I have a book of poems to her cat by Elsa Morante where on one side of the page there is Italian and the other French. I enjoy reading these enormously. I like books with French on one side and Italian on the other. I have a few from when I was studying Italian. I have Jhumpa Lahiri's latest book, on learning Italian where there is Italian on one side and English on the other.I enjoy reading translations and translations studies too. This is not a common taste .... I enjoyed studying Latin even in school. I never got very far.
Camille wrote: "Anybody game to read and discuss The Enchanted April with me?"Yes, I have it in my bag of TBread. Have wanted to try a buddy read, not done so before?? Laura
Hi Laura. I'm afraid this is an old thread and we read this back in 2017. I have too much on myself, but if you can find someone to buddy read it with you, then you'd be able to use this thread.Good luck and I hope you enjoy it. It's one of my favourite books.
So - is anything happening on Virago Reads?
Nothing has happened on here since this discussion.
I haven't read Penelope Lively, but would like to try her one day, I have read some Barbara Pym, but not that one, (I don't think that title is published by Virago) but others of hers are).
I have now finished the book, but as I don't want to spoil it for anyone I'll wait for others to comment, I will say that I loved reading it again, and Thanks again Camille for suggesting it.
Happy reading! :-)