More Pleasures of Reading

[Pianorak]

. . . the vinteuil recommendations are in the post . . .

The Duke of G. by Aubrey Menen has now arrived. Sounds like my kind of author - in fact, have just ordered his The Prevalence of Witches.
PS. Does anybody else share my love of R.K. Narayan's novels?

[vinteuil]

Does anybody else share my love of R.K. Narayan's novels?

... Very much! - for a time, I lived in Madras - and reading RK Narayan and then visiting small towns in Tamil Nadu - Kerala - Karnataka - he so absolutely 'caught' that world. I fear if I re-read them now I might find them a bit sentimental - but I have such good memories of the best of them - 'The Guide', 'A Tiger for Malgudi', 'Waiting for the Mahatma'... They're all up in the attic somewhere, disintegrating as most Indian paperbacks do...

[amateur51]

My copy of All Trivia by Logan Pearsall Smith has arrived! A very slim vomume on very thin paper, all rather delightful.

And the prose style? - I'm giggling away here, he is rather special. I think I'm going to read this very slowly, sampling it like a bottle of Madeira

Many thanks vinteuil & french frank for revealing LPS to me & for finding me an affordable copy

[vinteuil]

On the ‘Performance’ Forum there is a recent thread “What music makes you cry?” – to which I starkly responded, “None”.
I am often moved by music, but never does it have the effect of literally provoking tears. However the other day I was reading the letters of Dr Johnson – and did indeed well up with these....


Honoured Madam,
The account which Miss gives me of your health pierces my heart. God comfort and preserve you and save you, for the sake of Jesus Christ.
I would have Miss read to you from time to time the Passion of our Saviour, and sometimes the sentences in the Communion Service, beginning ‘Come unto me, all ye that travel and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’.
I have just now read a physical book, which inclines me to think that a strong infusion of the bark would do you good. Do, dear mother, try it.
Pray, send me your blessing, and forgive all that I have done amiss to you. And whatever you would have done, and what debts you would have paid first, or anything else that you would direct, let Miss put it down; I shall endeavour to obey you.
I have got twelve guineas to send you, but unhappily am at a loss how to send it to-night. If I cannot send it to-night, it will come by the next post.
Pray, do not omit any thing mentioned in this letter: God bless you.
I am your dutiful son
Sam: Johnson
Jan. 13, 1759

Dear honoured Mother
Neither your condition nor your character make it fit for me to say much. You have been the best mother, and I believe the best woman in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and beg forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and all that I have omitted to do well. God grant you his Holy Spirit, and receive you to everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen. Lord Jesus receive your spirit. Amen.
I am, dear, dear mother, Your dutiful son,
Sam: Johnson
Jan. 20, 1759

[Pianorak]

Vinteuil: Many thanks for recommending The Duke of Gallodoro; certainly entertaining but perhaps lacking the easy flow of language of South Wind? The poor man's Norman Douglas? Reading the Menen book somehow called to mind the author of the following passage:

The House of Sin was, in its ways, splendid, and Frank took satisfaction in its richness without having a clear idea of its ugliness. The drawing-room, so silvery blue, so crammed with uncomfortable "Louis" furniture, relieved only by the fierce mahogany gloss of the Phonoliszt, and the portly Victrola, repository of great music, including several records by the man-god Caruso. The dining-room, battleground of two great indigestions - Aunt's manifesting itself in sternly repressed gas, and Grand'mère's in a recurrent biliousness. Neither lady ever thought of moderating her diet. "I can take cream," Aunt would say, as if many other luxuries were denied her; she took cream at every meal. "Oh, I shouldn't, but I'll venture," was what Grand'mère would say, as she helped herself to another slice of Victoria's superb pastry, usually manifesting itself as the casing of a sweet fruit pie. The dining-room, with its red velvety paper and its pictures of cardinals, seemed an outward enlargement of two outraged, overloaded stomachs. And then, Grand-père's study, so complex and tormented in its panelling, where much the most interesting books were his many albums of sun-pictures. A House of Sin? Certainly a house of vexations and disappointments, quite apart from those that plagued Francis.

[french frank]

On the ‘Performance’ Forum there is a recent thread “What music makes you cry?” – to which I starkly responded, “None”.
I am often moved by music, but never does it have the effect of literally provoking tears. However the other day I was reading the letters of Dr Johnson – and did indeed well up with these....

This isn't literature - it's from a newspaper cutting, but I can't read it without snivelling:

“In the early hours of November 20 Boksburg was anchored off Sollum when Lieut. Foster received instructions to proceed to sea and patrol the coast from Sollum to Ras Azzaz, the northernmost tip of the bulge above Sollum to search for an unidentified vessel in distress off Bardia. The position of the stricken vessel was not known.

“Foster set a course for the rocks near Sollum where he anticipated the vessel was. An hour after weighing anchor a rocket was seen a great distance to seaward. The ship’s head was turned to that bearing and all speed was made.

“Three hours afterwards the ship was sighted on the port bow. The crew of the vessel, which proved to be a landing craft, then fired tracer bullets to attract attention and signalled by lamp that they were sinking. A full gale was blowing, accompanied by a very heavy sea and a high swell. Half an hour later the landing craft was seen to roll over and foundered by the head about a mile away and some 35 miles north east of Bardia. On nearing the flotsam two men were seen on a small float and 18 were clinging to the wreckage.

“It was found impossible to cast a heaving line and consequently Sub-Lieut. G.J. Long and Leading Seaman P.O. Jacoby swam away with lines to the men in difficulties.

“All were helped aboard and no injury was sustained by any. It was found that one seaman was missing and a close search was made for him among the floating debris, but without result. The rescued personnel were then safely taken to Bardia.

“The commanding officer of the rescued vessel expressed the opinion that it was nothing sort of a miracle that Boksburg should have been directed to that particular spot where they were in distress in time to witness the sinking.”


The commanding officer was my father and I have a letter he wrote to two friends not long after.

“… Now the next thing is congratulations on your wedding anniversary. I don’t know how many you’ve scored so far but here’s hoping you reach the century. I’ll drink a toast to you on the 17th.

“I’ve had quite a chequered career during the last few months, but am unable to write much about it. I had five weeks in hospital, including Christmas, but am now very fit and well again. (By the way, that is just between ourselves as I haven’t said anything about it to my folks)…”

[vinteuil]

but I can't read it without snivelling

Yes - it's the (very English?) retenue which is so moving, both here and in the Johnson letters.

[amateur51]

#50 Pianorak ... this is the close friend of Samuel Marchbanks?

[Pianorak]

#50 Pianorak ... this is the close friend of Samuel Marchbanks?

It is indeed. Well done!

[vinteuil]

To cheer us up, as spring and summer still seem distant:

“I know in my own case how much the thought sustains me of my first visit to France after the war, so that I can be decontaminated from all the newspapers I have read, the unnecessary people I have met, the stupid things I have said and the woolly opinions I have held. I shall land at Bordeaux or La Rochelle and go first to the valley of the Dordogne, that beautiful temperate Romanesque corner of France where Montaigne came from, where in the Virgilian countryside white oxen move about the maize-fields, and where, in the oakwoods above, the edible truffle propagates itself, a connoisseur of geese and men. From there I will make my way over the Massif Central, across the heather and granite of the Margeride, and over the pine forests and volcanic cones of the high plateau of the Vivarais, to that extraordinary road which descends, by a little stream marked in huge letters, Ardèche, to the Rhone valley. Thence I shall take the Route Nationale Sept, unwinding like a black liquorice stick through the plane trees, to Aix-en-Provence, and then branch off over the Maures, through the chestnut forests and the cork woods, till by Saint-Tropez I reach the sea. There for several months I shall lie on the beach without moving, like a lump of driftwood, until I have regained what Rousseau called the “sensation of existence stripped of every other feeling which is in itself a precious sense of contentment and peace,” and without which we cannot develop the best that is in us, and then, when the cicadas are silent and the nights turn cold, it will be time to think of Paris.”

[vinteuil]

From the same author, this time from perhaps his best-known work –

“Peeling off the kilometres to the tune of ‘Blue Skies’, sizzling down the long back liquid reaches of Nationale Sept, the plane trees going sha-sha-sha through the open window, the windscreen yellowing with crushed midges, she with the Michelin beside me, a handkerchief binding her hair...

Early morning on the Mediterranean: bright air resinous with Aleppo pine, water spraying over the gleaming tarmac of the Route Nationale and darkly reflecting the spring-summer green of the planes; swifts wheeling round the oleander, waiters unpiling the wicker chairs and scrubbing the café tables; armfuls of carnations on the flower-stall, pyramids of lemon and aubergine, rascasses on the fishmonger’s slab goggling among the wine-dark urchins; smell of brioches from the bakers, sound of reed curtains jingling in the barber’s shop, clang of the tin kiosk opening for Le Petit Var. Our rope-soles warm up on the cobbles by the harbour where the Jean d’Agrève prepares for a trip to the Islands and the Annamese boy scrubs her brass. Now cooks from many yachts step ashore with their market-baskets, one-eyed cats scrounge among the fish-heads, while the hot sun refracts the dancing sea-glitter on the café awning, until the sea becomes a green gin-fizz of stillness in whose depth a quiver of sprats charges and counter-charges in the pleasure of fishes.”

[french frank]

Hmmmm, well, I've just discovered that Napoleon's 'routes impériales' were renamed 'routes nationales' in 1830. So it was written after that . Not ringing any other bells with me.

[amateur51]

“I know in my own case how much the thought sustains me of my first visit to France after the war, so that I can be decontaminated from all the newspapers I have read, the unnecessary people I have met, the stupid things I have said and the woolly opinions I have held."

For some reason, having read Trivia recently, this opinion of journalists & journaliism, reminded me of Logan Pearsall Smith.

But it's a lot later than LPS. LPS was a one-time mentor to Cyril Connolly who loved France.

I reckon it's Cyril Connolly.

[vinteuil]

I reckon it's Cyril Connolly.

Yep. The first quote was from 'French and English Cultural Relations', a lecture delivered to the Franco-Scottish House in Edinburgh under the auspices of the British Council, June 1943 (collected in The Condemned Playground, 1985); the second quote from The Unquiet Grave (by 'Palinurus'), 1944.

When I was working far away from Europe, these passages gave me shivers and yearnings of Euro-nostalgia...

[french frank]

Well done, am51! I read Enemies of Promise a long time ago, but it left little impression. Must try harder