What are you reading now?

[Don Basilio]

I think Borrow was typical of the High Anglicanism of the time - antagonistic towards "Popery" and derogatory towards the Nonconformists.e

I am often taken with writers who were once popular and have almost disappeared (eg Scott). I read Borrow’s four major books a few years ago and they are fascinating. But High Anglican? Certainly not. The Oxford Movement was in full swing and he would have had no sympathy. He was not so much critical of the Roman Church as positively demented – I seem to remember there is a bit in Wild Wales, which I can’t find, saying that with its idolatry it was a derivation of Hinduism. By contrast he is sympathetic to dissenters. And thank you Abe Books for old hardback Everyman editions.

[french frank]

By contrast he is sympathetic to dissenters.

Blast! - I shall have to look up my references, then . Was I confusing him with the antiquarian Benjamin Heath Malkin, whom I had also been reading recently? If you have any doubts about how he felt about the dissenting fraternity in Wales, I have an excerpt.

"I happened to arrive there, without any previous knowledge of the place or institution, about three o'clock on a Sunday, when a number of decently-dressed and well-behaved people were assembling, with whose manners on the outside their chapel I was well pleased; but the inside exhibited such a melancholy exhibition of fanatical fatuity, as, happily for the honour of the human intellect, is rarely to be met, but among these jumping enthusiasts."

But Borrow may have been either more circumspect or genuinely more respectful. I withdraw my original comment.

Add: Is this what you were thinking of?

"We went on: my companion took me over a stile behind the house which he had pointed out, and along a path through hazel coppices. After a little time I inquired whether there were any Papists in Llangollen.

“No,” said he, “there is not one of that family at Llangollen, but I believe there are some in Flintshire, at a place called Holywell, where there is a pool or fountain, the waters of which it is said they worship.”

“And so they do,” said I, “true to the old Indian superstition, of which their religion is nothing but a modification. The Indians and sepoys worship stocks and stones, and the river Ganges, and our Papists worship stocks and stones, holy wells and fountains.”

[french frank]

(2) And I find this, not an attack on Nonconformity itself, as on Nonconformists - and their attitude to the "church" (rather than his own to Nonconformists:

"And here I may as well relate the history of this cat previous to our arrival which I subsequently learned by bits and snatches. It had belonged to a previous vicar of Llangollen, and had been left behind at his departure. His successor brought with him dogs and cats, who, conceiving that the late vicar’s cat had no business at the vicarage, drove it forth to seek another home, which, however, it could not find. Almost all the people of the suburb were dissenters, as indeed were the generality of the people of Llangollen, and knowing the cat to be a church cat, not only would not harbour it, but did all they could to make it miserable; whilst the few who were not dissenters, would not receive it into their houses, either because they had cats of their own, or dogs, or did not want a cat, so that the cat had no home and was dreadfully persecuted by nine-tenths of the suburb.

"Oh, there never was a cat so persecuted as that poor Church of England animal, and solely on account of the opinions which it was supposed to have imbibed in the house of its late master, for I never could learn that the dissenters of the suburb, nor indeed of Llangollen in general, were in the habit of persecuting other cats; the cat was a Church of England cat, and that was enough: stone it, hang it, drown it! were the cries of almost everybody. If the workmen of the flannel factory, all of whom were Calvinistic-Methodists, chanced to get a glimpse of it in the road from the windows of the building, they would sally forth in a body, and with sticks, stones, or for want of other weapons, with clots of horse dung, of which there was always plenty on the road, would chase it up the high bank or perhaps over the Camlas; the inhabitants of a small street between our house and the factory leading from the road to the river, all of whom were dissenters, if they saw it moving about the perllan, into which their back windows looked, would shriek and hoot at it, and fling anything of no value, which came easily to hand, at the head or body of the ecclesiastical cat.

"The good woman of the house, who though a very excellent person, was a bitter dissenter, whenever she saw it upon her ground or heard it was there, would make after it, frequently attended by her maid Margaret, and her young son, a boy about nine years of age, both of whom hated the cat, and were always ready to attack it, either alone or in company, and no wonder, the maid being not only a dissenter, but a class teacher, and the boy not only a dissenter, but intended for the dissenting ministry."

[Bryn]

[Don Basilio]

Blast!

“And so they do,” said I, “true to the old Indian superstition, of which their religion is nothing but a modification. The Indians and sepoys worship stocks and stones, and the river Ganges, and our Papists worship stocks and stones, holy wells and fountains.”

That's the passage I couldn't find. While he certainly thinks the Welsh should go to the "Church of England" (sic) churches, he has a very sympathetic portrait of a Welsh itinerant evangelical preacher in Romany Rye (or p.ossibly Lavengro But at least he thinks they are Christians.

[LMcD]

Spooky coincidence: much of the plot of 'Slough House', the latest outing for Mick Herron's 'slow horses', revolves around the consequences of a shooting in Kazan.

[Petrushka]

Spooky coincidence: much of the plot of 'Slough House', the latest outing for Mick Herron's 'slow horses', revolves around the consequences of a shooting in Kazan.

This reminds me of another spooky coincidence, which, in another coincidence, took place 40 years ago tomorrow, May 13 1981.

I was in Birmingham for a concert in the Town Hall (Concertgebouw/Haitink) and was idly leafing through some paperback thrillers in a branch of W H Smith. One which caught my eye was a story concerning a plot to assassinate the Pope. I laughed at the implausibility of the plotline and put the book back on the shelf. About an hour or so later that afternoon, I was walking around Birmingham city centre when I spotted a newspaper seller's placard which read, in big bold letters: 'POPE SHOT'!

[Petrushka]

Currently re-reading 'Herbert von Karajan A Life in Music' by Richard Osborne.

[DracoM]

Novel by Graham Swift
BUT after 'A Perfect Spy' by J. Le Carre, which was to say the least, a real surprise.

[LMcD]

William Boyd: Trio

[Joseph K]

last night I started Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. Despite the fact that it was published in 2007 it still sounds very up-to-date - much more up-to-date now than would have been recognised in Britain at the time, I'd say - with its depiction of capitalists & the ruling class seeing disasters as opportunities to enrich themselves and their friends.

I finished this last night. Now onto Owen Jones's Establishment.

[Serial_Apologist]

Just now reading several books of poetry by people I know whenever the chance to spread out on the grass. It's funny to say "I know" because, from reading their poetry, I'm wondering just how true this is.

[french frank]

Barnaby Rudge - Dickens's other historical novel, though it seems to be more Dickens than history.

Interesting that, although Barnaby Rudge is based round the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780 that took place in the wake of the 1778 Papists Act, Dickens must have started his novel not long after the 1831 Bristol Riots against the Great Reform Bill, and he has a lot to say about mob action. It's intriguing that Barnaby, portrayed as a 'natural' or lad with learning difficulties, was accidentally swept up into the mob, to his mother's great distress, and became an ultra enthusiastic participant without ever fully understanding what any of it was about. He had something of a historical counterpart in the Bristol Riots in the figure of one Christopher Davies. He had emerged semi-inebriated from the ale-house and was similarly swept into the passing mob where he was then seen waving his umbrella in the air and shouting, "Pull down the churches and mend the roads with them."

Davies was subsequently arrested, charged with being one of the ringleaders and was one of four men sentenced to be hanged. The chaplain who spoke with him in the death cell reported that he was contrite and admitted that he had spent too much time in the ale-houses and had been a bad husband and father who fully deserved his fate. The stuff of novels …

Added info: I've just discovered that five men were sentenced to be hanged, but the fifth was reprieved as he was declared 'an idiot' - the word which is regularly used of Barnaby throughout the novel. Coincidence?

[Padraig]

I'm enjoying Actress by Anne Enright. Has anyone here read it?

[LMcD]

'The Secret Scripture' by Sebastian Barry.