Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1957-8)

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1890 - 1960) is an epic Russian novel that takes place during the socialist revolution of 1905 and the years up to World War II. Philosophical and beautifully written, it is sometimes difficult to follow as it has a cast of thousands and everyone is known by about three or four different names. Ah! Russian novels!

Doctor Zhivago was first published in the West in 1957 but was banned in the Soviet Union. Pasternak won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958 'For his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition.'

Pasternak initially accepted the award but after a brutal denunciation by the Soviet regime he reluctantly renounced it. It was either that or be banished from the country he loved. It wasn’t until 1988, twenty-eight years after his death, that the book was published in Russia for the first time. From what I’ve read about the author, the book is partly autobiographical. 

Yuri Zhivago, the main character, is a physician and poet. Pasternak was born into an artistic family and had a classical education. He went on to study music and philosophy but gave them up to devote himself to poetry. Zhivago’s life reflected that of the author’s in his relationships with women also.

Zhivago was an intellectual and as such, an enemy of the people in the new Communist regime. In many ways he was a victim of the times: forcibly taken by the partisans to work in hospitals on the battlefields, he was removed without notice from his wife, Tonya, and young family, who could only guess at his whereabouts. Given an opportunity to escape his forced detention, he basically walked across Siberia to his old home but found his family had relocated. 

Throughout the novel there are threads of long-term friendships and a vast network of relationships that intertwine and separate throughout. One of these relationships was in the person of Lara whom Yuri had met when he was a boy and later on as he was working in the hospital in town. He had just begun a relationship with her before he was taken by the partisans and they came together again after his escape. He was a complex, sensitive man but his actions at times demonstrated a lack of moral feeling. Although at times he pined for knowledge of his wife and children, he didn’t make any great effort to find them. Zhivago’s internal world reflected his external circumstances:

'Everything established, settled, everything to do with home and order and the common round, has crumbled to dust and been swept away in the general upheaval and reorganisation of the whole of society...'

The author must have been a brave man to try to publish a book like this in Soviet Russia. It is certainly not a glowing account of the rise of the Soviet state. Yuri was at first an admirer of the Communist cause but that admiration dissipated as the book progressed:

‘...he found that he had only exchanged the old oppression of the tsarist state for the new, much harsher yoke of the revolutionary super-state.’

‘Revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track minds, men who are narrow-minded to the point of genius. They overturn the old order in a few hours or days … but for decades thereafter, for centuries, the spirit of narrowness which led to the upheaval is worshipped as holy.’

‘...it turns out that those who inspired the revolution aren’t at home in anything except change and turmoil: that’s their native element; they aren’t happy with anything that’s less than on a world scale.’

He was to ask himself later:

‘Was it possible that in one short moment of over-sensitive generosity he had allowed himself to been enslaved forever?’

Pasternak’s poetic ability shines through his writing so brilliantly that it was difficult to choose what to share here. He also digresses into much philosophical meandering but it is so well-written that I think it adds to the story. Some of these philosophical reflections reminded me of Tolstoy’s writing in Anna Karenina - actually, Tolstoy was a friend of Pasternak’s parents.

‘Marxism a science?...Marxism is not sufficiently master of itself to be a science. Science is more balanced. You talk about Marxism and objectivity. I don’t know of any teaching more self-centred and further from the facts than Marxism. Ordinarily, people are anxious to test their theories in practice, to learn from experience, but those who wield power are so anxious to establish the myth of their own infallibility that they turn their back on truth as squarely as they can. Politics mean nothing to me. I don’t like people who are indifferent to the truth.’

‘Men who are not free...always idealise their bondage.’

I loved this description:

‘Now the front is flooded with correspondents and journalists...linguistic graphomania and verbal incontinence.’ 

And this one:

‘Everything had changed suddenly - the tone, the moral climate; you didn’t know what to think, who to listen to. As if all your life you had been led by the hand like a small child and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself. There was no one around, neither family nor people whose judgement you respected. At such a time you felt the need to entrust yourself to something absolute - life or truth or beauty - of being ruled by it now that man-made rules had been discarded.’

‘How intense can be the longing to escape from the emptiness and dullness of human verbosity, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labour, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!’ 

‘There was something in common between events in the moral and the physical world, between disturbances near and far, on earth and in the sky.’

Pasternak was a master of simile and metaphor:

‘The gunfire had died away behind him. There, behind him was the east. There the sun had risen in a drift of mist and was peering dully through floating shadows, like a naked man through a cloud of steam at the baths.’

‘Grief had sharpened Yuri’s vision and quickened his perception a hundredfold. The very air surrounding him seemed unique. The evening breathed compassion like a friendly witness of all that had befallen him. As if there had never been such a dusk before and evening were falling now for the first time in order to console him in his loneliness and bereavement. As if the valley were not always girded by woods growing on the surrounding hills and facing away from the horizon, but the trees had only taken up their places now, rising out of the ground on purpose to offer their condolences.‘ 

An extract from Yuri’s diary in happier times with Tonya and her father who lived with them:

‘At the beginning, during the spring and summer, we had a very hard time. It was all we could do to struggle along. But now we can relax in the winter evenings...The women sew or knit, Alexander Alexandrovich or I read aloud...We read and re-read War and Peace, Eugene Onegin, and Pushkin’s other poems, and Russian translations of Stendhal’s Rouge et Noire, Dickens’s Take of Two Cities and Kleist’s short stories.’

At the end of Doctor Zhivago the Bezprizornaya, homeless children whose parents were killed in the civil war, are mentioned. There is an article here about this: 

My copy of Doctor Zhivago pictured above was published by Vintage in 2002 and was translated from the Russian by Max Hayward and Manya Harari in 1958. 

Linking to Back to the Classics 2020: 20th Century Classic

Nature Study in Australia: Winter

These are some of our recent nature gleanings. On a visit to a local park this very tame rabbit was having breakfast and remained totally oblivious to us and we were able to have an unplanned nature study observing him/her feeding.

 

We've used Nature Studies in Australia by William Gillies this year for studying Natural History in Australia and finished it the other week so now I'm reading The Wilderness by Amy Mack (1922) aloud. It's only 26 pages in length but it fits in nicely with the course from U of N. A free online version is available here.

 

Last week we had a walk down near the creek after quite a bit of rain. We have a waterfall that gives a spectacular display after a good amount of rain and this was the first time that these two had seen it like this. My granddaughter (who's nearly 3 yrs old) pointed to it and called it a shower. 

Here they are having a good splash in a puddle. My grandson (nearly 2 yrs of age) calls any body of water a puddle including the river we visited a couple of months ago.

Miss 15 yrs and I signed up to do the free University of Newcastle's Natural History Illustration course. Hails had already done it about 2 years ago and wanted to do it again so I joined her this time.

This is my rendition of an echidna. We usually see about one a year around our area and I sketched this from a photo as they don't hang around for very long and start to burrow if they sense people are near.

This was this week's lesson was about 'developing good observational skills and accurately recording every detail you see in front of you; looking at both positive & negative spaces, breaking down complex subjects into simplified shapes & depicting a three dimensional object on a two dimensional surface.'

This is my drawing from that:

 

And this is Hails' drawing of a fox and the stages she went through in doing it - yes, she leaves me for dead, but she is very encouraging and likes me drawing (well, trying to) with her. 

A wattle in bloom... a little earlier than usual

Some fungi after all the rain

We've seen some new birds on our birdfeeder or on the camellia trees nearby but haven't been able to identify them yet. Our lyrebird makes an appearance from time to time and today we saw a black cockatoo in a tree just up the road. and we've had our yearly sighting of an echidna.

Non-Fiction: Queen Victoria by Lucy Worsley (2018)

Victoria served as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 until her death in 1901, making her the longest serving monarch up until Queen Elizabeth II’s reign.
Lucy Worsley’s book uses letters, diaries, and other material to explore twenty-four days in Victoria’s life with insights into the era which was named after her.
Naturally, there has been a plethora of books written about Victoria and her reign with a wide range of opinion, speculation & gossip - some of it sympathetic and some not.
This book looks at Victoria’s life from her birth & childhood up until her death and shows her growth and development as a woman and a leader, her relationship to her husband Albert and their nine children, (she outlived three of them) and her interactions with various members of her staff and the government of the day.
When Victoria was still a baby, her father died of a fever leaving his wife, Victoire, in sole charge of their child. Unfortunately, as he was dying, he advised his wife to put her trust in his friend and servant, John Conroy, a trust that would cause much trouble later on as Conroy exerted his control over Victoire and Victoria.
As the years passed it became more probable that Victoria would one day sit on the throne and so her life was carefully regulated and controlled under the ‘System’ that Conroy devised for her.
Victoria and Albert met when she was sixteen but even though their meeting had been clearly arranged, she was resolved not to marry until she was twenty.
Three weeks after she turned eighteen William IV died and Victoria became Queen. Conroy had hoped to exert his power through Victoire as Regent in the likely event that William died before she came of age, but the king had hung on and now Victoria could rule in her own right. And Victoria rose to the occasion.
Pressure had been put on the queen to marry and at last she posed the question to Albert, as was her prerogative, and he accepted.

Victoria often used the third person to describe her actions as queen:

‘Had she been engaged to the Prince a year sooner,’ Victoria explained in later life, ‘she would have escaped many trials.’

Nine children were born to them and Albert took on many duties Victoria would normally would have done had she not had the responsibilities of motherhood.
Worsley portrays Albert as a bit of a controller with a hardened attitude in areas of royal business as opposed to Victoria, who she considered was more conciliatory by nature.
After the birth of their first child Victoria said that Albert’s care for her, ‘was more like a mother...’
Worsley observed that, 
‘The words ring true, but they were perhaps strange ones to use of a husband: a ‘mother,’ a ‘judicious’ nurse. In fact, Albert was infantilising his wife.’

Albert was also portrayed as very moralistic, almost prudish - characteristics that are often associated with the Victorian Era. He was also said to have been very exacting of his children and expected them to be studious, which Bertie, especially, did not live up to.

Albert’s untimely death, supposedly from Typhoid Fever, at the age of only 42 years was devastating to Victoria. Since their marriage she had come to depend more and more upon her husband’s involvement in ministerial affairs.
A decade of mourning followed for Victoria during which she was absent bodily from public life but now her wayward eldest son, Bertie, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of his father’s death, was almost at death’s door himself.
When Bertie unexpectedly pulled through his illness, Victoria emerged from her more isolated existence and began to ‘re-possess her power...She returned to her best self, the self she had lost in Albert, had begun.’

This was a good introduction to the life of Queen Victoria and I liked the ‘twenty-four day’ approach as it helped to give an overview of her life in general. The author presents Queen Victoria as a complex person with faults and eccentricities but also as a person who was affectionate and sympathetic. Her unusual pressurised upbringing prepared her in many ways for her future role but it also disadvantaged her in other aspects, and certainly didn’t help her in her role as a mother.
Victoria came to the throne at a time when society was less comfortable with women in power than the Tudors and Stuarts were with their queens, but her strength was to rule through influence rather than power.
According to the author, on the one hand Victoria was very socially conservative but on the other she was ‘tearing up the rule book for how to be female.’ (I don’t know if this is just a modern take on Victoria or not.)
Reading this book filled in many gaps for me regarding Queen Victoria and it did so in an engaging way. Worsley presents Victoria as a multifaceted woman about whom you could feel both sympathy and dislike. I thought it was awful how she basically treated her unmarried daughters as ladies in waiting and her expectation that her youngest daughter, Beatrice, would not marry but stay with her as scribe and general dogsbody was appalling. (Beatrice did eventually marry but only after she’d promised her mother that she and her very good-natured husband would live with the queen!)

‘In this book I have questioned, sometimes undermined, the story of Albert and Victoria’s endlessly, superbly, unquestionably happy marriage. But for Victoria, his charm had never failed. For her, the bewitchment of the ‘angel’ to whom she had proposed marriage sixty-one years previously at Windsor Castle still geld strong.’

Besides being a writer of history books Lucy Worsley is Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces and a presenter at the BBC.
The lovely floral cover image on my copy of the book is from the William Morris Gallery.
It has 509 pages which includes 75 pages of sources and notes.
Age recommendation: I was thinking this might be a good book for my 15 yr old but there are some sections I’d definitely skip. There is mature content in quite a few of the chapters that I wouldn’t consider suitable for that age.



Linking to the 2020 Non Fiction Challenge: History

Pilgrim’s Inn by Elizabeth Goudge (1948)

Pilgrim’s Inn (also published as The Herb of Grace) is the second book in the Eliot Family Trilogy. Its best to read it after The Bird in the Tree as most of the characters are introduced in the first book and the central theme continues into the second book. I read both books one after the other.

The Bird in the Tree introduces the Eliot family and the history of Lucilla, the matriarch of the family, who purchases the house at Damerosehay, which she intends to establish as an inheritance and a place of refuge and beauty for her grandchildren.
Lucilla had very noble intentions but when her beloved and favourite grandson, David, entered into a relationship that was the antithesis of all she had planned and hoped for, she took some matters into her own hands.
The Bird in the Tree has the rumblings of WWII in the background and ends with on a shaky note regarding this relationship. Pilgrim’s Inn picks up the pieces at the end of the war and continues to work through the ramifications of the various individual decisions.

What I liked about this book:

• The setting (the coastal area of eastern England) and the descriptions of the countryside
• The theme - a moral dilemma; the choice between feelings/emotions and duty
•       Goudge doesn't offer quick fixes. Her characters feel pain and hopelessness but there is always a redemptive pathway
• The sensitivity shown by the author to the effects of marital breakdown on children
• Goudge’s lovely reflective writing:

‘Hers was the unconscious tyranny of inexorable great expectations.’

‘She knew how worrying, even how agonising sometimes, the questions of grownups can be to children whose capacity for experience so far outstrips their capacity for talking about it. And in afterlife it it’s the other way round...adult and educated folks seemed to experience so little of any consequence and yet to say such a vast and wearisome amount about it.’

Some Characters:

Lucilla, a grandmother who was quite manipulative at times. Yes, she loved her family, but her actions were often quite selfish towards some of them, especially her unmarried daughter, Margaret. I cringed a few times to read how she advanced her own (noble as they were) plans. She was a praying woman but perhaps felt the Lord needed some help from her!

Hilary, the eldest of Lucilla’s five children - a bachelor and a parish priest - on the other hand, was not in any way manipulative. Placid, patient, wise, utterly unselfconscious, utterly happy, much loved and popular within his parish. He did know when to speak out and did so when the time came.

Annie-Laurie, a gifted young lady with a dark past and a secret she dare not disclose.

Nadine, a beautiful woman who made a decision to put duty before passion but is now faced with working this out in daily life.

‘In even the smallest of selfless decisions there is a liberation from self...’

David, a young, sensitive man devastated by loss and only capable of ‘tattered loving.’

'Till whatsoever star that guides my moving
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tattered loving,
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;
Till then not lift my head where thou mayest prove me.'
- William Shakespeare

Pilgrim’s Inn is a slow, worthwhile read; descriptive and thoughtful with a satisfying outcome. I haven’t yet read the last book in the trilogy but this one didn’t leave me with a sense of unfinished business so unless the book falls into my hands I probably won’t read it.
Or should I? Have you read the last book in this trilogy? I’d be interested to know whether it really adds anything more to the story.



Linking to 2020 Back to the Classics: Classic with a Place in the Title

Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai (2011)

Inside Out & Back Again is the chronicle of  a ten year old Vietnamese girl during 1975. Hà, her mother and her three older brothers live in Saigon. Her parents had come south just before the borders between North and South Vietnam had closed. Her father had been in the navy and was captured by the Communists while on a mission. It wasn’t known if he was dead or alive.
One day their father’s best friend, Uncle Son, visited them and said he could get them out of the country. The alley outside their back door would allow them to bypass the navy checkpoint and give them access to the port.

'I will not risk
fleeing with my children
on a rickety boat.

Would a navy ship
meet your approval?

As if the navy
would abandon its country?

There won’t be a South Vietnam
left to abandon.

You really believe
we can leave?

When the time comes,
this house is our bridge
to the sea.'

Two of Hà’s brothers don’t want to leave the country but their mother had lived in the North. She knew that her son at college would eventually be asked to leave; her younger son would come home from school chanting the slogans of Hồ Chí Minh and be rewarded for reporting everything that was said in the home to his teacher.

The family destroyed everything at home that could be used as evidence against their father and taking only necessary items, they boarded a ship. Two weeks later while they were at sea, there was a formal lowering of their flag as the commander announced that South Vietnam no longer existed.

Although Inside Out & Back Again is a work of fiction, it is based on the author’s own experience as a Vietnamese refugee. It is written in free form verse in short, crisp, ‘visual’ phrases which reflect the sound of the Vietnamese language. (Hà would have been thinking in Vietnamese and not English.)
I think the free verse works very well for this book. My teacher daughter gave me this book to read and said that she read it aloud to her 6th Grade class at school when studying immigration. The family in this book eventually settled in Alabama in the USA, as did the author, but their experiences, in many ways, mirror those of refugees who came to Australia.
Here are some ideas my daughter used with this book:

*  Mapped out Ha’s journey

*  Looked at literal and figurative language and used this to help us discuss the culture shock for the main character

*  Discussed what it would be like to view things that are normal to us from the perspective of someone seeing them for the first time (took photos of the classroom, what do you think your first impression would be?)

*  Annotated poems from the book

*  Performed poems

*  Wrote our own free verse poems

*  Looked at the history - push and pull factors of migration

*  Discussed racism and how people often treat people who are unfamiliar or “other” badly or dismiss them as inferior. How does this affect the main characters experiences? How might her experiences have been different without these attitudes?

Inside Out & Back Again was a 2012 Newbery Honor Book and is a very accessible book for younger readers to introduce them to the Vietnam War, immigration and free form poetry. Recommended for ages 9 to 12 years of age but interesting for older readers also.

A Foray into Some Modern Books

Lila by Marilynne Robinson (2014)

I’ve been interested in reading something by this author for some time but as I’m always cautious about more modern novels and am generally disappointed with them, I wasn’t prepared to buy a new copy. Fortunately, I found a copy of at a secondhand book sale and then I discovered that my local library has other books by Marilynne Robinson, which is wonderful as I enjoyed this book very much.
Lila was a neglected child who found her way into the heart of an itinerant worker. Doll was a single woman on the fringes of life who slept at Lila’s house most nights. One evening she came home and found the young child half asleep outside the house in the cold, after being kicked out because her family was sick of her crying. Doll picked her up, wrapped her in her shawl, went into the house where everyone was asleep, took her bundle of possessions and went out into the night.

‘Doll may have been the loneliest woman in the world, and she was the loneliest child, and there they were, the two of them together, keeping each other warm in the rain.’

From then on Doll kept on the move with Lila, always with the fear that Lila would be taken from her. After a time they they joined up with a group of itinerant families and travelled with them. These were good years with enough food, a sense of security, and a year of school for Lila.
But the Great Depression drew near and the good years came to an end. The itinerant work dwindled and Doll and Lila, left to fend for themselves, were separated.
Lila had a life of misery and ended up in a whorehouse at one stage. After escaping from that place she wandered the countryside until one day she found herself in a small town called Gilead and took shelter from the rain inside a church.
Lila is a beautifully told story that goes back and forward in time revealing the details of Lila’s life as the story progresses. This type of writing doesn’t always work well but the author uses it to great advantage. The flashback technique was also good at showing the fracturing of families and society in the impoverished years of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl times in the 1930’s. The storyline has an aura of mystery surrounding it and was a book I found difficult to set aside because it always had me guessing. Lila is someone you come to care about, especially as she comes to a watershed in her life where her choices will either make or destroy her. I kept hoping her fear wouldn’t keep her on the run.
A major theme in the book is trust and when Lila put aside the fear she had been brought up with and decided to walk into that church in Gilead she started on a pathway where she was to learn to trust.
Acceptance, love and an unusual romance were part of this.
Highly recommended and I am definitely going to read more of this author.


A Dangerous Language by Sulari Gentil (2017)

A Dangerous Language is the eighth book in Sulari Gentill’s Rowland Sinclair Mystery series. I’ve read all eight and each book in the series seems to get better than the last. This one took off from the start and was hard to put down so I read it very quickly.
As usual, the author weaves in Australian history, politics, culture, and news items from the 1930’s. Her writing is extremely well-researched and I really appreciate the Australian history I pick up effortlessly when I read her novels.
Rowland Sinclair and his three friends are embroiled yet again in the dangerous world of political intrigue; this time in Canberra, the nation’s newly developed capital, when a Communist agent is murdered on the steps of Parliament House. (‘Old Parliament House’ as it’s now known opened on 9 May 1927)
Rowland has volunteered to fly an international peace advocate from Fremantle to Melbourne where he is scheduled to speak but the right-wing militia responsible for the agent’s assassination are determined to stop him.
The predicaments and dangerous situations that Rowland and his three friends find themselves in this mystery series are definitely far-fetched but the writing is witty, fun and intelligent.
I’d recommend reading the books in order as many of the characters in previous books make a reappearance and they build on each other. The four main characters are also developed more fully as the series progresses and the longstanding interest that Rowland has for his friend, Edna, is a work in progress. I do wonder how long the author will string out this relationship! I think readers need some closure here and Edna & Rowland really have had plenty of time to get over their pasts and get their act together.
These books afford a unique presentation of our more local history and factional politics in a well done fictional setting.

Death in Holy Orders by P.D James (2001)

Death in Holy Orders by P.D. James is a sinister multiple murder mystery set in an Anglican Theological College on the East Anglican coast.
All through the book there is an underlying tension that keeps the reader in suspense as the murders seem unconnected and random. The author’s strength lies in her exploration of the psychological aspects of her characters and their inherent motives. These explorations open up a Pandora’s box and complicate the investigation process. Part of the enjoyment of James’ writing is the intellectual pursuit she engages the reader in, not to mention her excellent command of the written word.
In Death in Holy Orders, Commander Dalgleish returns to a place he frequented as a child (his father was a rector) and relives some of his boyhood experiences. We don’t often get personal insights into Dalgleish’s life and I always enjoy them when they are included. In this book Dalgleish also finds romance. His first wife had died in childbirth a number of years ago and he distanced himself emotionally.
The murders aren’t described in great detail but she always includes some (often bizarre) element of a s*xual nature. I don’t think these are necessarily gratuitous as James had seen the seamy side of life in her work in the forensic science department of the police force and later in the Criminal Policy Department. She also served as a magistrate in Middlesex and London and worked in the National Health Service and used her varied experience to help her write her books.

There are actually some likeable characters in this book. Sometimes James seems more than a little misanthropic but there was more nuance in the personalities here than in some of her other novels.
One scene was a lovely redemptive act that dealt with the acceptance of guilt in thought:

‘What was there about this place that forced him to confront the greater as well as the lesser lies? He had known she was in danger if death. He had hoped that she would die. He was in the eyes of his God...guilty of murder...How could he continue to minister to others, to preach the forgiveness of sins, when his own great sin was unacknowledged? How could he have stood up before that congregation tonight with this darkness in his soul?

He got out of bed and knelt, burying his head in his hands. It wasn’t necessary to search for the words; they came to him naturally, and with them came the promise of forgiveness and peace. ‘Lord be merciful to me, a sinner.’

Death in Holy Orders is well-written and engrossing crime mystery. It's of the best books I’ve read by this author and apart from the one or two scenes which may not sit well with some readers, I’d recommend it as a very interesting and complex murder mystery.

Character, Disposition & the Formation of Habits

Reading through Charlotte Mason’s second volume, Parents and Children, I was jolted by some ideas that weren’t new to me, but came as a bit of an epiphany this time around.
Even of you are only barely familiar with Charlotte Mason (CM) and her educational ideas, you probably know that habit formation is a cornerstone of her philosophy of education.
The ‘epiphany’ passages I read in Chapter 22 of Parents & Children (A Catechism of Educational Theory) look at how habits originate and how they may be corrected.

Some of the ideas discussed in this chapter are:

• That disposition, intellect, genius, come pretty much by nature.

• That character is an achievement, the one practical achievement possible to us for ourselves and for our children.

Character is the result of conduct.
We have ‘made’ ourselves by the thoughts we have allowed ourselves to think, by the words we have spoken, and by the things we have done.
How we behave (our conduct) has its origin in the way we habitually think. We are accustomed to think in a certain way and so we also act in a certain way.
The links between thought and conduct and the origin of these habits was where I sat up and took notice.

CM poses the question: What is the origin of these habits of thought and act? Her answer is that it is usually inherited disposition.

‘The man who is generous, obstinate, hot-tempered, devout, is so, on the whole, because that strain of character runs in the family.’

Inherited disposition becomes more obvious to us when we marry someone who has been brought up in a family that has a very different strain of character running through it than the one we have been brought up in.
An inherited disposition may not be apparent until circumstances force it to surface e.g. when faced with loss, success, or major change. This was something I experienced in my teen years when my parents’ marriage fell apart.
I became more inclined to be pessimistic in my thought life (this was something my Dad had difficulty with) so much so that a close friend told me at the time that my mind was ‘like a gloomy cave!’

When I read the above passages from ‘Parents & Children’ recently, it shone a light on the course my thoughts had been taking at the time. I had allowed some old patterns of thought to cloud my thinking and hijack my emotions. I was feeling that old pessimism again.
I’m always surprised at how slyly the wrong habits of thinking gain their power.
I’d been reading ‘Tapestry of Life: Devotions for the Unique Woman’ by Nancy Corbett Cole, a book my husband gave me in 1994 and which I’ve read quite a few times since. She talked about taking every thought captive and reminded me that, ‘Salvation is both instant and constant. We are instantly saved at the moment we believe, and continually saved as we let go of the old life, and live in the new.’

Oswald Chambers said that ‘Salvation is easy because it cost God so much, but the manifestation of it in my life is difficult.’ 

The habits of the old life need to be replaced by new habits. Thomas a Kempis said, 'One habit overcomes another one.' So we develop the opposite good habit to replace the one we want to get rid of.
Bad habits make us slaves but once we establish new habits they make mental tracks for us that support and enable us to go in the direction we really desire to follow.

Unhealthy habits and negative thinking also close our eyes to the love of God and create the perfect environment for disappointment & despair. Our minds become gloomy caves and we lose hope. We may think our circumstances will never change, second guess the decisions we’ve made in the past, or believe a whole lot of things conjured up by a faulty perspective.

Corrie ten Boom, a survivor of the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp in WWII, a woman who knew all about fear, pessimism and despair, gave this advice:

‘If we do not see as much as we need or want to see, then we must tell it to the Lord. He will heal our eyes so that we see that the love of God is far greater than anything else.’

Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey (1946)

Miss Pym’s mission in life had been to teach schoolgirls to speak French, which she had done for four years until her remaining parent died and left her two hundred and fifty pounds a year. Lucy supplemented her living by giving French lessons from time to time and spent her spare hours reading books on psychology. After reading thirty-seven volumes on the subject, she wrote a rebuttal  of what she considered was idiotic nonsense.
By chance her writing came to the attention of a publisher at a time when the intellectual world had tired of Freud and his ilk and, recognising the appeal that Lucy’s fresh approach to the area of psychology would have, he had her writing published.
Lucy Pym became an overnight bestseller and found herself in demand as a speaker. Life was comfortable, cultured, and pleasant.
A few months after her new found fame as an author, she received a letter from an old school friend, Henrietta, asking her to come and address her students at the Physical College where she was headmistress.
Initially her stay was only an overnight one but the young women enjoyed her company and urged her to stay longer and she did.

'Young in years a few of her acquaintances might be, but they were already bowed down with the weight of the world’s wrongs and their own importance. It was nice to meet a morning-of-the-world youngness for a change.'

'Why should she go back to London yet? What was there to take her back? Nothing and nobody. For the first time that fine, independent, cushioned, celebrated life of hers looked just a little bleak. A little narrow and inhuman. Could it be? Was there, perhaps, a lack of warmth in that existence she had been so content with?'

The crime doesn’t occur until the latter part of Miss Pym Disposes so most of the narrative is taken up with the relationships between the students and the various staff members at the College, their  personalities, and Lucy's interaction with them personally.
I really liked this character assessment of a staff member who couldn’t get beyond her own background and past disappointments. She was unable to clearly see things because of this. Her view was distorted or blurred - she had mental astigmatism.

‘...how can one reduce a mental astigmatism like that? She is quite honest about it, you see. She is one of the most honest persons I have ever met. She really ‘sees’ the thing like that...everything that is admirable and deserving, and thinks we are prejudiced and oppositious. How can one alter a thing like that?’

‘Up to a point she was shrewd and clear-minded, and beyond that she suffered from...’astigmatism’; and for mental astigmatism nothing could be done.’

There was a good bit of suspense throughout the book that has the reader waiting for some nasty crime to occur but it happens in a low key way so much of the 'action' is based on getting to know the various characters, and I enjoyed this aspect. Inspector Alan Grant isn’t a character in this story so it was up to Miss Pym to play amateur detective using her psychological insights to find a motive and a suspect.
Her investigations concluded, the crime atoned for, she is ready to return home when an surprise revelation reveals the true culprit.
As she gets in the taxi to return to London she makes a decision:

'...in London she would stay. In London was her own, safe, nice, calm, collected existence, and in future she would be content with it. She would even give up lecturing on psychology.
What did she know about psychology anyhow?
As a psychologist she was a first-rate teacher of French.'

Josephine Tey spent three years at a Physical Training College in Birmingham, England, herself, and one of the incidents from her life as a teacher is used in this novel. This was the only one of her crime novels that I hadn’t read so now I’m done (sniff!) I enjoyed this one; it is quite humorous in places but I did miss Inspector Grant.


Linking to Back to the Classics 2020: Classic With a Name in the Title

Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens: A Study of Selfishness

‘My main object in this story was, to exhibit in a variety of aspects the commonest of all the vices; to show how Selfishness propagates itself; and to what a grim giant it may grow, from small beginnings.’ 

This book isn’t one I’d planned to read & it’s not a Dickens’ title that had come to my attention at any time, but I saw it at a book sale and bought it because I hadn’t read anything by Dickens for a while.
It sat unread on my book shelves for some time until one night when I was considering which book I should start reading next but couldn’t make up my mind. I’d just finished The Lord of the Rings, which I’d put off for years (and found to my surprise that it was hard to put down) so when my eyes came upon Martin Chuzzlewit, I thought, ‘I’ll just read the first chapter and if I can’t get into it, I’ll choose something else.’
Well, I kept going and that was that. From memory, it usually takes me a few chapters to engage with Dickens so I was surprised at how quickly it happened with one of his books that doesn’t seem anywhere near as popular as many of his others.

Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4) first came out in monthly installments but unlike Dickens’ previous books, The Old Curiosity Shop, and even Barnaby Rudge, sales were low for various reasons: he had abstained from novel-writing for a time and this caused him to lose ground with the public; when he did return to publishing he released the chapters monthly as opposed to weekly, which was his previous practice; his reputation declined after the public’s disappointment with Barnaby Rudge.
After the poor reception of the first instalments of Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens decided to change some aspects of the story and set parts of it in America where he had recently spent some time. (He wrote a record of that journey in American Notes.)

Dickens himself considered Martin Chuzzlewit his best work and when it was published in book-form it proved to be one of his greatest successes.
Not only is Martin Chuzzlewit a study in selfishness, it also concerns itself with how suffering shapes character. Oswald Chambers said that ‘Sorrow burns up a great deal of shallowness, but it does not always make a man better’ and Dickens’ demonstrates the effects the same circumstances may work for better or worse in different people. Chambers also observed that if you yield in childhood to selfishness, you will find it the most enchaining tyranny on earth. Some of the characters in Martin Chuzzlewit never broke free of those chains.

Dickens’ satire on the Chuzzlewit family portrays ‘the poison of selfishness as transmitted within a family,’ and the ‘false notions of family grandeur and the parasites which they breed.’

As usual, there is a large cast of characters in the story but I thought there were many more likeable persons here compared to some of his other books and more redemptive aspects in the characters’ lives.
I really enjoyed the developing friendships between some of the young men. The loyalty and unselfish regard they had toward one another stood out in comparison to the opportunistic relationships in the greater Chuzzlewit family.

Some Notable Characters:

Martin Chuzzlewit: the young protagonist of the story; he had fallen out with his Grandfather, of the same name, who had brought him up, and now struck him out of his will. Martin junior was frank and generous by nature but his upbringing had allowed him to grow selfish. Circumstances opened his eyes to see others he had taken for granted and used.

‘How was it that this man who had had so few advantages, was so much better than he who had had so many?’

'Martin - for once in his life, at all events - sacrificed his own will and pleasure to the wishes of another, and consented with a fair grace. So travelling had done him that much good, already.'

Mr Pecksniff: an absolute hypocrite and selfish to the core. 

'He was a most exemplary man: fuller of virtuous precepts than a copy-book. Some people likened him to a direction post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there.

(His) detractors thought he bore a fanciful resemblance to his horse, not in his outward person but in his moral character - full of promise, but of no performance.
He was a kind of animal who infused into the breasts of strangers a lively sense of hope, and possessed all those who knew him better with a grim despair.’

His comment on seeing a beggar on the street: ‘If everyone were warm and well-fed, we should lose the satisfaction of admiring the fortitude with which certain conditions of men bear cold and hunger.'

Tom Pinch - unpretentious and noble-souled; his Grandmother had skimped and saved to allow him to enter Pecksniff’s service as a student of architecture after he had dazzled her with prospects of Tom’s happiness and advancement. ('Pecksniff’s genius lay in ensnaring parents and guardians, and pocketing premiums.') And poor Tom was completely take in by the man.

One of the characters who undergoes a transformation of character (but I won’t spoil the story by mentioning names):

‘I never thought at all; I had no thought, no heart, no care to find one; at that time. It has grown out of my trouble. I wouldn’t recall my trouble, such as it is and has been - and it is light in comparison with trials which hundreds of good people suffer every day, I know - I wouldn’t recall it tomorrow, if I could. It has been my friend, for without it no one could have changed me; nothing could have changed me.’

I agree with Dickens that Martin Chuzzlewit is one of his best stories and I highly recommend it.
Moozle, who is 15yrs of age and has never taken to Dickens (I think The Old Curiosity Shop turned her off!) was hunting for something to read and agreed to try MC after I said how I enjoyed it. I’m very happy to say that she actually liked it!!

Linking to the Back to the Classics Challenge 2020: 19th Century Classic 

The Lord of the Rings by J.R. Tolkien (1949)

I've just remedied the possibility that I was perhaps one of the few people on the planet who had never read (or even watched) the The Lord of the Rings (LOTR). I did read The Hobbit aloud to my daughter a few years ago and enjoyed that and it was my plan to read the LOTR some years ago after we bought a lovely boxed Folio edition but although I don't mind reading fantasy, I'm not a big enough fan of the genre to let it edge out other books I'd like to read.
The main reason I did actually start reading this about two months ago was because I knew I’d have more leisure to read an epic story with the coronavirus restrictions and also because my daughter-in-law was re-reading the trilogy and suggested we watch the movies at a later date. I always like to read a book before seeing the film version so that was the prod I needed.
I’m not even going to attempt a review of such a well-known book but I would like to share some general thoughts.

The LOTR comprises three books: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. They follow on from each other and were intended by the author to be one volume but for various reasons his publisher didn’t allow this.
Tolkien began writing LOTR soon after he’d finished writing The Hobbit and before its publication in 1937, but between his many other duties and pursuits as well as the outbreak of WWII, it wasn’t completed until 1949.

Tolkien created a whole new world with its own intricate history, peopled with diverse creatures: hobbits, elves, dwarves, wizards, orcs, trolls and men. While it was a sequel to The Hobbit, it became much more than that; it is darker, more challenging to read, and while some characters from The Hobbit re-appear and there are some similarities, LOTR is much more developed plot-wise. It is full of wisdom, mystery, humour, and many unlikely heroes.
Tolkien specifically said in the foreword to LOTR that he didn’t intend any inner meaning to the story and that he disliked allegory in all its manifestations. He preferred readers to use their own freedom of applicability (I'd interpret that as their 'moral imagination') rather than allowing the author's purpose to dominate.

Bilbo, the main character from The Hobbit, returned to his home in the Shire with a Ring in his possession. For many years he had kept this Ring safe and only his nephew, Frodo, and the wizard, Gandalf the Grey, knew about it and its power to make its wearer disappear.
One day Gandalf paid Bilbo a visit and was concerned to observe that the Ring seemed to have a strange power over his hobbit friend. Bilbo had been restless and planned to leave the Shire so Gandalf persuaded him to leave the Ring behind with Frodo when he did.
Years after Bilbo had departed, Gandalf had made a number of journeys investigating the history of the Ring, which was one of many that were forged in the distant past. During this time of Gandalf's absence, Frodo received strange tidings from dwarves and other travellers passing through the Shire and he grew increasingly restless. When Gandalf eventually returned to the Shire he was certain in the knowledge that Frodo’s Ring was The Ring of Power, the One that ruled over all others. He also brought news that the evil Lord Sauron of the Land of Mordor knew now that the Ring he presumed lost was to be found in the possession of a hobbit in the Shire.

'Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.'

Now that Frodo’s life was in danger, Gandalf urged him to leave the Shire and travel to Rivendell where the Elves dwelt. The Ring needed to be destroyed, that was understood, but Frodo did not want to be the one take it to Mordor and thought he could pass it on to another.

'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'

Frodo did not go alone as was originally intended but was accompanied by three hobbits: Sam, Merry and Perrin. Sam was Frodo’s gardener; simple, practical, a faithful companion, the most unlikely hero, and one of my favourite characters in the story.

On their way to Rivendell they met a character by the name of Strider, a Ranger of the North, a recluse and a wanderer, who was not who he seemed to be, but who nevertheless joined them in their journey.

'All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
the old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken;
The crownless again shall be king.'

Frodo gained Rivendell by the skin of his teeth in an unconscious state and awoke in a room with Gandalf beside him. A Council was held to decide on what should be done with the Ring and after much discussion, Frodo said, 'I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.'
The Company of the Ring was to be nine and the remainder of the story tells of the adventures, dangers, and disappointments of this Fellowship as they fought for Middle Earth against the spreading evil that threatened to overwhelm all they knew and cared about.

One of the major themes of the book is the examination of power and its effects on those who possess it.
The Master-ring that came into Frodo’s possession had the power to consume and control its possessor. Although it extended the life of the bearer, it burdened that life, stretching and straining it. A mortal who kept one of the Great Rings did not die, but merely continued and grew wearier. If he often used the Ring to make himself invisible, he faded and eventually became permanently invisible, and in the end was devoured by the dark power.

‘But where shall I find courage?’ asked Frodo. ‘That is what I chiefly need.’
‘Courage is found in unlikely places,’ said Gildor. ‘Be of good hope!’

The themes of courage, companionship, duty and loyalty running through the book are multilayered and inspiring.
Tolkien’s linguistic genius and the complexities of plot, may be appreciated more by mature readers and such is the descriptive power of Tolkien’s writing that it is difficult to believe that his imagined world: the Shire, Mordor and Gondor, didn’t actually exist.

For me it was an ideal read during the weeks of uncertainty with the virus lockdown and restrictions. There were many challenges and disappointments for the Fellowship but hope kept resurfacing and seemingly insignificant characters played major roles and helped turn the tide in many instances.

‘There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart if the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow. Frodo was neither fat nor very timid; indeed, though he did not know it, Bilbo (and Gandalf) had thought him the best hobbit in the Shire. He thought he had come to the end of his adventure, and a terrible end, but the thought hardened him. He found himself stiffening, as if for a final spring; he no longer felt limp like a helpless prey.’

‘Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.’

‘...we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.’

‘Don’t leave me behind!’ said Merry. ‘I have not been of much use yet; but I don’t want to be laid aside, like baggage to be called for when it’s all over.’

‘...it is best to love what you are fitted to love.’

'The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own.'

We watched the DVD’s over three evenings after I’d finished reading the trilogy and I annoyed everyone by saying, ‘That wasn’t in the book!’  However, I did enjoy watching them. My youngest also watched them for the first time although she’d read the books a couple of years ago and was waiting impatiently for me to hurry up and read them so we could watch together.

I think the story would be best appreciated by anyone aged 12 years and up, if they are a confident reader. It feels like it was written for around that age group in some respects but like any well written classic it has universal appeal. I don't know that I'd want to read this aloud with the plethora of names and places but it would be a great family read if you didn't mind wrapping your tongue around it all.
Graphic and detailed screen images are hard to put aside in order that your imagination may form its own, so I think it's important that the books be read before the movies. I feel that way with every book but this one more so!




Linking to Back to the Classics 2020: Adapted Classic

Notebooks in a Charlotte Mason Education - Year 6

Moon Jelly Aurelia aurita - common ocean animal often washed up on beaches. There's a video about them here.

Science Notebook 

This year Moozle has recorded experiments from some of her science books e.g. Archimedes and the Door of Science; The Sea Around Us; The Elements and The Mystery of the Periodic Table. The experiment below was one she watched via video on the Periodic Table:

Archimedes and the Door of Science

 The Sea Around Us

We had a severe storm with large hailstones about a week ago so we did a study on what causes hail and watched the short video below which explains it reasonably well. The hailstones were the largest we've experienced and made a tremendous racket as they hit the roof. They were about the size of eggs and we ended up with a smashed skylight and damaged pergola.

Nature Notebook

We've been using this series of videos on basic water colour techniques by John Muir and also some by Alphonso Dunn on using ink & watercolours to get some direction and help in this area. Moozle has also been inspired by the watercolouring in A Country Diary of an Edwardian Woman. I wrote a little about that here.

The Portuguese Man O' War or Bluebottle was mentioned in the fourth chapter of The Sea Around Us and around the same time as we were reading through that chapter, we went to the beach and there were heaps of them washed up on the sand. Moozle managed to get stung twice but fortunately, the bluebottles we get here are not the tropical nasties. The stings hurt but what hurt more was the bull ant bite she got a few days later out the back! I know because I got one on the under part of my foot and it was awful!
For an introductory video on recognising bluebottles and treating their sting see here. A marine-stinger fact sheet is here.

The Portuguese Man O' War is an interesting creature. It's not a true jellyfish but a colony of four different types of animals. My nature journal entry:

Bull Ant

We started a tree study earlier this month. So, of course, the best way to do that is to get up in the tree and have a good look.

Poetry Notebook