Tombe la neige Source: Le portail anti-crise

Joyeux Noël à tous !!!

Santa Claus will very soon be at our doorstep or should I say up on the roof, ready to drop precious little presents into our chimney, ‘wee surprises’ as Iain and Margaret would say . Why not read or re-read some good Scottish Christmas stories while waiting for him?

Storytelling has always been very popular in Scotland and indeed the country has given birth to some of the greatest storytellers: Sir Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson first come to my mind but there are so many others…

George Mackay Brown being my favourite storyteller, I’ve chosen him to illustrate my purpose. He wrote a number of Christmas stories, some of them being very thrilling ghost stories which I’m particularly fond of. Most of these stories were first published in the newspapers in very attractive Christmas special issues. Some of them have been collected in Winter Tales. The two book covers I’ve inserted below are quite expressive of the contents of this marvellous book which I intend to re-read during Christmas holidays:

Winter Tales George Mackay Brown Flamingo 1996

Light and darkness are common themes in these tales, which all have a fireside ambience.

It is easy to imagine Mackay Brown… enthralling all before him as the peat crackles and another bottle of malt is broached.

(Sunday Express)

It was in winter that the islanders gathered round the hearth fire to listen to the stories (…)

Going over tales I’ve written during the last decade or so, I was not too surprised to see that many of them are calendar tales, that yield their best treasure in midwinter when the barns are full.

The mystery of light out of darkness has been with us since the builders of Maeshowe five thousand years ago. The Celtic missionaries gave the mystery breadth and depth.

I like to think I am part of that tradition.

(George Mackay Brown - Winter Tales)

I am a raving fan of gorgeous book cover designs as those of Winter Tales,  for example, and I always like to anticipate my reading on catching a glance at the contents of a book even before buying it. Below is the contents of Winter Tales :

•  Foreword
• The Paraffin Lamp (first published in Hydro Electric Magazine – 1975)
• Lieutenant Bligh and Two Midshipmen
• The Laird’s Son (1989 in The Scotsman )
• The Children’s Feast (1989 in The Tablet)
  
• A Crusader’s Christmas
• The Lost Sheep (1990 in The Tablet)
  
• A Boy’s Calendar (1990 in The Scotsman )
• The Woodcarver (1991 in The Scotsman )
• Three Old Men (1991 in The Tablet)
  
• Ikey (1992  in The Scotsman)
• A Nativity Tale (1992 in The Tablet)
  
• Dancey
• Shell Story (1993 in Xanadu, USA)
  
• The Architect (1993 in  The Scotsman)
• St Christopher (1993 in  The Tablet)
  
• The Sons of Upland Farm (1994 in the Daily Telegraph)
  
• The Road to Emmaus
• The Fight in the Plough and Ox

Winter Tales George Mackay Brown Polygon 2006

Winter Tales is a superb collection of tender and compassionate tales, focusing on light and darkness, winter and its festivals,

by one of the greatest story-tellers of the twentieth century.

Through a variety of characters from shipwrecked Scandinavians to an Edinburgh gentleman,

George Mackay Brown looks at the impact of new ways of thinking on the traditional way of life of Orkney.

(From the back cover of  Winter Tales  Polygon 2006 )

Christmas Crime Stories The Folio Society London 2004

In my Folio Edition of Christmas Crime Stories I’ve found The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (L’escarboucle bleue, in French), written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This story was first published in Strand Magazine in January 1892.

Below is the summary I’ve found in Wikipedia:

“Watson visits his friend Holmes at Christmas time and finds him contemplating a battered old hat, brought to him by the commissionaire Peterson after it and a Christmas goose had been dropped by a man in a scuffle with some street ruffians. Peterson takes the goose home to eat it, but comes back later with a carbuncle. His wife has found it in the bird’s crop (throat). Holmes makes some interesting deductions concerning the owner of the hat from simple observations of its condition, conclusions amply confirmed when an advertisement for the owner produces the man himself: Henry Baker.

Holmes cannot resist such an intriguing mystery, and he and Watson set out across the city to determine exactly how the jewel, stolen from the Countess of Morcar during her stay at a hotel, wound up in a goose’s crop. The man who dropped the goose, Mr. Henry Baker, clearly has no knowledge of the crime, but he gives Holmes valuable information, eventually leading him to the conclusive stage of his investigation, at Covent Garden. There, a salesman named Breckinridge gets angry with Holmes, complaining about all the people who have pestered him about geese sold recently to the landlord of the Alpha Inn. Clearly, someone else knows that the carbuncle was in a goose and is looking for the bird.
James Ryder imploring Holmes’ mercy

Holmes expects that he will have to visit the goose supplier in Brixton, but it will not be necessary: The other “pesterer” that the salesman mentioned shows up right then, a cringing little man named James Ryder whom Holmes prevails upon to tell the whole sordid story, by first mentioning that Ryder is probably looking for a goose with a black bar on its tail, a remarkable bird that “[laid] an egg after it was dead”. Of course, Holmes has already deduced most of it.

Ryder, believing he was being pursued for the theft, fed the carbuncle to a goose being bred by his sister Maggie Oakshott. He was to have that goose as a gift, but lost track of which one it was.

Thus, when Ryder cut open the goose and found no gem, he went back to his sister, who had provided the Alpha Inn geese, and asked if there was more than one goose that had a black bar on its tail. She said there were two, but he was too late: she had sold them all to Breckinridge at Covent Garden. Breckinridge already sold the geese to the Alpha Inn, and the other goose with a black bar on its tail found its way to Henry Baker as his Christmas fowl. Ryder and his accomplice — the countess’s maid, Catherine Cusack — contrived to disguise the crime to frame John Horner, a plumber who worked at the same hotel as Ryder and had previously been imprisoned for robbery.

Holmes, however, does not take the standard action against the man, it being Christmas, and concluding that arresting the clearly anguished Ryder will only make him into a more hardened criminal later. Ryder flees to the continent and Horner will be freed as the case against him will collapse without Ryder’s perjured testimony. Holmes remarks that he is not retained by the police to remedy their deficiencies.”

You can read the whole story on Gutenberg website=>  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1661/1661-h/1661-h.htm#7

Christmas Crime Stories The Folio Society London 2004 Michael Foreman Illustration for Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

It is, I think, much more likely that Henry Baker is an absolutely innocent man,

who had no idea that the bird which he was carrying was of considerably more value than if it were made of solid gold.

(Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle)

I would like to end this Christmas post on one of the most remarkable stories I’ve ever heard about.  It’s a mystery story but also a true story, the kind of story that can only happen in Scotland . It took place in Edinburgh, the Unesco City of Literature, the very place which gave birth to Sir Conan Doyle, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Luis Stevenson…

Edinburgh mystery sculpture 1 Source Edinburgh City of Literature website

Just try to imagine: since the month of March 2011 where the first sculpture had been dropped on the doorstep of The Scottish Poetry Library,  seven beautiful and very elaborate book sculptures have been left all across the City of Literature by an anonymous artist, all wearing the same tag with the words  “in support of libraries, books, words, ideas.”

I invite you to read the whole story on the Edinburgh City of Literature website. George Mackay Brown would certainly have found this story ‘marvellous’ and written about it in the Orcadian .

Ian Rankin and Edinburgh mystery sculpture Source Edinburgh City of Literature website

‘Ian Rankin, ex-board member of the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust, drops in to marvel at the sculpture that was left for them.’

Edinburgh mystery sculpture 2 Source Edinburgh City of Literature website

Isn’t that an extraordinary story to enjoy at Christmas, an opportunity to rejoice at the end of a year which has given us so many occasions to be sad and last but not least, in our never ending quest, an invitation to discover more about Scotland and its amazing capital, Edinburgh, the UNESCO City of Literature…

Happy Christmas to everybody!

A bientôt.

Mairiuna

Edinburgh Festival Fringe Information 180 High Street © 2006 Scotiana

Hi everybody,

We don’t live in Edinburgh and, as the number of our visits there happen to be rather limited, our vision of this fascinating city owes much to our readings, each of them adding its little touch to the sense of place we got there and making us still more eager to go back to the beautiful Scottish capital.

From even before the times when it was nicknamed ‘Auld Reekie’, Edinburgh has been a great source of inspiration for poets and novelists. The Literary Traveller in Edinburgh by Allan Foster and The Edinburgh Literary Companion by Andrew Lownie are among my favourite books about this town and they can be very helpful to begin a literary tour of the first UNESCO City of Literature.

But is there a better way to discover the hidden face of Edinburgh than to follow on the steps of the many authors who have written about it and in so unforgettable pages, each one in his own manner? Today we’ll follow Alexander McCall Smith as he is one of the most popular contemporary Scottish writers. This writer was born in Zimbabwe but he has studied, taught and worked in Edinburgh where he is living now.  His ’44 Scotland Street’ and ‘Sunday Philosophy Club’ series are set in Edinburgh. I’ve discovered this author recently and I like him very much. As I’ve already mentioned it, in one of my last posts about this author, the reading of Alexander McCall Smith’s books makes me relax, smile, laugh and think. Last but not least, there’s that ‘gentle touch’ in his books that makes you feel better

I’m now reading Espresso Tales, re-reading 44 Scotland Street (paying more attention to details) and, with Janice, we’re reading together The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. We intend to read each of the many books of Alexander McCall Smith’s series and we’ve even begun to  listen to Corduroy Mansions , the first episode of his ‘London series’ which is published on The Telegraph (not easy to reach the 1st episode… for there are many of them already!)

The Literary Traveller in Edinburgh Allan Foster Mainstream Publishing 2005

Scotland Street is an unassuming New Town street which does not quite possess the class of Heriot Row or Abercromby Place. Nevertheless, it is the setting for one of Edinburgh’s most famous fictional  addresses: no. 44 Scotland Street (the street exists but no.44 does not). This celebrity status is due to Alexander McCall Smith’s daily novel of the same name which appeared in The Scotsman during 2004. (…) By the way, not only is no. 44 Scotland Street fictitious, but its residents are too, so if you’re after the blood of Bruce, the vain surveyor, you’ll have to vent your wrath on someone else.

(The Literary Traveller in Edinburgh – ‘New Town’ – Allan Foster – 2005)

I like the design of the book cover of Allan Foster’s The Literary Traveller, with its literary mosaic focusing on some of the most popular writers who are linked, one way or other, with Edinburgh. You can recognize, beginning from the upper left side of the cover and between several images of bookshops and one of the emblematic Literary Museum’s sign: Alexander McCall Smith, JK Rowling, Clarindas’ Tea room linked with Robert Burns, Sherlock Holmes’s statue, Ian Rankin, Irvine Welsh, Stevenson and Walter Scott. All these authors are of course on our reading lists, especially Sir Walter Scott, Louis Stevenson, Ian Rankin and Conan Doyle

The Edinburgh Literary Companion Andrew Lownie front cover Polygon 2005

Leading north off Drummond Place is Scotland Street, described by Alexander McCall Smith in his novel 44 Scotland Street (2005) as lying ‘on the edge of the Bohemian part of the Edinburgh New Town, the part where lawyers and accountants were outnumbered – just – by others’.

Inspired by Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City and originally a serial novel in The Scotsman, 44 Scotland Street centres on the lives of a range of characters living at this fictional address. There are numerous episodes set around the New town, most particularly in the Cumberland Bar in nearby Cumberland Street, and in various Edinburgh institutions such as Valvona & Crolla (an Italian delicatessen at the top of Leith Walk), Jenners tea-room, Sandy Bell’s bar and the Braid Hills Hotel – a favourite of Miss Jean Brodie – with walk on-parts given to a number of well-known Edinburgh residents such as Ian Rankin. (…)

(The Edinburgh Literary Companion Andrew Lownie  Polygon 2005)

It is interesting to note that Alexander McCall Smith had just published 44 Scotland Street (2005) when the Literary Traveller in Edinburgh and The Edinburgh Literary Companion were published in 2005.

The Edinburgh Literary Guide Andrew Lownie front cover Canongate Press 1992

He didn’t appear in the edition of Andrew Lownie’s The Edinburgh Literary Guide, very beautifully illustrated by Richard Demarco, published in 1992. Alexander McCall Smith became popular with his detective novel The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency which was the first volume of Mma Ramotswe series which takes place in Botswana.

Alexander McCall Smith 44 Scotland Street front cover Polygon 2005

I’m reading the paperback edition of 44 Scotland Street but I wanted to have a first edition of the book, with its beautiful cover, so it’s with great pleasure that I received it a few days ago. I was very happy to discover the illustrations all along the book and still more when I discovered that there was two  maps of Edinburgh inside the covers of Alexander Smith’s novel.

Alexander McCall Smith 44 Scotland Street 2005 Hardcover Polygon Edition Illustrations © Iain McIntosh 2005

Here they are!  What a pity they don’t appear in the more recent editions of the book. They’re quite helpful, especially when you don’t know very well the city which takes so big a part in Alexander McCall Smith’s book.

Alexander McCall Smith 44 Scotland Street 2005 Hardcover Polygon Edition Illustrations © Iain McIntosh 2005

This hardcover edition also contains a number of nice illustrations in it. Some of them are reproduced on the map pages, as you can see. I would just add another one which I like particularly. Here it is:

Alexander McCall Smith 44 Scotland Street Cyril the dog Polygon and Abacus editions 2005

Cyril, the dog with the golden teeth! He’s one of my favourite characters with his master Angus and Domenica

I’ve just mentioned the ‘gentle touch’. The passages about Cyril the dog and the relationship between master and dog have it. These are marvellous pages, full of humour and tenderness. To describe them as he does, Alexander McCall Smith surely does love animals (see also the description of the white cows of Mma Ramotswe’s father, in ‘The No.1 Ladies’ Detective’ series).

Now, I would end this post on a passage which moved me to the heart when I read it. It is situated at the beginning of chapter 86 entitled  ‘On the Subject of Dogs’. It reads:

“On the subject of dogs,” said Angus Lordie, taking a sip of his whisky, “I’ve just discovered the most marvellous book. I came across it quite by chance - The Difficulty of Being a Dog. It’s by a French writer, Roger Grenier, who was a publisher apparently. He knew everybody – Camus, Sartre,Yourcenar – all of them, and he had a wonderful dog called Ulysse. The French title was Les larmes d’Ulysse, The Tears of Ulysses, which was rather better, in my view, than the one they used in English. But there we are. You don’t know it, by any chance?’

Oh YES I do know this marvellous little book and the very name of it rings a very touching bell, I can tell you. I happen to fall on Les larmes d’Ulysse,  in 2000, in particularly sad times, just a few days after losing our dear dog. In Le rosier de Ralph,  my ‘In Memoriam’ little book devoted to our friend, I wrote the incredible story which happened to me that day when I got out from a big supermarket with only that book in my hands to read it on a bench… I could not read my book then but, when I got out of the supermarket with Les larmes d’Ulysse and a feeling of gratitude to the gypsy boys I had just met, I didn’t wept any more but I  smiled…

The difficulty of Being a Dog by Roger Grenier - The University of Chicago Press 2002

Les larmes d'Ulysse Roger Grenier Folio 1998

Many dogs are named Ulysses. But Ulysses’s own dog was named Argos. He waited for his master in less comfortable surroundings than Penelope’s. When the ever prudent King of Ithaca finally set foot on his island, he disguised himself with Athena’s help. And still Argos recognized him.

‘Now with his master gone he lay there, castaway, on piles of dung from mules and cattle, heaps collecting out before the gates till Ulysses’ serving-men could cart it off to manure the king’s estates. Infested with ticks, half-dead from neglect, here lay the hound, old Argos. But the moment he sensed Ulysses standing by, he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped, though he had no strength to drag himself an inch toward his master. Ulysses glanced to the side and flicked away a tear…’

During Ulysses’ long exile, Poseidon had persecuted the Greek hero with the vindictive spirit for which the gods are known. Poseidon made Ulysses weep. But now that the traveler was home, it was his old dog who had the power to make him shed a tear.

(The Difficulty of Being a Dog - Roger Grenier – The University of Chicago Press 2002)

How I fell on Les larmes d’Ulysse, I still wonder…

But we don’t find books, they find us, don’t they?

Bonne lecture!

A bientôt. Mairiuna

Ralph on 'Le chemin de Ralph' près de L'Eau Bourde à Cestas - Août 1998 © 1998 Scotiana

First, let me tell you that I absolutely fell in love with Arnold Lobel’s illustration “Books to the Ceiling” that we can see inside your post: “First Steps in Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street… Very original rendering of a house full of books!

As we are both great book lovers, no wonder this charming illustration depicting a stylized cat reading a book gave me such an “emotional kick”

Whiskers & Rhymes Arnold Lobel

Second, I thought it would be fun, to follow your steps in the colorful presentation of the 44 Scotland Street series written by the popular Scottish author, Alexander McCall Smith, and showcase other book covers that I have on my bookshelf.

The runners-up for the series, ‘No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series’ are:

Book Covers From Alexander McCall Smith 'No1 Ladies' Detective Series'

Cover Artist for the first book in the series, ‘The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ is designer Barrie Tullet. Photograph by Sandy Grant.

Cover Artist for the fourth book in the series, ‘The Kalahari Typing School For Men’ is designer Stuart Midgley. Photograph by L.H. Grant.

Cover Artist for the sixth book in the series, ‘In The Company of Cheerful Ladies’ are designers Barrie Tullett and James Hutchison. Top photography is from Karen Duthie/Alamy, while the clothesline photo is under by Xing Productions and L.H. Grant copyright.

From the French version of this same series, I happen to have these two books:

Published by Editions 10/18 in the collection grands détectives,  ‘Vague à l’âme au Botswana’  (2004)  is the translation of ‘Morality For Beautiful Girls’ and  ‘Mma Ramotswe détective’  (2003)  is the translation of  ‘No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’.

If I’m not mistaking Mairiuna, I think you have different book covers as well?  Was there not a dragon depicted on one of them?

Alexander McCall Smith Mma Ramotswe detective Editions 10-18 collection 'Grands Détectives' 2003

Mairiuna:  Not a dragon, Janice, but a crocodile .  YES it’s an African crocodile and one which does ring a bell, doesn’t it? Or should I say that it rings a clock for it seems to have swallowed up one like the crocodile in Peter Pan, the famous book by JM Barrie

Alexander McCall Smith The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency back cover Abacus 2008

Alexander McCall Smith The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency front cover Abacus 2008

I like this kind of colourful and naive illustration which we can see on the Abacus English and 10-18 French editions. The artist is Hannah Firmin.

In 2004 she won Best Book Cover of the Year at the British Book Awards for her cover of Alexander Mccall Smith book ‘The No.1 Ladies’ Detective’ series. She also illustrated the covers for the rest of this series.

Below is a mosaic of the first eight volumes of ‘The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ series.

'The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency' - Inner front cover - Abacus 2008 Edition

Eleven out of the twelve book covers of the series are designed with the same attractive, naive and colorful style.

Just for the pleasure of the eyes, I will add them below:

Janice:  Thanks so much Mairiuna for sharing these gorgeous book covers! Wow…what a treat!

Now, let’s take a look at the ‘Sunday Philosophy Club‘ series.

Below is the 2005 English version dust jacket of  ‘Friends, Lovers, Chocolate’ novel, alongside the 2006 French version book cover of  ‘Amis, amants, chocolat’.

It is very interesting to notice that book covers differ depending from which country they are published. Would be nice to research all countries publication.

Well Mairiuna, I guess we shall wrap it up here or else we’ll still be uploading book covers when the dawn breaks!

Enjoy all!

Talk soon.

Janice

"Books to the Ceiling" illustration Arnold Lobel Whiskers & Rhymes Greenwillow Books 1985

Books to the ceiling, books to the sky.
My piles of books are a mile high.
How I love them!
How I need them!

(Arnold Lobel – Whiskers & Rhyme)

Hi everybody!

The little corner of my library devoted to Alexander McCall Smith’s books is beginning to become crowded. As I’ve mentioned in my last post, Alexander McCall Smith is a very prolific author, generally adding one title each year to each of his four series.

Twelve volumes have been published since 1998 in the ‘No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series’, Alexander McCall Smith’s first series which takes place in Bostwana. This series, with Mma Ramotswe as the very colourful central character, is extremely popular. I’ve read the first volume, some time ago, and I liked it very well. Of course, I intend to read it again and I will also read the eleven following volumes. It will be reading ”by the fireside’ this time … la ‘lecture au coin du feu’

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party Alexander McCall Smith Pantheon Books 2011

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party Alexander McCall Smith Little Brown 2011

The last volume of ‘The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ is The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party. It was  published on March 3rd 2011

44 Scotland Street Alexander McCall Smith Edition 10-18 2007

Seven volumes have been published since 2005 in the ’44 Scotland Street series’ (published dailyin The Scotsman in 2004). The last volume of the series, Bertie Plays The Blues , has just been published in August 2011, a few days ago, but I’m still six books away from this title and I wonder how long it will take to me to arrive there…

Alexander McCall Smith Bertie Plays the BluesPolygon An Imprint of Birlinn Limited 2011

I do like the cover of Bertie Plays the Blues. It’s the second one which focuses on Bertie, one of the most lovely characters of the novel

Alexander McCall Smith The World According to Bertie 2007

As most readers, I like very much Bertie… the gifted little boy who does love trains

Alexander McCall Smith The Charming Quirks of Others Little, Brown, September 2010

Alexander McCall Smith The Charming Quirks of Others - Abacus 4 août 2011

In ‘The Sunday Philosophy Club Series’ seven volumes have been published to this day with the eighth one to be released very soon, this September 2011 maybe.

Alexander McCall Smith The Dog Who Came in From the Cold - Polygon An Imprint of Birlinn Limited May 2010

Alexander McCall Smith A Conspiracy of Friends - Polygon An Imprint of Birlinn Limited April 2011

The ‘Corduroy Mansions’, Alexander McCall Smith last series, takes place in London. It is still being published in The Telegraph. An audio version is also available. I feel like reading this series for there seems to be a lovely character in it : a dog! From what I’ve read in 44 Scotland Street, I know that the author excells in describing these friendly creatures! Since I don’t know much of London either, I could get some information about the big city there. Alexander McCall Smith also excells in making us feel the sense of place.

Alexander McCall Smith The Forgotten affairs of Youth - Little, Brown September 2011

Just to count them and make a list, I’ve put all my collection of McCall Smith’s books on my desk, the English and the French ones side by side. So doing, I did enjoy the lively and colourful mosaic they were composing though, like in a jigsaw puzzle, many pieces are still lacking. Anyway, and while I’m waiting for the arrival of new ones, I can make my first steps into the world of Alexander McCall Smith.

Alexander McCall Smith books mosaic © 2011 Scotiana

You can notice, at the bottom of this mosaic, the first three volumes of ‘McCall Smith’s Edinburgh Chronicles’ in the French edition, and on the first row the first two volumes in English. I usually try to read the novels in both languages, when I happen to have them. It takes me more time but my reading is more rewarding then. Elisabeth Kern has been translating the ‘No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ and ’44 Scotland Street’ series into French. Good job it is!

Auguste Renoir 'Young Girl in the Garden at Mezy' 1891 Boston Museum

As mentioned in my last post, I’ve just finished reading 44 Scotland Street. Pure reading pleasure! It has been a favourite on my summer reading list;-)

To me, the expression ‘summer reading’ evokes unforgettable hours of reading under the shade of the big lime trees which grew in front of my grand-mother’s house, sheltered from the scorching sun which was hitting, a little further, rows and rows of vines and the lucerne field busy buzzing with all sorts of winged creatures. I have not forgotten the big old wardrobe in the barn, with its shelves groaning under the weight of books. How we, the children, would have liked to fall on the rusty key which opened this ‘caverne d’Ali Baba’ but our grand’ma used to hide it, with many other much coveted treasures, in a place only known to her. The old books which piled up in the old wardrobe were mostly red hardcover school prizes which contained many black and white illustrations and which had been won by my mother and my aunt, a long time ago, during one of those much anticipated days of  ‘Distribution des prix’ .

84 Charing Cross Helen Hanff Editions Autrement 2001

84 Charing Cross Helen Hanff - Virago Press Ltd 2002

The title 44 Scotland Street reminds me of 84, Charing Cross Road,  Helene Hanff’s epistolary novel (a pure jewel!).  But it’s George Perec’s La vie mode d’emploi (in English : Life: A User’s Manual) which came immediately to my mind when I began to read 44 Scotland Street…

George Perec La vie mode d'emploi Paris, Librairie générale française, collection Le Livre de Poche 2009

Georges Perec Life A User's Manual David R. Godine 1987

‘…a tapestry of interwoven stories and ideas and literary and historical allusions, based on the lives of the inhabitants of a fictitious Parisian apartment block, 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier’ as described in Wikipedia.

Armistead Maupin Tales of the City US 1st edition Harper & Row 1978

However, in the first lines of his very interesting Preface, Alexander McCall Smith underlines the direct influence of The San Francisco Chronicle (Tales of the City) by Armistead Maupin. No need to say that I’ve put it on my reading list, all the more since we happen to have visited the very beautiful town of San Francisco .

44 Scotland Street Alexander McCall Smith Abacus illustrated edition 2005 frontcover

44 ScotlandStreet Alexander McCall Smith 1st edition Polygon 2005

She pressed the bell and waited.

After a few moments something buzzed and she pushed open the large black door

with its numerals, 44, its lion’s head knocker, and its tarnished brass plate above the handle.

(44 Scotland Street – Alexander McCall Smith)

I’ve found five good reasons to make our first steps in 44 Scotland Street:

1 – Pure reading pleasure: easy and entertaining reading, with much suspense, humour and the gentle touch here and there.

2 – A very lively characterization: there are a number of colourful characters in Alexander McCall Smith’s novel. Pat is the first one we meet. She opens the door of 44 Scotland Street and we’ll be following her adventures all along the series.

3 – The  sense of place which makes us discover Edinburgh in a new light

4 – Food for thought: the philosophical touch…

5 – And a little something more, ringing a bell, touching the heart but I will tell you more about that in my next post

And let us leave the last word to the writer

Alexander McCall Smith Source Wikipedia

What I have tried to do in 44 Scotland Street is to say something about life in Edinburgh which will strike readers as being recognizable

about this extraordinary city and yet at the same time be a bit of light-hearted fiction.

……………….

I enjoyed creating these characters, all of whom reflect human types I have encountered and known while living in Edinburgh.

It is only one slice of life in this town – but it is a slice which can be entertaining. Some of the people in this book are real, and appear under their own names.

Bonne lecture

A bientôt. Mairiuna.

'Girl stands in a field reading her book' Harold Knight (1874-1961)

Hi everybody!

With autumn already touching our gardens and woods with its warm colours, it may seem a little late to write a page about “summer reading” but isn’t it a good idea to make  summer last a little longer. Indeed, the Indian Summer is still to come, isn’t it Janice?

But before embarking on our ”summer reading’ I would like to deeply thank our dear friends Iain and Margaret for their last Letter for Scotland. Never have I read  such a beautiful text about WWII. Margaret’s page entitled ‘The Leningrad Album, a Token of Scottish-Russian Friendship in War ..’ is an unforgettable one and I can but highly recommend Margaret’s little book Dear Allies !  Had I learned history in such a marvellous way at school, I certainly wouldn’t have forgotten a single page of it!

As mentioned by Iain, we do correspond regularly by email! A very friendly and entertaining Scottish-French-Canadian correspondence, I can tell you .  And to quote Iain:

We write in English, Marie-Agnès and Jean-Claude in French, and Janice often alternates between the two languages. I enjoy being reminded of French words I’d rarely come across since schooldays; my old French teacher would wisely give us little groups of words to be written together in our notebooks, to make clear the differences and to help us remember! For example, «une librairie» is a bookshop (or a publishing house); «une bibliothèque» a library (or collection of books; or even a set of bookshelves!) Yes, Marie-Agnès, we do have upstairs une bibliothèque tournante – a revolving bookcase. It’s a small one, but it holds a surprisingly large number of books.

.
‘Une bibliothèque tournante’! What a dream of a bookcase! I remember pretty well the very nice story Margaret told us, in one of her first messages, about this unique Scottish piece of furniture ‘faite sur mesure’.

My French Notebook - Mon cahier anglais Paul Schwartz and Maylis Treuil

By the way, while I was trying to find an image to illustrate my answer to Iain and Margaret, I fell upon an interesting method to learn each other’s language…  I’ve not tried it still but it could prove useful at the start of a new school year

'In the Garden Doorway' Peter Ilsted 1913

Books, books, books ! YES definitely

So, back to my ‘summer reading’.

'Reading' Igor Zhuk oil canvas 70 x 50 cm

The expression “summer reading” conjures up a lot of pleasant images, the summer being the season supposed to offer us fine weather as well as much time to read our favourite books. The chosen ones are of course a matter of personal choice and I’m not sure many readers will choose to read Proust’s A la recherche du Temps perdu A hard and big job according to Big Lou, one of the vivid characters depicted by Alexander McCall Smith in 44 Scotland Street (same title in English and in French), the first volume of the ’44 Scotland Street ‘ series (‘Les Chroniques d’Edimbourg’ in French).

Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street is a favourite on my summer reading list for it is exactly the kind of book I like when I want to relax.

44 Scotland Street Alexander McCall Smith Edition 10-18 2007 frontcover

44 Scotland Street Alexander McCall Smith Abacus illustrated edition 2005 frontcover

As a matter of fact, I’ve just finished 44 Scotland Street and I’m quite eager to begin Espresso Tales, the second volume of this series (to me, the French title Edimbourg Express is more evocative of “un train express” than of a cup of Italian coffee!). 44 Scotland Street has made me smile, laugh and always eager to know what is going to happen next page. I’ve also learned in this book a lot of things about Edinburgh and its lifestyle, about Scotland and some of its artists, painters more especially. Last but not least, the author seems to have a talent for introducing in the dialogues and without taking them too seriously, a number of fundamental questions.

Each chapter has been given an expressive title and the English edition has black and white illustrations by Iain McIntosh. In the very interesting Preface written by the author we learn that the book was first published as a daily series in The Scotsman.

 

44 Scotland Street Alexander McCall Smith The Scotsman edition frontcover

“Most books start with an idea in the author’s head. This book started with a conversation that I had in California, at a party held by the novelist, Amy Tan, whose generosity to me has been remarkable. At this party I found myself talking to Armistead Maupin, the author of Tales of the City. Maupin had revived the idea of a serialised novel with his extremely popular serial in The San Francisco Chronicle. When I returned to Scotland I was asked by The Herald to write an article about my California trip. In this article I mentioned my conversation with Maupin and remarked what a pity it was that newspapers no longer ran serialised novels. This tradition, of course, had been very important in the nineteenth century, with the works of Dickens being perhaps the best known examples of serialised fiction. But there were others, of course, including Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, which nearly landed its author in prison.

My article was read by editorial staff on The Scotsman, who decided to accept the challenge which I had unwittingly put down. I was invited for lunch by Iain Martin, who was then editor of the paper (…) At that stage I had not really thought out the implications of writing a novel in daily instalments; this was a considerable departure from the weekly or monthly approach which had been adopted by previous serial novelists. However, such was the air of optimism at the lunch that I agreed.

The experience proved to be both hugely enjoyable and very instructive. The structure of a daily serial has to be different from that of a normal novel. One has to have at least one development in each instalment and end with a sense that something more may happen. One also has to understand that the readership is a newspaper readership which has its own special characteristics.

The real challenge in writing a novel that is to be serialised in this particular way – that is, in small segments – is to keep the momentum of the narrative going without becoming too staccato in tone. The author must engage a reader whose senses are being assailed from all directions – from other things on the same and neighbouring pages, from things that are happening about him or her while the paper is being read. Above all a serial novel must be entertaining. This does not mean that one cannot deal with serious topics, or make an appeal to the finer emotions of the reader, but one has to keep a light touch.

When the serial started to run, I had a number of sections already completed. As the months went by, however, I had fewer and fewer pages in hand, and towards the end I was only three episodes ahead of publication. This was very different, then, from merely taking an existing manuscript and chopping it up into sections. The book was written while it was being published. An obvious consequence of this was that I could not go back and make changes – it was too late to do that.

(Extract from the Preface of 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith)

To this day, the ’44 Scotland Street series’ (‘Les chroniques d’Edimbourg’) is composed of 7 volumes:

2005     44 Scotland Street (44 Scotland Street, traduit en français par Élisabeth Kern, éditions 10/18, coll. « Domaine étranger » Paris 2007)

Edimbourg Express Alexander McCall Smith 10-18 edition 2009 frontcover

Espresso Tales Alexander McCall Smith 2005 frontcover

2005     Espresso Tales (Édimbourg Express, traduit en français par Élisabeth Kern, éditions 10/18, coll. « Domaine étranger » Paris 2009)

Alexander McCall Smith L'amour en kilt Edition 10-18 2009

Alexander McCall Smith Love Over Scotland 2006

2006     Love Over Scotland (L’Amour en kilt, traduit en français par Élisabeth Kern, éditions 10/18, coll. « Grands détectives »  Paris, 2009)

Alexander McCall Smith Le monde selon Bertie Edition 10-18 2010

Alexander McCall Smith The World According to Bertie 2007

2007     The World According to Bertie (Le monde selon Bertie, traduit en français par Élisabeth Kern, éditions 10/18, Paris, 2010)

Alexander McCall Smith The Unbearable Lightness of Scones 2008

2008     The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (Ouvrage non encore traduit en français)

Alexander McCall Smith The Importance of Being Seven 2010

2010     The Importance of Being Seven (Ouvrage non encore traduit en français)

Alexander McCall Smith Bertie Plays the Blues 2011

2011      Bertie Plays The Blues (Ouvrage non encore traduit en français)

A lot of books to read, don’t you think?

Next time, I will tell you why I do love 44 Scotland Street and more about the other volumes as soon as I have read them.

Bonne lecture ! A bientôt.

Mairiuna

Agatha Christie Postern of Fate Fontana 1976

‘Books!’ says Tuppence in Agatha  Christie’s Postern of Fate

(Chapter 1: ‘Mainly Concerning Books’)

“Is there anything I can take down for you?”

“Well, I wish you would”, said Tuppence. “I’m falling off those chairs. Some of their legs are very wobbly, some of them rather slippery.”

”Any book in particular?”

”Well, I haven’t got on very far with the third shelf up. Two shelves down from the top, you know. I don’t know what books are there.”

Albert mounted on a chair and banging each book in turn to dislodge such dust as it had managed to gather on it, handed things down. Tuppence received them with a good deal of rapture.”‘Oh, fancy! All these. I really have forgotten a lot of these. Oh, here’s The Amulet and here’s The Psalmayad. Here’s The New Treasure Seekers. Oh, I love all those. No, don’t put them on shelves yet, Albert. I think I’ll have to read them first. Well, I mean, one or two of them first, perhaps. Now, what’s this one? Let me see. The Red Cockade. Oh yes, that was one of the historical ones. That was very exciting. And  there’s Under the Red Robe, too. Lots of Stanley Weyman. Lots and lots. Of course I used to read those when I was about ten or eleven. I shouldn’t be surprised if I don’t come across The Prisoner of Zenda. One’s first introduction really, to the romantic novel. The romance of Princess Flavia. The King or Ruritania. Rudolph Rassendyll, some name like that, whom one dreamt of at night.”

Albert handed down another selection.

“Oh yes,” said Tuppence, “that’s better, really. That’s earlier again. I must put the early ones all together. Now, let me see. What have we got here? Treasure Island. Well, that’s nice, but of course, I’ve read Treasure Island again, and I’ve seen, I think, two films of it. I don’t like seeing it on films, it never seems right. Oh – and here’s Kidnapped. Yes, I always liked that.”

Albert stretched up, overdid his armful, and Catriona fell more or less on Tuppence’s head.

Oh, sorry, madam. Very sorry.”

“It’s quite all right,” said Tuppence, “it doesn’t matter. Catriona. Yes. Anymore Stevensons up there?”

Albert handed the books down now more gingerly. Tuppence uttered a cry of excessive delight.

“The Black arrow. I declare. The Black Arrow!”

(Postern of Fate: Chapter 2 The Black Arrow)

Traquair House, Innerleithen, Scottish Borders, The Library, Scotiana 2006

YES, BOOKS !

Books are golden keys opening to enchanted gardens,

and, as I always say, we DON’T find them, THEY find us

(Mairiuna)

At home, our new books are dangerously piling up above the others, and in the most unexpected places of our house, but we simply can’t help welcoming them inside, even the most wretched of them. I would like you to see my old edition (1809) of Ann Grant’s Letters from the Mountains. It’s in so bad condition that I hardly dare to open it. But here it is, with its two crumbling volumes, still telling its old story, a Scottish story of course: ‘I think I see you smile and compare me to the fox in the fable ; while from this solitude I rail at the lost pleasures of the dear town. I arrived here last night at eleven, after a tedious journey, in a very rainy day, through the Mona Lia[1], or grey mountain, an endless moor, without any road, except a small footpath, through which our guide conducted the horses with difficulty. The height of the mountain is prodigious. Crossing it, we were enveloped in the very region of storms and clouds. A small dreary lake, or abrupt grey crag, was the only variety which interrupted a scene, enough to fill any susceptible mind with awe and horror. I am now sitting, in the same rainy weather, in a house on the very edge of a sea, sprinkled with numberless islands. … (Letters from the Mountains “Letter I – To Miss Ewing, of Glasgow - Oban – April 30 1773“)

Kenneth White La Maison des marées Editions Albin Michel 2005

Kenneth White House of Tides Polygon 2000

‘If my Atlantic library is pretty well-stocked with books (a few thousand volumes in several languages) and in maps (all kind of atlases, portulans and charts), it also has a special section devoted to manuscripts. Idon’t mean my own manuscripts, I’m referring to old texts I’ve managed to sniff out and pick up here and there since I took up residence in these Armorican parts.’ (Kenneth White House of Tides)

In order to prepare my next post about the life and works of Kenneth White, I was reading, in House of Tides, the above passage of the chapter entitled ‘A Bibliophile Fantasia” when it suddenly came to my mind that it could be most interesting to introduce on Scotiana a new series devoted to the library of our favourite Scottish authors, wondering  about their favourite books and trying to discover to what extent these books have influenced them in their writings.

Writers are great readers and they generally own big libraries, so it could be quite interesting to try and know more about them. Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are! The literary tastes of writers not only can help us to understand who they are but also make us feel like reading what they read.  I always learn about our favourite authors’ ‘reading list’ with as much pleasure as I discovered the much awaited list our teachers used to give us at the beginning of a new school year

Our literary investigations will take time for even if we limit our research to our favourite Scottish writers our list of names is already long and each day brings its lot of new Scottish books and authors to read. We’ll begin with the authors we like most  and know better:  George Mackay Brown, Iain Crichton Smith, Neil Gunn, JM Barrie, Muriel Spark, Alasdair Gray, Margaret Oliphant, Hugh MacDiarmid, John Buchan, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, Conan Doyle, Hugh Miller, Robert Burns, Iain Rankin… and of course of Kenneth White who is second to none to tell us about his library, his books, maps and manuscripts. Indeed, his readings are omnipresent in his writings.

Now, how shall we proceed to get our information, you must ask yourself?

Of course, our first source of information will be the authors themselves. We’ll use largely their own writings : autobiographical writings, prose as well as poetry as in the case of Kenneth White whose poems are very rich in autobiographical elements, their journals and also their interviews.

Scottish Writers Talking Isobel Murray Tuckwell Press 1996 © 2011 Scotiana

Biographies : the literary tastes of the writers is a question the interest of which has not escaped biographers and they devote a lot of pages and even entire chapters to the subject.  So, we’ll largely use them too.

Travel books and journals: I’m pretty sure we can glean many interesting pieces of information there. The first names that come to my mind are those of Dr Johnson and Boswell, H.V. Morton, Dorothy and William Wordsworth but there are many others…

Guidebooks:

The Literary Traveller in Edinburgh Allan Foster Mainstream Publishing 2005

The Literary Traveller in Scotland Allan Foster Mainstream Publishing 2007

Some of them are much more than mere touristic guides.

The Edinburgh Literary Guide Andrew Lownie Canongate 1992

And of course, our own visits to Scottish writers’ houses though we didn’t visit many of them still. The most rewarding visit we’ve made is that of Abbotsford.

Abbotsford Sir Walter Scott's library © 2006 Scotiana

We’ve gone there several times and we are very happy to have been able to visit it at the time when Abbotsford was still inhabited by Sir Walter’s descendants.  We could not believe our eyes when we discovered the writer’s desk and library for the first time.

Abbotsford Sir Walter Scott's study and library © 2006 Scotiana

We would have spent hours there!

Many reading memories still haunt  Lilibanks, Barrie’s native place in Kirriemuir. We know how he and his mother, Margaret Ogilvie, were avid readers at the time of the author’s childhood.

When we last went to Ecclefechan, it was too late to visit Thomas Carlyle’s Arched House but, at the entry of the village,  the statue of the writer sitting in an armchair with a book in his hands, says a lot about the importance of reading for this erudite author.

Thomas Carlyle Statue at Ecclefechan, Dumfries & Galloway © 2006 Scotiana

We’ll try to visit Thomas Carlyle’s native place and as many writers’ houses as we can next time we’ll go to Scotland

Writers' Museum Lady Stairs House, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh © 2007 Scotiana

Scottish Museums : one of the best ones we saw, as far as literary matters are concerned, is the Writers’ Museum, in the old Lady Stairs House, Lady Stairs Close, just off Lawnmarket in Edinburgh.

For our French readers, and there are a number of them on Scotiana , and for those who have not been definitely discouraged to learn French because of the difficulties of our grammar, I would like to recommend one very interesting book out of a fascinating thematic collection entitled, quite appropriately, Demeures de l’esprit.   These books have been written by a French author who has devoted part of his life travelling, visiting and writing about the homes of famous writers.  Of course,  I’ve begun my reading by the pages describing the Scottish writers’ houses . I still don’t have the whole collection but I’ve put it on my wishing list

Demeures de l'esprit Renaud Camus Fayard 2009

Below is the list of writers’ houses visited and described by Renaud Camus in Demeures de l’esprit:

• Abbotsford near Galashiels, Borders, Sir Walter Scott’s house (1771-1832)
• Little Sparta, Dunsyre, Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh, Ian Hamilton Finlay artist and poet (1925-2006)
• 126 High Street , Dunbar, East Lothian, John Muir (1838-1914)
• Brownsbank Cottage, Biggar, South Lanarkshire, Hugh McDiarmid (1892-1978)
• Kellie Castle, Fife,   Sir Robert Lorimer (1864-1929) Arts & Crafts movement architect
• Lilybank, Kirriemuir, Angus, Sir James Barrie (1864-1936)
• Church Street, Cromarty, Highland, Hugh Miller (1802-1856)
• Shuttle Row, Blantyre, Greater Glasgow, Scotland David Livingstone (1813-1873)
• Murdoch’s Lone, Alloway, South Ayrshire  native place of Robert Burns (1759-1796)
• Castle Street, Mauchline, East Ayrshire, Doctor Mackenzie’s house where Robert Burns and Jean Armour lived for a time
  
• Ellisland Farm, Auldgirth, 6,5 miles northwest of Dumfries, Dumfries & Galloway Robert Burns 1788-1791
• Mill Hole Brae, Robert Burns, 25 Burns Street, Dumfries, Dumfries & Galloway
• Arched House, maison natale de Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Ecclefechan, Dumfries & Galloway
• Broughton House, painter Edward Atkinson Hornel (1864-1933) High Street, Kirkcudbright, Dumfries & Galloway

Bernard Pivot Le métier de lire Folio 2001

In front of this new reading challenge, we would be well-advised to ask for the help of Bernard Pivot, who is certainly the most famous and best-loved reader in France.  He is a journalist, interviewer and host of French cultural television programmes, one of the most popular being ‘Apostrophes’. Indeed, we like very much his interviews of Kenneth White: a friendly dialogue more than an interview, a very lively and full of humour and complicity, which took place, guess where, at the House of Tides

Now, hoping to have given you still more reading ideas I can’t help telling you again ‘Bonne lecture’

A bientôt.

Mairiuna

Kenneth White - Lettres de Gourgounel - Les Presses d'Aujourd'hui - 1979

I would like to begin this post with a few words about Lettres de Gourgounel (1979), one of the first books written by Kenneth White (his first book of prose) and also the first book I‘ve read by this author. The title of the original English edition is Letters from Gourgounel (1966) but it has been out of print for a long time now. Lettres de Gourgounel remains one of my favourites books by Kenneth White. It is a ‘bouffée d’air pur’.

The author’s lively style and great sense of humour to tell us about the old farm he bought in Ardèche, a mountainous and wild region in south-central France, about his relationships with his colourful neighbours, make us feel as if we were up there at Gourgounel. We learn much about the place and the people who live there, about the author’s love for a simple life, close to nature, about his love for books and solitude, about his work.  In Lettres de Gourgounel, Kenneth White shares with us, the best of his literary and philosophical knowledge and, at that early time of his life, it was already immense. He was only 26 when he wrote Letters from Gourgounel!

Kenneth White - Lettres de Gourgounel Notebook - Candle holder © 2011 Scotiana

Having read this book a long time ago I feel like re-reading it now. I remember how I used to copy my favourite passages on the rough surface of the pages of a very nice leather-bound notebook I had been offered some time before. The kind of notebook so beautifully made you dare not write in it.

Kenneth White - Lettres de Gourgounel Notebook © 2011 Scotiana

But the content is well-worth my nice hand-crafted notebook. I still keep it preciously

But let us try to know more about Kenneth White’s peregrinations  ‘across the territories’! It is in Scotland that Kenneth White ‘s mental map begins to take shape.

Kenneth White - Un monde ouvert - Poésie Gallimard 2006

I was born on that Atlantic shore of Europe and I have its topography imprinted on my mind.

(Kenneth White – On Scottish Ground)

Kenneth White - Le grand rivage - Bilingual edition Le Nouveau Commerce 1980

Living as a boy on the shore

seeing and hearing the clouding

and clamouring of gulls

like overwhelming metaphors

or maybe a heron

‘na h’aonar ri atobh na tuinne

mar thigse leatha fhèin’s a’ chruinne

alone beside the sea

like a mind alone in the universe.

(From Kenneth White Le grand rivage - Editions  Le Nouveau Commerce 1980 -

Original title : A Walk along the Shore)

Our best source of information about Kenneth White will be his own writings (poems and prose)  and a few biographical books and studies written about him. There are many of them.

 

 

Gorbals Main Street 1911 Source Wikipedia

The Gorbals is an area on the south bank of the River Clyde in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. By the late 19th century, it had become over-populated and adversely affected by local industrialisation. It became widely known as a dangerous slum and was subject to efforts at redevelopment, which contributed to more problems. In recent decades, some buildings have been demolished for a mixture of market and social housing; others are being refurbished and restored to a higher standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorbals

Kenneth White was born in the Gorbals area of Glasgow on 28 April 1936 which was not reputed then for being the ideal place to rear a family. Kenneth White’s father who worked as a railway signalman and was also an avid reader and a lover of nature, decided to move to a more genial place and Kenneth White was only three years old when the family settled in Fairlie, a little village on the west coast, south of Largs in Ayrshire. There he spent his childhood and adolescence.

Kenneth White En toute candeur Mercure de France 1964

In that house of three storeys

only yards from the sea

a house with

anwar don lavar

levawr wrthi

a wild wave talking

and clashing beside it.

(From Le grand rivage -1980 – A Walk along the Shore)

A few strange words in this extract has for a long time puzzled me. I’ve found an answer to my questions in The Radical Field. Here is what Tony McManus writes about this passage: ‘It is in his removal of the family to the coast that White senior most influenced the future of his son, for so much of what Kenneth White has come to do has its origins in that landscape and seascape. In his long poem, ‘Walking the Coast’, he writes of the sound of the sea (quoting in the by-going, both for sound and sense, an old Welsh poem) which was a constant feature of his surrounding’

In  Kenneth White’s books, we find many happy memories of this early time in Ayrshire : family life, relationships with friends and neighbours, school life, open-air activities including playing as well as working ones (Kenneth White contributed to the family economy by gathering wrack and picking shellfish on the shore), reading, much reading – and even churchgoing which he recalls with humour in the following poem:

I’d be getting at the window

and forgetting the sermon

(all about good and evil

with a lot of mangled metaphor

and heavy comparison)

eager to get back out

onto the naked shore

there to walk for hours on end

with a book sometimes in my hand

but never a thought of preaching in my mind

trying to grasp at something

that wanted no godly name

something that took the form

of blue waves and grey rock

and that tasted of salt.

(From ‘Scotia Deserta’ quoted by Tony McManus in The Radical Field)

Largs, North Ayrshire, Scotland - Source:Wikipedia

Of course, we can only try to imagine what it was like to live on the Ayrshire coast in the 1930s, decades ago and in such a different kind of society as our own, but even today it also remains ‘terra incognita’ for us for, when we go there, we are only passing travellers. However, even if Ayrshire is not the Scottish region we know the best, we quite remember the beautiful and wintry place, close to the ocean, with its many islands, hills, woods and moors. Good ground for a young poet to grow up!

We didn’t have time to stop at Fairlie and Largs when we passed there on our way  to Ardrossan for we had booked on the next Caledonian ferry which was about to depart for Arran, the rugged and mountainous island often mentioned by Kenneth White in his writings. No wonder the poet found inspiration in these unforgettable Scottish landscapes, still wild enough to offer many opportunities to admire the landscape in silence and solitude.

The Cumbraes, North Ayrshire, Scotland - Source: Wikipedia

When driving southward on the picturesque A78 coastal road we only had time to catch a glimpse of the Little and Great Cumbraes, the two small islands situated just in front of Largs and Fairlie but we have been lucky to visit the nearby island of Bute, in May 2004, at the time when its gigantic rhododendrons are in full bloom. It’s quite magical! We’ll soon devote a page on Scotiana to this little island for it is really worth the visit. At Rothesay, there is an old mediaeval fortress with moats full of water reflecting canons which seem ready to fire, a mysterious and quite fascinating gothic palace at Mountstuart and the ruins of a very ancient abbey at St Blane’s in the South from where you can also get magnificent views across the water of the the island of Arran.  While taking the ferry which crosses from Rothesay to Wemyss Bay and if the weather is fine you can also get unforgettable views of the Cowal Hills.  The Kintyre peninsula is not far either but we’ll come back to it later, for it would be too long today to describe whatwe’ve seen there.

The Radical Field - Tony McManus - Sandstone Press Ltd - 2007

One of the most recent books published about Kenneth White, The Radical Field by Tony McManus, which is subtitled ‘Kenneth White and Geopoetics’, is open on my desk. There is often no better source of information about an author than his own writings and Kenneth White’s books are particularly rich in autobiographical elements but Tony McManus who is a great admirer of Kenneth White has devoted much time to the study of his works and of geopoetics and his book is full of quotations drawn from Kenneth White’s books .

The Radical Field is divided into  into three parts: ‘The Initial Ground’, ‘The Emergent Field’ and ‘Open World Writing’). To make you an idea, I give you the contents of the book, the titles and subtitles of which are particularly revealing.

PART ONE: THE INITIAL GROUND

1    Family Alchemy
2    Shore and Moor
3    The Glasgow Student
4    Munich: Isolation and Meditation
5    Paris: The Incandescent Zone
6    Gourgounel : Resourcing
7    First Publications
8    On the British Literary Scene
9    The Departure

PART TWO: THE EMERGENT FIELD

1    A Scottish Constellation
2    Universal Ancestor: The Shaman
3    Cultural Analysis Now
4    The Drifting Dawn
5    Radical Europen Thought
6    On American Trails
7    Investigations into Asia
8    Pathways in Science
9    From Scotland to Alba end Beyond
Notes

PART THREE/ OPEN WORLD WRITING

1    The Essay
2    The Waybook
3    The Poem of the Earth
Notes

Bibliographies

The Radical Field Tony McManus Sandstone Press Ltd 2007 back cover

‘If I set out to write this book on the work of Kenneth White and geopoetics, it’s because it has been obvious to me for some time now, not only that White stands among the most significant writers and thinkers working today, but that his work belongs to a very rare category, one that stands outside those currently in vogue.
This has already been recognised in contexts other than the English language one.

Looking through the already bulky archives gathering around White’s work in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh and the Fonds Kenneth White in the city of Bordeaux, one comes across statements such as these: (…) ‘At a time when a certain mediocrity is reaching planetary proportions, one of us has stood up, turned his back and, possessed of real knowledge,moved off’ (Revue des Belles-Lettres, Geneva); ‘White belongs to a silent vanguard, in solitary rebellion against not only the entrenched establishments, but the modernist cliques’ (Review of the University of Mexico); ‘Travelling out on his own ways, kenneth White is bound to appear more and more as the foremost English poet of these times’ (Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris).’  (The Radical Field - Foreword –Tony McManus – Edinburgh, September 2001)

To enter Kenneth White’s world is a fascinating quest but not an easy one. We hope this post and the other ones which we intend to devote to the great Scottish-French poet will be helpful for the readers who are trying, as we do, to enter this vast universe. You follow a blue road and you discover a white world, ‘un monde blanc’…

Bonne lecture !

A bientôt.

Mairiuna

Kenneth White The Blue Road 1990 Mainstream Publishing

Scotiana readers who have followed us on our ‘blue road’, in Quebec, already know we are great admirers of Kenneth White. Now, we would like to share with you what we know about the well-known Scottish-French poet, academic and writer.

Open on my desk are the last two books published by Kenneth White : La carte de Guido and Les Archives du Littoral . Some of the author’s key words appear in the titles : ‘archives’, ‘carte’ and ‘littoral’, evoking a poetry of earth and ocean, geography and travel. Kenneth White is a born traveller, a poet and a scholar too, and in La carte de Guido, subtitled ‘Un pélerinage européen’, we follow him in the European countries, discovering landscapes, people, art and literature with as much pleasure as when we followed the author on The Blue Road…

 La carte de Guido is a French-written book but I’ve noticed that it had been translated, as most of Kenneth White’s books, by his wife Marie-Claude and though I’ve still not found its English version there must be one, or there will be one, sooner or later…

Les Archives du Littoral is a book of poetry and it is bilingual. The three parts of the book reflect Kenneth White’s periples all over the world.

I – A travers l’Europe (Up and down in Europe)

II – Pacifique Nord (North Pacific)

III – Memoires d’Armor (Armorican Memoirs)

When I first opened Les Archives du Littoral,  still remembering our unforgettable journey in Quebec on the steps of Kenneth White, I immediately looked for a poem which would ring a bell  and I found one, in part II,  entitled ‘Mackenzie’s report’.  Here’s an extract:

(..) day after day we spent

paddling, poling, towing

lugging packages over portages:

tedious and toilsome labour -

but what splendid beauty everywhere!

tall clifs, red and grey

a multitude of rapids and cascades

birch, cedar, hemlock, willow

lofty blue mountains crowned with snow (..)

to the armchair geographers

this definitive message :

having travelled the road

I can say with no fear of reproach

there is no fabulous North-West passage

leading to some Asia indolent and rich

only a wan and silent water

a seaweed-covered beach

involved in fog

inhabited by seal and otter.

I entrust this letter

to a battered old rum-cask

which I hereby deliver

this June 27th, 1793

to the waters of the Unnamed River

thinking that, who knows

one day someone in the future

will discover it with eyes full of wonder.

I invite our readers to find Les Archives du littoral and to read the whole poem. After reading it, I’ve made a research on Wikipedia to try and find who was this explorer, named Mackenzie

Kenneth White La carte de Guido Albin Michel 2011

Kenneth White Les archives du littoral Traduit de l'anglais par Marie-Claude White - Edition Bilingue -Mercure de France 2011

Kenneth White Comédie du Livre Montpellier Edition 2009 - Source Wikipedia

Kenneth White has written many books in English as well as in French, he has given and still gives lectures and interviews all over the world and, after creating the revolutionary concept of Geopoetics, he has founded, in April 1989,  the International Institute of Geopoetics. His talent is internationally recognized and he has received a number of literary awards, especially in France where he has been living for a long time. After spending several years in Pau, Aquitaine, teaching at the University of Bordeaux and Paris, he now holds the Chair of XXth Century Poetics at Paris-Sorbonne. He lives and works with his wife Marie-Claude, in the ‘House of Tides’, at Trebeurden, on the Pink Granite Coast, in Brittany.

Indeed, it’s with infinite pleasure that I’ve read La maison des marées (in English: House of Tides) in which the poet invites us to visit his ‘House of Tides’ and his ‘Atlantic Studio’. The chapters entitled ‘A Bibliophile Fantasia’, ‘The Paths of Stone and Wind’, ‘A Garden’, ‘The Great World of Little Catou’ , to mention only a few of them, are windows opened on Kenneth White’s world and there are more than one lovely passages about the daily life of the great poet.

Kenneth White La Maison des marées Traduit de l'anglais par Marie-Claude White Albin Michel 2005

Kenneth White La Maison des marées Albin Michel 2005

‘My workroom is laid out on a west-east axis, so that I go to work with the rising sun in one window, and finish it with the setting sun in the other.’

I work in here about twelve hours a day. Around eight in the morning, I’ll be crossing the yard with a pot of tea (a heavy cast-iron Japanese teapot) and one of the bowls made by my friend the potter. Let’s say it’s a winter morning, overcast, no stars to be seen, only a light in the neighbouring farm, a misty light from behind trees, and, down to the south-west there, the noise of the waves on the beaches of Lannion Bay. I switch on the lamp and the heater, sit at my table, pour myself a bowl of tea, and the day’s work begins.’

(Kenneth White House of Tides ‘An Atlantic Studio’)

The title of this post has been called after Kenneth White’s book, Across the Territories, a book which we’ve read in French under the title of “Le rôdeur des confins”.

Kenneth White Le rôdeur des confins Editions Albin Michel 2006

 The first chapter of Across the Territories, is devoted to Orkney, a place we went to in 2003. We had been attracted there by the magnificent weather-beaten landscapes of these northern islands and their rich archeological heritage (Skara Brae – Maes Howe – the Ring of Brodgar). I also  wanted to pay homage to George Mackay Brown, ‘the Orkney Bard’, a marvellous Scottish poet born in Stromness and buried there, close to his beloved seashore.  ‘Carve the runes and then be silent’ can we read on his grave.  I will never forget our pilgrimage to the Warbeth Kirkyard, overlooking Hoy Sound.

Added to the fact that Kenneth White is second to none to catch the sense of a place and to show empathy with the people he happens to meet on the road, his writing is quite entertaining. Humour is omnipresent in his books.  (‘Maybe more than one passenger thought fleetingly of the life jacket under the seat, equipped, as we’d been told, ‘with a light and a whistle to attract attention’. Though looking out into the murky turmoil, who wouldn’t be thinking too that, in a storm like that, a wee light and a pink plastic whistle would have about half the chance of a snowball in hell.’).

Here’s a short passage I’m particularly fond of, from the chapter ‘The Isles of the Orks’.

‘I laid out my things, set out books (among them Orkneyinga Saga) on the table by the window,

pinned a map of the archipelago on the wall,

and felt immediately at home -

as in a captain’s cabin, or maybe rather a monk’s cell.’

These lines make me think of another passage written by H.V. Morton, one of our favourite travel-writers, in his famous book In Search of Scotland :

‘There is one way only to bring a reluctant smile to the face of a bedroom which looks as though it doubted your ability to pay the bill

- smother it in books! Pile them on chairs, tables, washstands, on mantelpiece and, if possible, on the floor.

The most bitter and resentful room is flattered if you try to turn it into a library.

Books and a fire can humanize any room, so that if you travel, as I do, with more books than clothes you have nothing to fear from any hotel’.

The relationships between a traveller and his or her books are revealing. As far as we’re concerned, we can’t help to take a number of them with us each time we travel and, as we always add new ones during the journey, we recurrently find ourselves confronted with luggage problems at the airport or in the car. And we still haven’t learned the lesson.

For you to make a first idea of Across the Territories I’ve transcribed the comment figuring out on the back cover of the book and also its contents. Having a look at the contents is always the first thing I do before buying and reading a book. The choice of titles are important too and those of Kenneth White are particularly well-chosen, in English and in French : The Blue Road’, ‘The Wanderer and his Charts’, ‘House of Tides’, ‘Le grand rivage’, ‘Scènes d’un monde flottant’, ‘Terre de diamant’, ‘Les rives du silence’, ‘L’anorak du goéland’ , ‘Les cygnes sauvages’. As a haïku writer, Kenneth White excells in telling things in a minimum words.  I also like very much the cover illustration of Across the Territories.  It’s  a reproduction of a watercolour entitled “Junction of the Yellowstone and the Missouri’  painted c. 1835 by Kark Bodmer.

Kenneth White Across the Territories Polygon 2004

An initial mapping of this book might say that it goes from Orkney to Polynesia via Scandinavia and the Baltic regions, the Iberian peninsula, and North America. But it’s impossible to sum up the diverse pathways and the multiple dimensions of Kenneth White’s method in that highly original type of travel-writing he calls the waybook. The thing is to get out on the road with him. Along with, for example, three Quebeckers from the St Lawrence river-country through the forest and along the coast of Maine, or with an eleven-century Jewish poet across Spain. Other chapters will take the reader to the haunts of migrating cranes in Sweden, the misty margins of Portugal, across the plains of Poland, into the Atlas mountains, or along the coast of Norway into the Lofotens. The book ends on the atoll of Rangiroa in the Tuamotu archipelago, on a shore of dark jagged coral, wild bird cries and empty sea. The result of the whole complex process is an acutely increased sensation of life, a vastly enlarged experience of the world.
Real poets are explorers, and Kenneth White is one in the fullest sense of the term. He brings together the near and the far, poetry and everyday living. Kenneth White, with the wind on his heels and his brain ablaze!
André Laude, Le Monde

Who could imagine a more pleasant companion than this Scotsman ? He has a way of listening to how people talk, or of watching a hawk in the sky, that makes you want to get out there and travel with him.
Claude Roy, Le Nouvel Observateur.

White’s work is very much about life on the periphery, a rim of civilization which somehow he imbues with a sense of centrality : new beginnings, outside the outmoded, over-used and over-worked centres.
Artwork

Contents

The Isles of the Orks

The Dancing Cranes

Aurora Borealis

Winds of the Skagerrak

Travels in a Sea of Vodka

The Cry of the Loon on the Kennebec

Around Corsica

The Big Andalusian Trip

Rainy Margins and Misty Horizons

The Lights of the Atlas

The Road to Rangiroa

I will begin my next post with  Lettres de Gourgounel which is the first book by Kenneth White I’ve read but in the meantime, here’s a bibliography of Kenneth White’s books.

Kenneth White Letters from Gourgounel London Jonathan Cape. (1966)

Bibliography

Poetry
· Wild Coal. Paris: Club des Étudiants d’Anglais (Sorbonne). (1963)
· En toute candeur. Paris: Mercure de France. (1964)
· The Cold Wind of Dawn. London: Jonathan Cape. (1966)
· The Most Difficult Area. London: Cape Goliard. (1968)
· Scènes d’un monde flottant. Lausanne: Alfred Eibel Editeur. (1976)
· Terre de diamant. Lausanne: Alfred Eibel Editeur. (1977)
· Mahamudra. Paris: Mercure de France. (1979)
· Le Grand Rivage. Paris: Nouveau Commerce. (1980)
· Eloge du corbeau (1983)
· Scènes d’un monde flottant (Grasset 1983)
· Terre de diamant (Grasset 1983)
· Atlantica. Paris: Grasset. (1986)
· L’anorak du goéland. Rouen: L’Instant Perpétuel. (1986)
. The Bird Path: Collected Longer Poems. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream. (1989)
· Handbook for the Diamond Country, Collected Shorter Poems 1960-1990. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream. (1990)
· Les Rives du silence. Paris: Mercure de France. (1998)
· Limites et marges. Paris: Mercure de France. (2000)
· Open World: Collected Poems 1960-2000. Edinburgh: Polygon. (2003
· Le passage extérieur (Mercure de France 2005)
· L’anorak du goéland in L’Ermitage des brumes (Dervy 2005)
· Un monde ouvert (Gallimard, collection Poésie 2007)
Prose
· Letters from Gourgounel. London: Jonathan Cape. (1966)
· Dérives (Maurice Nadeau 1978)
· Lettres de Gourgounel (Les Presses d’aujourd’hui 1979, Grasset-Cahiers rouges 1986)
· Les Limbes incandescents (Denoël-Lettres nouvelles 1976, Denoël 1990)
· Le Visage du vent d’est. Paris: Les Presses d’aujourd’hui. (1980)
· La Route bleue. Paris: Grasset. (Grasset 1983 – prix Médicis étranger)
· Une apocalypse tranquille. Paris: Grasset (1985)
· Travels in the Drifting Dawn. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream. (1989)
· Les Cygnes sauvages. Paris: Grasset. (1990)
· The Blue Road. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing. (1990)
· Pilgrim of the Void. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream. (1992)
· Corsica. L’itinéraire des rives et des monts (traduit de l’anglais par Marie-Claude White et illustré par Jacqueline Ricard de gravures au carborundum; Les Bibliophiles de France, 1998)
· House of Tides: Letters from Brittany and Other Lands of the West. Edinburgh: Polygon. (2000)
· Across the Territories. Edinburgh: Polygon. (2004)
· La Maison des marées (traduit de l’anglais par Marie-Claude White; Paris, Albin Michel, 2005;
· Le Rôdeur des confins. Paris: Albin Michel. (2006)
· Le Visage du vent d’est, Albin Michel, 2007
· Les Affinités extrêmes, Albin Michel, 2009
Essays
· La Figure du dehors. Paris: Grasset. (1982)
· Une apocalypse tranquille (Grasset 1985)
· L’Esprit nomade (Grasset 1987)
· Le monde d’Antonin Artaud (Éditions Complexe 1989)
· Hokusaï ou l’horizon sensible – Prélude à une esthétique du monde (Terrain Vague 1990)
· Le Plateau de l’albatros: Introduction à la géopoétique. Paris: Grasset. (1994)
· Les finisterres de l’esprit (Éditions du Scorff 1998)
· Une stratégie paradoxale : essais de résistance culturelle (Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux 1998)
· On Scottish Ground. Edinburgh: Polygon. (1998)
· The Wanderer and His Charts. Edinburgh: Polygon. (2004)
· Le chemin des crêtes, avec Stevenson dans les Cévennes” (Études et Communication Éditions 1999, 2005)
· On the Atlantic Edge. Sandstone. (2006)
· Écosse, le pays derrière les noms (Terre De Brume, 2010)

Bonne lecture ! A bientôt. Mairiuna

Walter Scott bust Abbotsford Scotiana.com

We’ll begin the new year, on Scotiana,  with our reading of Walter Scott’s Rob Roy, one of the most famous Waverley novels. The French and English audio files will be available for download as well. That’ll take some doing but Janice and I are very enthusiastic about sharing with you our reading of this great Scottish author!

Abbotsford Sir Walter Scott's study and library Scotiana.com 2006

But first, and to give things a bit of atmosphere, let us go back to Abbotsford, Sir Walter’s beautiful mansion. That will make us journey back to the time of the great writer. Can’t you see him, leaning at his desk, in his quiet study, surrounded by his books and dear souvenirs? If you can’t I invite you to have a closer look at the contents of his desk as Janice is doing in the following picture

Abbotsford Closer look at Sir Walter Scott's desk Scotiana.com 2006

And to help us trigger our imagination, let us open again A Day with Scott. In this little old book I had mentioned in my last post,  May Byron seems to have catched the sense of the place particularly well. I still don’t know when this book was published, but I will check that soon in our Sir Walter Scott Bibliographical History. For biographical purposes we’ll also make some incursions in Lockhart’s Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.  The author of this very interesting biography happens to be Sir Walter’s son-in-law, so he must know better.

Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart Lockhart one-volume 1845 edition Robert Cadell, Edinburgh

Indeed, I have in my library a very old one-volume edition of this book. It was published in 1845 if I’ve not been mistaken by the roman date appearing on the title page and which reads MDCCCXLV…

In the frontispiece of the book there is a picture of Sir Walter with one of his dogs …

Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart Lockhart one-volume 1845 edition Robert Cadell, Edinburgh

But let us see what May Byron has to say about  Sir Walter’s writing place :

Everything in Scott’s room betokened a most sympathetic humanity. Just inside his desk, carefully set in certain order, lay a collection of little relics, so placed that they might catch his eye, every morning before he began work. Little old-fashioned toilet-boxes that had once lain upon his mother’s dressing table, – the silver candlestick which he had bought for her with his first earnings, – little packets of children’s curls, each named in her delicate Italian hand : and many other touching mementoes of those long passed away….
Hour by hour, line by line, stanza by stanza, the poet wrote steadily on : he was never charged with hurrying or scamping his work. The early dawn is not, one would suppose, the period most conducive to the divine afflatus : “thoughts that breathe and words that burn” are rarely associated with the chilly morning twilight. But Scott’s genius was of a singularly sane character, robust and well-controlled as the man himself. “When at his desk,” says Lockhart, “the truth is that he did little more, as far as regarded poetry, than write down the lines which he had fashioned in his mind” already, while pursuing out-of-door vocations.

A quiet place to write indeed, though there must have been many comings and goings in the house. We must not forget that Sir Walter lived at Abbotsford with his family and servants, that he used to entertain his many friends at home and that he also was a very busy man, working as a sheriff in nearby Selkirk. One special mention here for Tom Purdie, the faithful and irreplaceable servant who took so well care of the domain and of his master.  “I wrought till two o’clock till I was almost nervous with correcting and scribbling” wrote Sir Walter in his Journal,  “I then walkd or rather was dragd through the snow by Tom Purdie while Skene accompanied. What a blessing there is in a man like Tom whom no familiarity can spoil, whom you may scold and praise and joke with, knowing the quality of the man is unalterable in his love and reverence to his master. Use an ordinary servant in the same way and he will be your master in a month.”
Something seems to be lacking in our picture ! Have you guessed what it is? The dogs, of course ! For Sir Walter would no be Sir Walter without his dogs.  He cherished them and there was always one or two of them lying at his feet or walking on his heels…

Sir Walter Scott's Dogs The New York Times 1898

But let us read again May Byron …

Meanwhile, as close as the pile of books would permit, a couple of splendid dogs lay waiting and watching for their master’s frequent glance and word, – for alike in work and conversation, Scott would often pause to speak to his dogs as though to friends and rational beings – which indeed they were. Maida, the great-iron-grey staghound, grave and stately, was hardly ever separated from his side; and as for the greyhounds, setters, and terriers of the establishment, they were practically innumerable. Scott had been accustomed, as a child, to be sent out upon the Border hills in charge of a shepherd; and he declared that “the habit of lying in the turf there among the sheep and the lambs had given his mind a peculiar tenderness for animals which it had ever retained.” This mutual attraction between the “Wizard of the North’ and his canine friends, often finds expression in his poems and romances. The staghound Maida was the “Bevis” of Woodstock. Lufra, in The Lady of the Lake, “the fleetest hound in all the North,” whose action precipitates the finale : the great dog Roswal, the companion of Sir Kenneth in The Talisman, – and several others, will recur to the memory at once.

Indeed, Sir Walter has often been pictured with one or two of his dogs at his side.

Painting by Sir Francis Grant of "Sir Walter Scott in his study at Abbotsford writing his last novel 'Count Robert of Paris' ", 1831. Source : SCRAN

I’ve often wondered how a man like Sir Walter Scott can have posed for so many long hours with his dogs, keeping still and quiet …But I let the master speak for himself and for the dogs.  In his Journal, on 7 saturday 1826, Sir Walter has written something full of humour and tenderness about the question…

Sunday. Knight (1), a young artist, son of the performer, came to paint my picture at the request of Terry (2) – This is very far from being agreeable as I submitted to this distressing state of constraint last year (3) – to Newton (4) at request of Lockhart, Leslie (5) at request of My American friend (6), Wilkie for his picture of the King’s arrival at Holy Rood House (7) and some one beside. I am as tired of the operation as old Maida (8) who had been so often sketchd that he got up and went away with signs of Loathing whenever he saw an artist unfurl his paper and handle his brushes. But this young man is civil and modest and I have agreed he shall sit in the room while I work and take the best likeness he can without compelling me into forced attitudes or the yawning fatigues of an actual sitting. I think if he has talent he may do more my way than in the customary mode – at least I cannot have the hangdog look which the unfortunate Theseus has who is doomd to sit for what seems an eternity (9).

(1) Knight : John Prescott Knight (1803-1829)

(2) Daniel Terry (?1780-1829), the gentleman-actor. Scott first met him through the Ballantynes in 1810, and their similar tastes for old plays drew them together. Terry idolized Scott even to the extent of talking like him and imitating his handwriting. He “Terryfied” (that is, dramatized) some of the Waverley Novels, and helped to furnish Abbotsford. See Life iii.223 and, e.g., Letters, vii. 278

(3) Scott means 1824

(4) Gilbert Stewart Newton (1794-1835)

(5) C.R. Leslie, R. A., who painted Scott’s portrait in October 1824.

(6) George Ticknor (1791-1871), Professor of French and Spanish at Harvard, who had visited Edinburgh in 1819. The portrait was painted in 1824 and Scott ‘with a tact and amiability very characteristic of him, selected the young American painter, then making himself known in England’. Ticknor’s Life, i. 389

(7) The picture referred to, which now hangs in Holyrood, is a composite portrait, celebrating the visit of George IV to Edinburgh in 1822 when Scott himself arranged and managed the entire proceedings.

(8) His favourite deerhound, which died in 1824.

(9) An allusion to Virgil’s Aeneid, vi. 617 quoted by Scott in the Entry for 14 June 1830.

The Journal of Sir Walter Scott Canongate Classics 1998

Hum… my  paperback copy of The Journal is falling into pieces and I think Janice’s book is no better…  I must try and find a hardback copy very soon for this big volume (918 pages in the Canongate edition) has become a true bible for us…

Abbotsford entrance door and dog statues Scotiana.com 2001

Camp, Nimrod, Spice, Triton, Ginger, Maida…the most famous dogs who have shared the short span of their life with Sir Walter did not fail to leave him memories as only dogs can do and I know what I’m talking about.  Not only did their master used to remember them with emotion in his Letters and in his Journal but he also made them live in his books, as we shall see later, following our reading of Walter Scott’s novels.

Abbotsford Chinese drawing room Ginger picture Scotiana.com 2006

Here is Ginger as we can discover him in a beautiful picture at Abbotsford…

Scott Monument Edinburgh Walter Scott and Maida statue Sir John Steel Princes Street Scotiana.com 2007

As for Maida, the favourite, she has been immortalized in the marble by Sir John Steel who represented the dog forever sitting at the side of his beloved master.The beautiful white statue of Sir Walter and Maida is definitely the most touching element of the Scott Monument, that huge gothic building which dominates Princes Street in Edinburgh. But, in the heart of the beautiful Scottish capital, Maida must share the limelight with Greyfriars Bobby, another famous Scottish dog whose moving story I will tell you in my next post.
My last words will be for Maida, as would have liked his master.

Abbotsford Walter Scott's House Entrance Maida dog statue Scotiana 2001

On the gravel path, as if keeping watch in front of the door of Abbotsford, we fall upon the statue of a dog tilting her head to her side as dogs use to do. On an inscribed plinth a latin phrase reads :  “Maidae marmorea dormis sub imagine Maida / Ante fores domini sit tibi terra levis” which Walter Scott translated into the words :

“Beneath the sculptured form which late you wore
Sleep soundly, Maida, at your master’s door.

WOUF !

A bientôt.

Mairiuna.

Thomas Carlyle Statue - Ecclefechan - Scotland (Photo © Scotiana 2006)

The artist, Joseph Edgar Boehm, has depicted the philosopher of Chelsea seated in an arm-chair, in deep study.

Head of Thomas Carlyle Statue-Ecclefechan-Scotland (Photo © Scotiana 2006)

More statues of Thomas Carlyle can be found, namely in the Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow as well as in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

Thomas Carlyle Statue by William Kellock Browne Kelvingrove Park(Photo © www.thomascarlyle.eu)

Thomas Carlyle StatueScottish National Portrait Gallery (Photo © SNPG)

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Born in a Calvinist environment, son of a master stonemason, he uses all of his wit to preach against materialism and also against mechanism during the industrial revolution while spreading  his German likeliness of thoughts as personnaly inspired by Goethe and  Schiller. He also admired Coleridge.

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The most characteristic work written by Thomas Carlyle is Sartor Resartus in which he describes  the material world as being a symbolic reflection of the spiritual world.

Sartor Resartus Thomas Carlyle - Everyman's Library Ed.

His thesis expresses the belief that as you leave this world, only the physical form goes through a change, as opposed to your spirit permanency.

The book did not reach instant approbation of the readers and consequently had limited success upon publication in 1838. Why? As per my readings , it seems that it is because:

“[...] in part because of its wild, grotesque, and rambling mixture of serious and comic styles. This picturesque and knotted prose was to become Carlyle’s hallmark “.

Source: Answers.com/topic/thomas-carlyle

I personally agree with the theme of his book, and cannot wait to read it in it’s entirety to better understand why it was greeted with “universal disapprobation”.

Author: Harry Fern from a photograph by John Pattrick, Century Magazine, 1899

Thomas Carlyle was a remarkable man.  To attend his courses he first walked the distance of 84 miles that separated his house from the University of Edinburgh.

Birthplace of Thomas Carlyle known as the Arch House (Photo © Scotiana 2004)

Another proof of his courage, endurance and energy was how he came back from the misfortune of having his entrusted manuscript for the first volume of The French Revolution burned by one of his friend John Stuart Mills’s close relationship, who mistook the manuscript as scrap paper !! Even though he was offered a £200 compensation, he still had to rewrite the entire book from the beginning.

I go bezerk when I loose two sentences from a document I closed without saving !! Imagine losing an entire book ? …gee wiz

One thing is certain, even though Thomas Carlyle was the leading social critic of early Victorian England, he never forgot his scottish roots and now rests in Ecclefechan churchyard in Scotland.

Thomas Carlyle Gravestone - Ecclefechan Churchyard - (Photo © Scotiana 2004)

Here rests Thomas Carlyle, who was born at Ecclefechan, 4th December 1795, and died at 24 Cheyne Row Chelsea, London on Saturday 5th February 1881.

Dwight Eisenhower who kept Sartor Resartus with him from 1942 through 1945 while Commander of AEF noted,

President Dwight Eisenhower - Stamp Collector

“It is a humble man who has read this masterpiece and hides it in his heart.”

Talk soon,

Janice