I then sorted out my remaining books, looking for the ones that I have acquired over the years but not got around to actually reading (everyone has this problem, right?). Now I have all of my unread books ready to go – this
picture merely shows the fictional ones!
Depending on how long this lockdown
business lasts, I might finally get around to reading Lorna Doone and Bleak
House – although I’ll probably go for The Shadow of Doctor Syn and
at least one of the Agatha Christies before either of those...
I started on my unread books with a point of order – regarding
the John Buchan book, The Strange Adventures of Mr Andrew Hawthorn & Other Stories (which I had myself picked up from the communal bookshelf at
the Tube station). This recent Penguin Classics Buchan anthology contains 18 of
JB’s short stories, eight of which I already have thanks to my owning both volumes
of The Best Short Stories of John Buchan so I felt that this one was a
bit of a cheat. None of these volumes, by the way, contains the Buchan short
story that made it into The Penguin Book of the British Short Story from
Daniel Defoe to John Buchan; all I can deduce from that is the obvious
observation that JB wrote a lot of well-regarded short stories! My plan here, I
decided, was to read through the JB short stories that weren’t in the books that I
already own (if that makes sense). I particularly enjoyed the titular one, a very Buchan-esque piece about a man who steps out of his house one morning ... and is neither seen nor heard of for the next five years.
As for The Penguin Book of the British Short Story
from Daniel Defoe to John Buchan, this is an anthology covering the British
short story from the age of Swift and Defoe to the early twentieth century, with
works by 36 authors. I’ve been dipping into it at leisure. Some names are
familiar to me, others less so. Having enjoyed some of Rudyard Kipling’s short
stories in the past, I made a bee-line for his one, ‘The Village that Voted the
Earth was Flat’ (a lively read, and a story that I feel has great contemporary relevance
in the age of fake news and concerns over the extent of the influence of the media; worth comparing, I feel, with Buchan’s ‘The Last Crusade’). I then chose an unknown (to me) author at random, and
thus found myself enjoying ‘Holiday Group’, the tale of a vicar and his wife
taking their young family on a holiday to the seaside by E.M. Delafield.
Then it was an immersion into the murky world of Tudor
politics courtesy of Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel’s sequel to Wolf Hall.
At just under 500 pages it’s a long read even though it covers a short
time-frame, from September 1535 (the point at which Wolf Hall left off) to the
execution of Anne Boleyn the following year. I do like the revisionist
portrayal of Thomas Cromwell, particularly how he deals with the ever-fascinating and
ever-dangerous Henry VIII; the part where the King is knocked unconscious
during a joust and everyone fears that he has died – this at a time when it was
considered treason to speculate on what would happen in the event of the King’s
death – is a particular highlight. Then there’s Cromwell’s interaction with the
courtiers who think that the low-born Master Secretary (the son, as is often mentioned,
of a Putney blacksmith) is beneath them, just like they thought the same of
Cromwell’s former mentor Cardinal Wolsey whose ghost haunts the life of his protégé.
Oh, how they underestimate him! It’s no coincidence when, as Cromwell moves to
bring down Anne Boleyn once it becomes clear to him that the King’s now got
eyes for Jane Seymour, he makes sure to take down four noblemen who openly mocked
Wolsey after his downfall. Heavy going? Yes, for there is much detail here. That
it is very well-researched and very well-written I do not dispute, but although
I enjoyed parts of Bring Up the Bodies I do feel that, when it comes to
intrigue in the reign of Henry VIII, the Shardlake novels are probably more to
my taste.
A lighter read, next. Well, physically lighter at any
rate, for Rasselas (full title: The History of Rasselas, Prince of
Abissinia) by Samuel Johnson comes in at 150 pages and about a fifth of
that is the introduction (this being the early Eighties Penguin edition,
original retail price £1:60). I am something of an admirer of Samuel Johnson,
having volunteered at Dr Johnson’s House in the City (and even visited his
birthplace in Lichfield) but I had never previously read this, his only novel
which I bought – if memory serves – from the 50p shelf of a second-hand
bookshop in Winchester. According to Boswell, Johnson wrote Rasselas in
a week in order to pay the costs of his mother’s funeral, although unfortunately some
scholars have cast doubt on whether this was actually the case. The story
features characters from Ethiopia (formerly known as Abyssinia) which also
piqued my interest (since I went there myself on my African odyssey); Johnson
himself was not entirely unfamiliar with this country, one of his earlier works
being the translation of a book by a Portuguese missionary who’d been there in
the seventeenth century.
The titular Rasselas is a young and idealistic prince, raised in a comfortable-yet-isolated
community in the mountains known as the happy valley. He is, for want of a
better word, bored with his pampered and carefree existence in the valley and
desires to see the wider world and find what it is that makes people happy and contented. So, in the company of his sister Nekayah, her
servant Pekuah and a well-travelled poet-philosopher called Imlac who acts as a
mentor to the others, Rasselas escapes from the happy valley and travels to Cairo.
They meet various people from all levels of society, among them a hermit (who,
far from extolling the virtues of a life of solitude as might be expected, decides that he wants to
go back to the city), a philosopher who disappoints Rasselas by failing to practice what he preaches (“be not too hasty, said Imlac, to trust, or to admire, the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men”) and an astronomer who, although initially taken to be
wise, is in fact mad (“perhaps”, opines Imlac, “no human mind is in its right
state”). A visit to the Pyramids goes badly when Pekuah, who hadn’t wanted to join
the others by going into the Great Pyramid, gets kidnapped – leading the others
to reflect on guilt and loss before she is returned to them. Eventually, in the final chapter (entitled “The conclusion, in which nothing is concluded”), they decide to return to Abissinia after realising the futility of their search; complete happiness is, they have found, elusive.
It would be a mistake to assume that Rasselas is a
travel story, though. It’s an examination of the human condition, with
particular reference to the pursuit of happiness and the age-old question of whether (so
to speak) the grass really is greener on the other side. Somewhat cynical about optimism while also reflecting on mankind’s seemingly infinite capacity for hope, it’s definitely worth reading, and I feel that it’s a book that can be returned to again and again. And there are, of course,
some great Johnsonian pearls of wisdom to be had here, among them:
“A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected” (ch. XII – yes, he used Roman numerals for the chapters!)
“Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting is scent with the flowers
of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and
from the mouth of the Nile” (ch. XXIX)
“Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is
hourly lost, and something acquired … do not suffer life to stagnate; it will
grow muddy for want of motion: commit yourself again to the current of the
world” (ch. XXXV)
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