Recent reading: bits and pieces
Dec. 5th, 2021 10:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeThe Coast of Bohemia by William Dean Howells (1893). William Dean Howells was an absurdly prolific and very popular American novelist of the late 19th-early 20th century, and this book is his take on the world of Art. It follows Cornelia, a young woman who moves from a sleepy rural village to New York to study art, and her relationships with Ludlow, the man who first recognised her artistic talents and continues to act as a sort of mentor, and Charmian, a fellow art student who falls wildly and exuberantly in love with Cornelia while being equally wild and exuberant about everything else. osprey_archer said about this book, 'it is braided from three parts, two of which are delightful and one of which is the plot', and I agree with this assessment. The bits about Cornelia's life at art school and the world of art in New York are fascinating, and her relationship with Charmian is amazing fun. Charmian, the best part of the book, is a thorough pseudo-Bohemian; she's fitted up a room in her wealthy stepmother's flat as a perfectly decorated artist's studio, down to stretching a sheet diagonally across the ceiling to make the room look like a garret, and decorates the mantelpiece with pipes that she doesn't smoke, because 'pipes are so full of character'. She's not in the least annoyingly pretentious, just endlessly delightful in her forthright and uninhibited emotional expression. I found that her over-the-top adoration of Cornelia came across more as an extension of this general emotional attitude than as anything very overtly homoerotic—certainly there's no conscious tension to it and no jealousy over Cornelia's romance with Ludlow—although, when Cornelia and Ludlow are separated apparently for ever by a misunderstanding, she does talk very ardently about how she and Cornelia can now go and set up house together and 'live for each other in a union that should be all principle on one side and all adoration on the other'. Er, sounds good? Anyway, the third strand of the book, Cornelia and Ludlow's romance, was less interesting—there is some rather entertaining stuff about period notions of honour and correctness leading absurdly trivial problems to cause tons of drama, but Ludlow is annoying and I think Cornelia could do far better and more interesting things with her life, whether or not they involve Charmian.
A bit more Jacobite-related historical reading—I've read the diary of Elizabeth 'Beppy' Byrom, a young lady living in Manchester at the time of the '45. Very interesting history in here—the diary combines accounts of the Jacobite army's arrival in and movements around Manchester with the domestic details of Byrom's life, such as visits to her relatives and doing the washing. It's not as detailed as I might have liked, and her writing is sometimes difficult to follow, but still very good stuff. I enjoyed Byrom's accounts of how she expressed her own political opinions—making St Andrew's Crosses ('we sat up making till two o'clock') and dressing herself up in a white gown to go and see the Prince. (The 19th-century editor footnotes this with 'It is quite clear that this young lady was a sad Jacobite.').
Now I'm partway through 'Ladies in Rebellion' by Katherine Fusick, a Master's thesis on Jacobite women throughout the history of the movement. Lots of very interesting stuff on the different roles women played in Jacobite history, and I'm learning about some very cool people.
Then over the last week I've been working my way through a book published by a local natural history organisation, on the wildlife of a particular site nearby that I've visited several times. There are chapters on groups of organisms—fairly equitably distributed, with fungi, bryophytes and various insect taxa given as much attention as mammals and birds—the ecological history of the site, issues in its conservation and so on. It was fascinating to learn more about this place, and to see how much ecological and conservation work there is going on there—I've wanted to do more of this sort of thing myself for some time but, between moving around, the pandemic and being generally bad at getting into things like this, have never managed to find the opportunity. Anyway, I've written to the group asking about opportunities for getting involved, and we shall see how that goes.
osprey_archer said about this book, 'it is braided from three parts, two of which are delightful and one of which is the plot', and I agree with this assessment. The bits about Cornelia's life at art school and the world of art in New York are fascinating, and her relationship with Charmian is amazing fun. Charmian, the best part of the book, is a thorough pseudo-Bohemian; she's fitted up a room in her wealthy stepmother's flat as a perfectly decorated artist's studio, down to stretching a sheet diagonally across the ceiling to make the room look like a garret, and decorates the mantelpiece with pipes that she doesn't smoke, because 'pipes are so full of character'. She's not in the least annoyingly pretentious, just endlessly delightful in her forthright and uninhibited emotional expression. I found that her over-the-top adoration of Cornelia came across more as an extension of this general emotional attitude than as anything very overtly homoerotic—certainly there's no conscious tension to it and no jealousy over Cornelia's romance with Ludlow—although, when Cornelia and Ludlow are separated apparently for ever by a misunderstanding, she does talk very ardently about how she and Cornelia can now go and set up house together and 'live for each other in a union that should be all principle on one side and all adoration on the other'. Er, sounds good? Anyway, the third strand of the book, Cornelia and Ludlow's romance, was less interesting—there is some rather entertaining stuff about period notions of honour and correctness leading absurdly trivial problems to cause tons of drama, but Ludlow is annoying and I think Cornelia could do far better and more interesting things with her life, whether or not they involve Charmian.A bit more Jacobite-related historical reading—I've read the diary of Elizabeth 'Beppy' Byrom, a young lady living in Manchester at the time of the '45. Very interesting history in here—the diary combines accounts of the Jacobite army's arrival in and movements around Manchester with the domestic details of Byrom's life, such as visits to her relatives and doing the washing. It's not as detailed as I might have liked, and her writing is sometimes difficult to follow, but still very good stuff. I enjoyed Byrom's accounts of how she expressed her own political opinions—making St Andrew's Crosses ('we sat up making till two o'clock') and dressing herself up in a white gown to go and see the Prince. (The 19th-century editor footnotes this with 'It is quite clear that this young lady was a sad Jacobite.').
Now I'm partway through 'Ladies in Rebellion' by Katherine Fusick, a Master's thesis on Jacobite women throughout the history of the movement. Lots of very interesting stuff on the different roles women played in Jacobite history, and I'm learning about some very cool people.
Then over the last week I've been working my way through a book published by a local natural history organisation, on the wildlife of a particular site nearby that I've visited several times. There are chapters on groups of organisms—fairly equitably distributed, with fungi, bryophytes and various insect taxa given as much attention as mammals and birds—the ecological history of the site, issues in its conservation and so on. It was fascinating to learn more about this place, and to see how much ecological and conservation work there is going on there—I've wanted to do more of this sort of thing myself for some time but, between moving around, the pandemic and being generally bad at getting into things like this, have never managed to find the opportunity. Anyway, I've written to the group asking about opportunities for getting involved, and we shall see how that goes.
no subject
Date: Dec. 5th, 2021 05:56 pm (UTC)And go you, looking into the possibility of getting involved in nature conservation work! I feel at the moment like all my own work in this area is sending emails, doing book-keeping, etc, but I do very much enjoy being outdoors and doing surveys of species, etc. Hopefully I can do some of that next summer again.
Also, if Scotland happens, it will be cool to see new species there. I do enjoy seeing places which are a bit different from where I live, nature-wise, but still familiar enough that it isn't all overwhelming and new.
no subject
Date: Dec. 5th, 2021 08:13 pm (UTC)Aww, hopefully you do get to do some more outdoor conservation work soon! I love doing practical habitat management on reserves—my ID skills are not really good enough for surveys, but this organisation apparently have some training opportunities for species ID/surveying, so I might look into that.
Also, if Scotland happens, it will be cool to see new species there.
Definitely! Yes, a mixture of new and familiar species should be interesting. (I suppose, insofar as the Highlands share species with both Sweden and southern Britain, we'll be coming at that from opposite directions, which is nice :) ).
no subject
Date: Dec. 5th, 2021 09:25 pm (UTC)Underneath all the froth Charmian is extremely realistic: she knows exactly how much talent she has as an artist (not much) and exactly how important she is to Cornelia (far less important than Cornelia is to her) and she just bounces with it. This may be the secret to why her pretensions feel delightful rather than annoying: yes, she has indeed turned a room in her stepmother's incredibly luxurious New York apartment into a fake garret, but she straight-up confesses that she hung a sheet over the ceiling to do it and adds unprompted that she doesn't even smoke the pipes on the mantel. How can you help but love her?
I think her crush on Cornelia, like her garret, is an earnest attempt to live up to her ideal of the Bohemian Life: girl art students are SUPPOSED to have intensely emotional crushes on each other, and by gum Charmian can create the outer semblance even if she doesn't quite have the inner life!
no subject
Date: Dec. 6th, 2021 05:55 pm (UTC)Yes, you're very right about Charmian's self-awareness and realism. Her straightforward honesty about things like the sheet ceiling feels very unpretentious, and I suppose that relieves what would otherwise be pretentiousness in actually doing things like that.
True about her feelings for Cornelia, also. I suppose that's what Howells meant by 'the coast of Bohemia' rather than the interior. There's that bit in the introduction where he says that some critics thought he should have gone further into the Bohemian world but he wouldn't have liked to—I was rather intrigued by that, and a little bit disappointed! But, being what it is, it is a very fun book and I enjoyed it a lot.
no subject
Date: Dec. 6th, 2021 09:49 pm (UTC)Someday I'm going to find an 1890s book about bohemia that IS deeply femslashy. I had some hopes about Sarah Jeanette Duncan's A Daughter of To-Day, but alas it didn't really go there. But I'm sure it's out there!