Category: books

I started reading E.C.R. Lorac‘s detective novels recently as some of them are in the British Library Crime Classics series.

Death of an Author impressed me with its twisty reasoning — so many different what-might-have-happened theories! There were also hilarious debates on the mind of the female author, and whether one could tell the sex/gender of the author by reading the book, in which men argue with each other and sometimes change their minds. The main woman character in Death of an Author is notable for being super competent in many ways!

As I then went back to read as many Lorac novels as I could easily find I kept coming across amazing women who were more interesting than the detective main character.

Death on the Oxford Road has Miss Madeleine Hanton, who is not only perceptive and smart, as smart as the detective or smarter, but she also has a power wheelchair in around 1931.

“Her brother and niece disposed of, Miss Madeleine got herself settled into her electrically propelled motor-chair. It was a neat vehicle and assured her of “independent mobility” when she wanted to be on the move. This afternoon she decided to inspect the garden, particularly the shrubbery near the chauffeur’s cottage; if the Scotland Yard man were to arrive, Miss Madeleine intended to have a word with him.”

Miss Hanton was also a hospital Commandant in the war (World War I) and lets everyone know it:
““Rubbish, Waring!” snapped Miss Hanton. “How old are you? Twenty-three? Well, when you were seven years old, I was Commandant of a hospital in France. I’ve been bombed, and I’ve been torpedoed. I’ve bandaged men who were half blown to bits. If you think your corpse on the road is going to upset me, you’re making the mistake of your life. I only wish I’d been there,—I’m much more observant than most people, and corpses were commonplaces to me at one time.”

I thought back over many popular British detective novels of the time where there just weren’t ever women like this. There weren’t suffragists, or ambulance drivers, or nurses, or if there were they were undermined or mocked. Can you even think of a competent woman in an Agatha Christie novel who isn’t Miss Marple, who isn’t just like, the grossest and strangest stereotype?

Then I hit Post after Post-Mortem and while it had many intelligent women characters it seemed to leave it open to question whether too much intellectual activity and authoring might not be wrong for women, though it is the men (as usual) debating and questioning it. The subtext (to me) was that the intelligent, successful middle aged (?) woman writer was actually messed with and fucked over constantly by the men around her who supposedly admired and supported her. They could only cope with intelligent women if they were quite young, and thought that then the right thing would be for them to have babies, to keep them so busy they would not have time to be neurotic.

Ugh!!! Gross! I feel sure Lorac meant to be snarky about it.

In These Names Make Clues I’m still at the beginning but am charmed by Miss Susan Coombe (we are still in the 30s), who was a suffragist who had spent time in prison but post prison and post getting the vote, worked within the government (or with the government) to reform women’s prisons. She is instantly assessed by our detective as the smartest person around & a formidable intellect!

They are good books, not like earth shattering but a comfort read for me right now during this stressful time. There are often things to look up that send me down Wikipedia journeys – reading about what a Minty chair is, or last night, about the King and Country debate at the Oxford Union, from a casual line of dialogue in These Names Make Clues.

I’m glad I found Lorac’s work !

Another of the books in the pile from my mom – Judith and Jane – from 1925 – was completely separated from the spine with the pages detached, so I read it carefully on the dining room table yesterday. It was somewhat similar to Plain Jane and Pretty Betty as the story has a poor girl who is happy and a rich girl who is miserable, and they eventually become besties.

It also made me cry, as these books tend to do nowadays. Not sure what happened, since I was a heartless wretch as a child and would just laugh at any hint of sentiment, mocking it relentlessly, while now in my 50s I can feel myself winding up to weep into my hoodie as soon as one of the girls contemplates her sorrows or there is any sort of heart to heart talk!

So here is the plot synopsis with some commentary. Jane is the poor but happy girl, in a boarding house in 1920s New York City, living with her mother who works as a magazine editor. Her father died recently – within the last few months to a year – And her mother got an invitation for Jane to be a scholarship student at Mrs Something’s School for Girls.

Meanwhile, in the 6th grade at Mrs Whatever’s School for Snooty-Ass Bitches, vivacious, rich Judy is extremely popular, but secretly unhappy, as her mother is dead and her beloved father doesn’t really pay attention to her. He is an important banker or something. Her governness and all the servants in their mansion barely even remember how old she is on her birthday, her presents suck because they are like, dollies and frills and she is TWELVE and her party is boring because it’s the same overblown children’s entertainers as ever. She is not allowed to have her mother’s miniature in her room to weep over because it was painted by some famous artist. Awkward times at the old mansion! Judy compensates by acting out in school so she can always be the center of attention. So when Jane shows up, Judy is a huge snob and the other girls follow suit. Plus they are just puzzled at the thought of someone having no father and their mother isn’t even in Who’s Who! OMG!

The teachers are overwhelmed by the terrible behavior of the 6th grade class and especially Judy, except for Eleanore Myers Jewett’s self-insert character, the history and English teacher, Miss Kelly.

Jane’s mother points out that Judy must have something good in her, because her rizz dominates the classroom so hard. Jane kind of sees it and wishes they could be friends BUT NO.

Quick fast forward: Interspersed with scenes of Judy’s secret misery, we see Jane being treated unjustly. Not invited to Judy’s stupid party – Jane gets the best part in the class play (Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream) Judy is Jealous but secretly delivers flowers to Jane (!!!) – Accused of being a goody two shoes – Dared by the class to do something that the principal had just completely forbidden on pain of expulsion – Jane finds out she only got the scholarship because the other students suck and they needed to get someone smart in – Same for Miss Kelly, the only competent teacher – Jane suspected unjustly of stealing a beautifully illustrated book from a classmate AND EXPELLED on the very day that her mother is in a horrible subway accident and in the hospital, unconscious!

Jane moves in with her minister and minister’s wife who conveniently live in the same boarding house in the slums. Shit happens fast. The minister goes to the principal – Miss Kelly also intervenes – Judy has an enormous realization that she sucks, is sad, actually likes and admires Judy, wishes she could hang out with Judy’s beautiful and smiling motherly mother, etc. TURN ON THE WATERWORKS because they have a gorgeous talk and agree to be BFFs. They both secretly dream of becoming AUTHORESSES! They write poetry and stories! Jane then gets the riding lessons of her dreams including a full riding outfit and little ivory-handled riding crop, gets comfy in the mansion, and impresses Mr. Judy the Banker with her happy childlike laughter and ability to touch-type.

Back in the classroom, Miss Kelly assigns the 6th grade to think of a high old brick wall. If they could climb over it for the first time, what would they see? It turns out Judy at her summer mansion actually has an old stone wall she used to stare at but didn’t want to look over, exactly because she liked to imagine something amazing was there. Looking would ruin the fantasy. Someone mentions the Land of Happy Dreams (or something)

The girls then produce a zine!!! I’m not joking! They write all the stories and poems for their magazine, Jane types it all, and they produce two issues, one for Judy’s dad and one for Jane’s mom who is still in the hospital months later at Christmas, unable to walk!

Turns out Mr. Judy is on the Board of that very hospital and visits with Jane and Judy and gets Mrs. Jane a private room so she can have more frequent visits!

Mr. Judy becomes much much nicer, and has learned to be a real Father in a real homelike, cozy, listening to his daughter, way!

A famous surgeon found by Mr. Judy then repairs Mrs. Jane’s spine!

Jane meanwhile sent off one of her mother’s stories to an editor and it wins $300 in a contest, which I believe may have been enough to pay the surgeon (!?) But also Jane is invited to Judy’s summer mansion and is working very short mornings as Mr. Judy’s typist so that she doesn’t feel beholden!

Jane and Judy (led by Judy’s still naughty spirit) ride off without their groom early one morning, Judy is thrown from a horse, and then they are KIDNAPPED BY ROUGH MEN in a CAR and taken to the slums of NYC somewhere! The rough men’s … wife or mother or something … is roughly kind to them and won’t let them be hurt! But also won’t let them escape. Jane escapes, wanders around the slummiest slum, then into a diner full of rough and dirty men who do not help her but then the smallest dirtiest man gives her his LAST NICKEL and is kind – Police come – everyone rescues – Jane worries aboout rewarding the one kind and poor man and is informed the slum is only a slum because people were poor and that maybe unions will help them and the kind man is an anarchist organizer!

I had not predicted either a kidnapping, or that the girls would be RESCUED BY ANARCHISTS!

You can see the ending I hope! It lies just over the stone garden wall ! In the LAND OF HAPPY DREAMS AND ANARCHY.

Everyone is really truly sisters and lives happily ever after, with the note that even though their hopes and dreams change as they grow up, they have learned they should always work steadily towards them!

Of course I had to look up Eleanore Myers Jewett. She had the barest stub of a Wikipedia page, so I added a little to improve it, from a few decent looking sources. I would have to go lookking in histories of children’s books, or maybe newspapers or something with contemporary book reviews, to find out more to add.

Surprise (not) she had a PhD in medieval English and comparative literature, and worked for a while as a middle school English and history teacher! I love her now.

This book easily could have become a series. Judith and Jane at the Rodeo! Judith and Jane go Deep Sea Fishing! Judith and Jane March for Women’s Suffrage! I feel a pang that these books don’t exist.

Next up, Plain Jane and Pretty Betty.

I also plan to (re-)read some classics of Russian literature to offset the silly Inspector Rostinov detective series.

My mom gave me a small stack of old children’s books from my grandmother’s collection. I am fairly sure they were my grandmother’s to begin with. I grew up reading this stuff. The top of the pile was Helen’s Babies, which I vaguely remembered as somehow not one of my favorites – not a book that I read over and over again. After I ripped through it this morning I got some insight as to why. It has a sort of condescending “little kids lisping and saying adorable things while being idiotically naughty” flavor to it (like the much later “Penrod”) that I didn’t like then and that still rubs me the wrong way. I enjoyed it more now than I did when I was a kid and found it funnier. What I didn’t realize is that it was written in 1876! (Contemporary with Five Little Peppers btw.) That is quite early for this kind of book and makes it more interesting to me.

I had a look at the front of the book and realized that this isn’t my grandma’s copy of Helen’s Babies, which was in terrible condition, falling apart. My mom must have bought this one or maybe I bought it years ago to give to her, knowing she loved it. The book is inscribed, “Presented to Dan Halstand, April 5th, 1925 on his 7th Birthday from Grand Mother Halstand”. I wonder if 7 year old Dan liked it for the naughtiness of the little boys, ages 5 and 3? In a sort of Joel Pepper Gee-whockety way that an older kid (like I was when I read it) would find nauseating? And did Grand Mother Halstand present it to him because she read it to her children? It could even have been a book from her own childhood!

The book’s point of view character, Uncle Harry, arrives in the country somewhere just north of New York City, as his married sister sent him a letter telling him he should go take care of her two boys for his vacation. “Just the thing!” he muses, considering his brother in law’s fine horses, cigars, books, and cellar of claret. There is a maid or children’s nurse (aka a nanny), a cook, and an Irish handyman/driver/horse caretaker running the household. Anyway, Uncle Harry quickly realized that the children he thought of as perfect angels from earlier visits, were filthy, ruin everything, cry and howl, wake him up at all hours, love to climb up on the roof and hang over cliffs, and so on. Hijinks ensue.

The “plot” is that he has a certain Regard for a lady in that town, Alice Mayton, whose mother lives there – it seems like Alice is visiting from NYC too but staying in a boarding house full of other single ladies. So there is a romantic plot that is also comical as the children ruin every social occasion or embarrassing Uncle Harry in some cringey way by revealing way too much of his Certain Regard for Alice in mixed company. He falls into the mud and is seen by a carriage of tittering boarding house ladies; the littler boy falls and get hurt and demand that he sing a particular embarrassing song while rocking him and kissing him (also in front of the boarding house ladies.)

This is pretty cool in a way because it’s about this slightly pompous young man who does much of the normal work of caring for young children. He doesn’t realize how attractive and steady and loving it makes him look to not only all the ladies but his particular crush, Alice.

I went to have a look to see what reviews or discussion I could find of the book. Unexpectedly, right at the top of the results — George Orwell mentioned it a couple of times in his essays on literature; briefly mentioned in Good Bad Books (a term he says that GK Chesterton came up with), and then explored a bit more in Riding down to Bangor. He is thinking about how as children we gather some vague idea, the most stereotypical, about other places in the world – for him, from things like boys’ adventure tales.

The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one’s mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can even survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

You can think of how they map out gender and class in a similar way.

Orwell’s description of his boyhood concept of “America” is very funny!

He also mention so many good favorites of the genre! Rebecca of Sunnnybrook Farm and the What Katy Did books! I wish I could go back in time and get him to read Understood Betsy as well. Anyway, when he analyzes Helen’s Babies it’s really him trying to understand how social class works in the U.S. of the 1870s, in New York, post Civil War. And the morality of the book which manages to work in a pious Christian air in a less dull way than the usual books of that time – the tracts where a small child is either naughty and dies, or is super religious and pure and dies – accompanied by the most boring sermonizing ever. Instead our naughty toddlers are seen as cute and healthy and normal – their naughtiness is innocent and pure – They like the more adventurous Bible stories and insist on praying adorably before bed, not forgetting their dead baby brother.

Orwell analyzes it as compelling, readable schlock. I ended up reading through a fair number of his essays of criticism – some I had read before, like the one on PG Wodehouse, but most were new to me.

I had a look a the author of Helen’s Babies, John Habberton. He wrote the book on the advice of his wife (maybe with her input?) to tell stories of their own children and how cute they were. I saw he published more books that look like sentimental tales of parenting – for example, “The Annals of a Baby, by one of its slaves”. I’m curious to read that one!

That title makes me think of The Biography of a Baby, a more serious work of developmental psychology from 1881 by Milicent Washburn Shinn, in which she analyzes the behavior and development of her niece, Ruth, for the baby’s first two years. Very refreshing and non religious, not sentimental in the way you might expect from 1881 – contemporaneous with books like Helen’s Babies or Elsie Dinsmore. Milicent was the first woman to get a PhD from UC Berkeley. It’s a great book that I often buy for people when they are having their first baby!

Next up, I will re-read Plain Jane and Pretty Betty which I remember as one of my favorites. There is a very decrepit copy of Judith and Jane – to read it I will have to treat it like an archival copy and more or less turn the pages with tweezers and white gloves since I don’t see it online as an ebook anywhere and also don’t see any other copies for sale!