Yesterday was a typical Tuesday, which is to say busy volunteering, not enough sleep despite best efforts, and a long time sitting at gymnastics while my children enjoy themselves and I grit my teeth as the other parents I socialise with there are not getting along and so it is all awkward politeness and trying to steer the conversation out of danger areas. But between the volunteer work (which is fun, with children which I like more than with adults) and the gymnastics there is time to go to the library, and yesterday many of my book requests had arrived, so I have a very full bag to sort through today.
I read a great deal, and widely and randomly, and doing so over the years I have come across things -- mostly groups of people, but sometimes places or events or moments -- that catch on me and will not let go, so that I end up reading book after book after book about them, trying to see from as many different angles as I can until suddenly I am done. This happened first with the Bloomsbury group, twenty-plus years ago after I saw (several times over) the movie Carrington and became entranced by the real people behind the well-acted characters. Since then I have had periods of reading deeply about the wives of Henry VIII, Vera Brittain and her WWI correspondents, Wallis Simpson and the abdication crisis, much more Bloomsbury in fits and starts, the historical Maria von Trapp and family, Nancy Mitford, humour in the Soviet Union, Rupert Brooke's relationship with Noel Olivier (which since it is hard to find much about her ended up leading me to reading a great deal by and about him), and last year it was Nancy's youngest sister Jessica (and a tiny bit of Diana but the fascism is so hard to take). As is obvious from the list, many of these are wealthy British people of leisure and creativity, because that seems to be something which interests me a good deal, from Bloomsbury onwards.
Recently I have been rereading Juliet Nicolson's The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm and this time around Diana Manners (who became Lady Diana Cooper and shows up thus in my Mitford reading) has caught me -- somewhat in herself, but more in her social circle, who called themselves the Coterie and mostly died in WWI -- they included Raymond Asquith, whose sister-in-law Cynthia's diaries have been on my list to read for a very long time. The excerpts from Diana's memoirs in Nicolson's book are fascinating, as are the little aside bits about her friends, and I have an ongoing fascination with social groups and the effects of the great war upon them. But also Diana's mother, the Duchess of Rutland, seems to have been a very interesting woman -- she was an artist and sculptor as well as a society lady, and part of yet another social circle, this one called The Souls whom her daughter's Coterie seems to have been trying a little to shock -- well, I do not really know yet, but I have books about both of them and both of the groups and I will see where it takes me. It is always a pleasant feeling, this having a new hare to chase, the desire to settle down into something and see how it all connects up with what I already know.
(I thought that 'a new hare to chase' was a common if outdated idiom but Google disagrees with me; it is not very common and seems to be much more recent than I realised. I had no idea my subconscious was inventing folk etymologies in its spare time.)
Edited to note: Jessica is not the youngest Mitford sister, that is Deborah -- how could I have forgotten Deborah? (Perhaps because thus far I do not know much about her, other than that she became the Duchess of Devonshire and was fond of chickens.) Thank you![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oursin for the reminder.
I read a great deal, and widely and randomly, and doing so over the years I have come across things -- mostly groups of people, but sometimes places or events or moments -- that catch on me and will not let go, so that I end up reading book after book after book about them, trying to see from as many different angles as I can until suddenly I am done. This happened first with the Bloomsbury group, twenty-plus years ago after I saw (several times over) the movie Carrington and became entranced by the real people behind the well-acted characters. Since then I have had periods of reading deeply about the wives of Henry VIII, Vera Brittain and her WWI correspondents, Wallis Simpson and the abdication crisis, much more Bloomsbury in fits and starts, the historical Maria von Trapp and family, Nancy Mitford, humour in the Soviet Union, Rupert Brooke's relationship with Noel Olivier (which since it is hard to find much about her ended up leading me to reading a great deal by and about him), and last year it was Nancy's youngest sister Jessica (and a tiny bit of Diana but the fascism is so hard to take). As is obvious from the list, many of these are wealthy British people of leisure and creativity, because that seems to be something which interests me a good deal, from Bloomsbury onwards.
Recently I have been rereading Juliet Nicolson's The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm and this time around Diana Manners (who became Lady Diana Cooper and shows up thus in my Mitford reading) has caught me -- somewhat in herself, but more in her social circle, who called themselves the Coterie and mostly died in WWI -- they included Raymond Asquith, whose sister-in-law Cynthia's diaries have been on my list to read for a very long time. The excerpts from Diana's memoirs in Nicolson's book are fascinating, as are the little aside bits about her friends, and I have an ongoing fascination with social groups and the effects of the great war upon them. But also Diana's mother, the Duchess of Rutland, seems to have been a very interesting woman -- she was an artist and sculptor as well as a society lady, and part of yet another social circle, this one called The Souls whom her daughter's Coterie seems to have been trying a little to shock -- well, I do not really know yet, but I have books about both of them and both of the groups and I will see where it takes me. It is always a pleasant feeling, this having a new hare to chase, the desire to settle down into something and see how it all connects up with what I already know.
(I thought that 'a new hare to chase' was a common if outdated idiom but Google disagrees with me; it is not very common and seems to be much more recent than I realised. I had no idea my subconscious was inventing folk etymologies in its spare time.)
Edited to note: Jessica is not the youngest Mitford sister, that is Deborah -- how could I have forgotten Deborah? (Perhaps because thus far I do not know much about her, other than that she became the Duchess of Devonshire and was fond of chickens.) Thank you
oursin for the reminder.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-01 10:40 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-05-02 06:08 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-05-02 06:51 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-05-02 08:52 am (UTC)From:I do wonder quite a lot about the brother!
no subject
Date: 2019-05-02 07:20 pm (UTC)From:I read about 3/4 of the large book of letters last year before feeling that I had had enough Mitfords for the time -- I read it in tandem with Decca's own letters to balance out the so-much-Diana.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-02 10:35 am (UTC)From:Popular memory always thinks of the Summer of 1913 as the 'perfect one' and as so often, popular memory is wrong.