The Camomile by Catherine Carswell

Catherine Carswell’s book, The Camomile is about a woman who rents a room close to home, so she can focus on her creative pursuits. Recently returned home to Glasgow after studying music at a conservatory in Frankfort, Ellen Carstairs initially wants a place to practice the piano without being interrupted by her intrusive aunt, but it is writing that soon becomes Ellen’s primary focus.

The book is divided into three parts, starting with a letter dated 2 September, which Ellen writes to Ruby Marcus, a friend from the conservatory, who like Ellen has moved back home after finishing her training. In fact, the entire book is like one long letter to Ruby, because the second part is a journal addressed to Ruby, which Ellen mails off in parts. The third section is another letter to Ruby. This one dated 8 December, a year and three months on from the start of the book.

But—though it took us so long to realise it fully—you and I were both there under false pretences. You were there because you loved all the arts and had to escape from West Hampstead, I because I loved all the arts and had to get away from Glasgow. And though we had both been buttered up by our silly music-teachers into the belief that because we had general artistic taste music was our gift, I think we always ‘knew in our souls,’ as Boris used to say, that nothing comes of choosing an art; the art must choose you. I daresay it was party this that made us such friends right from the beginning.

Meanwhile here we are, both back in the places we worked so had and lied so stoutly to escape from, both faced with the necessity of justifying our brief escape by giving music lessons for money. It all seems very strange to me. (11-12)

Ellen talks about the everyday struggles with living in a close knit community and wanting to have a claim in her personal freedom. She quickly discovers that having a room to work in does not mean that you will always be able to get work done there. At one point she lists the advantages verses the disadvantages of her room, with the disadvantages far outweighing the advantages. Some of disadvantages are very funny indeed. My favourites being, number two, “Cats (many outside, one—not a nice one—inside)” and number 14 “Boy in the lane with an instrument giving lifelike imitation of cats” (29).

But I think the journal entry from 20 December perfectly captures what it is to have the physical space for your creative pursuits, but still finding there are other road blocks in the way of being creative.

For once I am going to write in this in the morning. Generally I don't let myself touch it till night. But of late writing at night has turned my head into a rookery, with ideas for the rooks, caw-cawing by the hour, but never getting any farther, and serving no end but to keep me hopelessly awake when I want to sleep.

After playing at Miss Sutherland's school this morning and giving lessons to the very unmusical Lockhart children, I went to my Room meaning to practise. But the whole house smelt so fusty and steamy, with a washing going on just under my window, that I fled.

Now I am sitting in the Botanic Gardens. Though the puddles are frozen in the shade, you could sit out for ever so long in the sun without feeling cold. (40)

I can picture Ellen huddled on a bench in the cold to scribble in her notebook and trying to convince herself it really is very warm in the sunshine,—if where was any—whilst slowly losing feeling in her fingers.

At one point Ellen is reading an autobiography by an aristocratic woman that a friend insists on lending to her, because she claims Ellen is getting too solemn and serious. It’s not the type of thing Ellen would normally read, and Ellen is confused as to why her friend thought it would help cheer her up, because the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that the life of an aristocrat wouldn’t suit her at all. 

I need so much leisure and being by myself doing nothing in particular, and she seems always to have done everything in company. I do love meeting people, but a whole day with them nearly kills me. Having to be socially polite for a couple of hours at a stretch makes my face ache all over. (91)

It’s just five pages later that Ellen’s love interest is first mentioned. There are too many red flags to the relationship to share them all, but this one stuck with me. When she asks him how he would feel if “instead of playing tennis and things I wanted to sit dully at home writing ‘highbrow’ stories” after they are married, he assures her that she won’t want to do that.

[H]e would never like to stand in my way, but he thought I was ‘so much a woman’ that what I suggested was unlikely to happen. ‘Life,’ he said, ‘is a bigger affair than books, and life is pre-eminently your business. Wait till your hands are full of life, and I doubt if you will have the time or the wish to add to the mass of feminine writings already in the world.’ This, I must say, deeply impressed me. (163-64)

This felt distinctly similar to a passage in Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel, The Bell Jar. 

I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn’t want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterwards you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state. (The Bell Jar 81)

Surprisingly, it is the book that was published earlier which offers hope for a character who feels the attraction to two things, being a wife and being a writer, which she has been lead to believe are mutually exclusive. As we find out at the beginning of The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood has a baby, but there is no mention of her being a writer. While Ellen Carstairs’ story ends with a section called ‘Also, Vorwärts!’. In reminding her friend Ruby of this encouraging cry which was a favourite of their music teacher, Ellen is urging Ruby as much as herself to move forwards, march onwards. It is distinctly optimistic.

According to the back cover of The Camomile, Catherine Carswell’s book is “widely considered a fictional counterpart to Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’”. Originally published in 1922, The Camomile, predates both ‘A Room of One’s Own’, published in 1929 and the 1928 Cambridge lectures the essay grew out of. This begs the question, did Woolf read The Camomile and could she have found inspiration in Carswell’s writing? Did Sylvia Plath, for that matter? Perhaps. However, it seems more likely that all of these writers were concerned with the pressing issues for women of their day, issues that continue to be of concern now. 

If there is to be a takeaway from this novel I think it is, at least in part, that the issues facing Ellen Carstairs are not solved by simply having a room and an income. A room is a start. And in this novel Ellen makes a start at carving out a space for herself and for her art. There is more work to be done, but if the last section heading, ‘Also, Vorwärts!’ is any indication, she is facing it from a position of vindication and optimism for the future. 

I found this book to be thought provoking and compelling. It was also a really enjoyable read. I think I will always list F. Tennyson Jesse’s A Pin to the See the Peepshow as my favourite book from the British Library Women Writers series, but this one is definitely up there. 

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of The Camomile for review. All opinions on the book are my own.

Mr. Pottermack's Oversight by R. Austin Freeman

 

I’m not going to lie to you. The first thing that attracted me to Mr. Pottermack’s Oversight is it’s gorgeous cover. As I was whizzing through this book, I would occasionally stop to admire the cover, while I contemplated the fate of Mr. Pottermack. Originally published in 1930, the cover artwork of this edition comes from a Metropolitan Railway brochure designed by E.J. Kealey. In my opinion, everything about this cover is perfect, right down to the deep plum colour of the text block. 

The only problem with a book that has as eye-catching a cover as this one is that one’s hopes for enjoyment cannot help but be inflated. Well, I neglected all of my plans last weekend and finished this book in two days, because I was too captivated to put it down, so I would say Mr. Pottermack’s Oversight is well-deserving of an equally captivating cover.

Richard Austin Freeman is credited with creating the “inverted mystery” in 1910 with his short story “The Case of Oskar Brodski” published in Pearson’s Magazine. Also known as a “howcatchem”, the story is structured with the crime at the beginning, and usually reveals the identity of the perpetrator. Freeman uses this construct in Mr. Pottermack’s Oversight.

The novel opens with a man in prison garb running for his life as a sultry July afternoon slips into evening. Luck is on his side as he happens upon a bather’s clothes, and he manages to evade the guards pursing him. When we meet up with a man called Mr. Pottermack admiring a sundial in a mason’s yard in the sleepy village of Borley, Bucks, we know this is that same man in disguise, doing his best to keep a low profile. No wonder the motto on the sundial holds a special meaning for him. Sole orto: spes: decedente pax. “At the rising of the sun, hope: at the going down thereof, peace” (26).

Despite Mr. Pottermack’s efforts to move on with his life, a persistent blackmailer continues to make a nuisance of himself. When the blackmailer inserts himself into Mr. Pottermack’s life one time too many, Mr. Pottermack realizes that no matter how much money he gives the man, he will never be free as long as the blackmailer lives. 

As he sat, two sides of the sun-dial were visible to him, and on them he read the words “decedente pax.” He repeated them to himself, drawing from them a new confidence and encouragement. Why should it not be so? The storms that had scattered the hopes of his youth had surely blown themselves out. His evil genius, who had first betrayed him and then threatened to destroy utterly his hardly earned prosperity and security; who had cast him into the depths and had fastened upon him when he struggled to the surface; the evil genius, the active cause of all his misfortunes, was gone for ever and would certainly trouble him no more.

Then why should the autumn of his life not be an Indian summer of peace and tranquil happiness? Why not? (88-89)

But it is once Mr. Pottermack has gotten rid of the blackmailer for good that his troubles really begin. The case of the missing bank manager is brought to Dr. Thorndyke’s attention and something about it peaks his interest. Mr. Pottermack is a determined and methodical man, but is he clever enough to outwit Dr. Thorndyke, a man who lives for interesting cases and specializes in forensics?

Initially, this book felt a bit overwritten, but either it grew less so as the book went on, or I adjusted to the writing style, as I was soon luxuriating in Freeman’s prose. One might say the conclusion drags on a bit. Freeman could have left more for the reader to piece together for themselves. But I must admit, I did enjoy the telling. I wasn’t annoyed by Dr. Thorndyke for taking his time, while I have been known to get a bit antsy with Agatha Christie’s conclusions, specifically with Hercule Poirot as it often feels like he needlessly spins out the explanation of how he solved the crime. 

Dr. Thorndyke reminded me of a more likeable Sherlock Holmes with his focus on science and forensics. I do wonder if even readers in the 1930s would have been fully on board with how mummified remains are purchased and used in this novel. A modern reader will certainly have to suspend their disbelief, but it did make for entertaining reading, nonetheless.  

I found that Mr. Pottermack reminded me a bit of Tom Ripley, but I’m still not quite sure why. As much as I appreciate Patricia Highsmith’s writing, Ripley tends to make me feel sick to my stomach. Whereas with Freeman’s character, as much as I was interested to see how Dr. Thorndyke solved the mystery, I wanted Mr. Pottermack to get away with his crime. I’m not sure I would describe Mr. Pottermack as a likeable character, but the author does a stellar job making the reader believe this character deserves his freedom. Right to the very end, I kept wondering if Mr. Pottermack was going to get away with his crime.

This book starts in late July, then picks up in the same month fifteen years later, concluding in April. Despite it’s autumnal cover, I think this book would make an enjoyable read at any time of year. While an important scene takes place in early autumn, I think the cover is symbolic of a man who is at a crossroads. For Mr. Pottermack, middle age is complicated with impending imprisonment if he fails to get away with his crime. He dares to hope that instead of facing the autumn of his life, a last Indian summer might remain for him instead of an early winter. You will have to read it to find out if Mr. Pottermack gets his wish. 

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Mr. Pottermack’s Oversight for review. All opinions on the book are my own.

A New Name

The last couple of weeks have been interesting for me. A lot of high points, but some not good very things happened too. Let’s get the bad things out of the way first. 

On 6 August Meta decided that the link to carosbookcase.blogspot.com was spam. I suspect it happened when a link to a review on my blog was shared on one of the Meta owned sited, but I have no way of knowing how or why it happened. It may be that AI is to blame, or it could be due to human error. I hate to think that anyone reported the link as spam, but I supposed that too is a possibility. Regardless of how it happened, the result was that I could no longer share the link to my blog in my bio on Instagram, or anywhere else on Meta's platforms, and neither could anyone else. I have filed a complaint through Instagram. However, I did this in the past for another issue and never heard a word from them.

The experience has been upsetting. Embarrassing, too. Unless you or someone close to you has had a similar issue, it's easy to assume that Meta is in the right when they say someone has gone against their ‘Community Guidelines’. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. But what can you expect from a social media conglomerate that sounds like it is straight out of a George Orwell novel? I spent a lot of time trying to come up with a solution to the problem. I considered creating a new blog, changing the domain name. The more research I did, the more daunting it felt, especially when the same thing could easily happen again with a new website. Then all of that work (and expense) would have been for nothing. 

For now I have opted to shell out for a custom domain, removing “blogspot” from the web address. Now you can find me at carosbookcase.com. If you happen to type the old address, carosbookcase.blogspot.com, into your web browser, it should reroute to the new address automatically.

Needless to say, this issue has greatly diminished my interest in creating content for a company that has no interest in its content creators or its users. When I joined Instagram I wanted to create something beautiful. I wanted to bring joy to others, but also to myself. And I have to tell you, this incident has left me searching for the joy. 

Here's where we get to the good things...

This incident has also reminded me of all of the kind people I have met since I started posting about books online. I just wanted to say that I appreciate all of you who reached out to me with offerings of kindness, commiseration, and brainstorming, when I shared the issue in my Instagram stories. The flood of messages I got was overwhelming.

I also want to thank you—the person reading this right now—for finding your way here. There are a lot of other ways you could be spending your time. It’s a blessing and a privilege to get to spend some of that time with you.

More good things

Two of which are featured in the photos accompanying this blog post. The bookcase was designed and built by my talented husband. The inspiration for the design comes from Michael Rothenstein’s 1933 painting of Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden. You can view that painting on the National Portrait Gallery website. It turned out a bit larger than I had expected, so at some point I hope my husband will make a smaller version. That is, once his memory of what a hassle it was to make this one has somewhat dimmed! 

That second good thing I mentioned is Clark, of course. I am so thankful to have this little man in my life. He has always been a big supporter of spending hours in our armchair reading. Somehow, I'm the one who has to encourage him to get off the couch and take a walk!

I hope you have a lovely weekend in store. Can you believe it’s the last full weekend in August already? I’d like to know how summers seemed to last an eternity when I was a child and now they seem to be over in a blink. Whatever you are up to this weekend, I hope you have time to put your feet up and enjoy a good book while sipping on a comforting cuppa. 

Wishing you all the good things this weekend, and beyond!

The Jasmine Farm by Elizabeth von Arnim

At Shillerton that week-end, the week-end before Whitsuntide, they had gooseberry tart—or is it pie? Daisy Midhurst, in whose house it was eaten, never quite knew, but anyhow it was the thing with pastry on its top instead of its bottom,—for luncheon on Sunday; and it was a hot gooseberry tart, because pastry is better hot, though gooseberries are worse; and the guests, having eaten it were hot too, and not only hot but uncomfortable; for the gooseberries, on whose sourness no amount of sugar flung and cream emptied had the least effect, almost immediately, on getting inside them, began to ferment. 

 
Daisy Midhurst, normally known to be an impeccable host, serves her guests underripe gooseberries. Serving them once is a mistake any hostess could make. Perhaps not someone of Lady Midhurst’s standards, though one might take comfort in the fact that even she makes mistakes now and again. But when the gooseberries appear at each successive meal, the guests start to wonder, and talk among themselves… 

This novel isn’t just about what happens over the course of the weekend, which is what I had been expecting going in. The story really starts at the tail end of the weekend when Daisy’s daughter, Terry, makes a fateful slip of the tongue about her mother’s secretary, Andrew, to old Mr. Topham, endearingly referred to as Topsy, and known to be “the chief of the London leakers”.

“Any other of her men friends would have died sooner than tell on her. Theoretically Mr. Topham, too, would have died. He couldn’t, however, help himself. He was made that way. Leak he must, and leak he did” (104).

Just like that, the secret is out, and while no one can quite believe it of the girl, they can’t entirely dismiss the rumour about Terry and Andrew as untrue, either.

From an English country house to the south of France, this story covers such unexpected topics for a book published in 1934, as extramarital affairs and blackmail, and, perhaps more anticipated, love, forgiveness, and the complexities of marriage. As usual Elizabeth von Arnim does a number on the married state, but with a lightness and humour that is all her own. 

Daisy’s husband is dead, but we get a glimpse of the couple on their honeymoon, and the first time they came across the jasmine farm that Midhurst would buy for his wife.

A reserved girl, his Daisy, and becoming, it seemed to him, every minute more reserved. Bad, that was, in a bride. Brides, in his opinion, if there was to be any real fun, should be headlong. He had never had one before, but in spite of his youth was experienced in that which, if legalized, would have been brides, and knew what he was talking about. Waste of time, held Midhurst, to be ladylike in bed; keep that for interviewing the housekeeper. Till the day the Napier broke down in the lane that ran through what they afterwards learned was a jasmine farm, Daisy had been very ladylike in bed, giving him to understand by her recoils and her silences, that he was no gentleman. (168)

In the present, Daisy has run away from London, and the scandal around her daughter, to the jasmine farm they owned, but had never been to since. The farm has been cared for by a man named, Adolphe, and the house remains just as they left it more than twenty years ago, right down to Midhurst’s yellow pyjama’s which are still lying folded on his pillow.

All these years they had been utterly forgotten, but now with what vividness she remembered him in them, coming out of the little dressing room opposite, his fair hair, so like Terry’s tousled, and taking a flying leap on to the bed—a boy the same age as herself, but versed in many things of which she hadn’t an inkling.

Wasn’t this horrible? Could she sleep, side by side with Tom’s empty pyjamas? And he dead. Poor Tom dead. So long dead, poor little Tommy, while his pyjamas went on being as fresh and yellow as ever. (185)

This passage and the one previous, highlight the complexities of marriage at a time when men had more experience, or at least had access to knowledge of sex and all that marriage would entail, while women, especially in the upper classes, were sheltered and kept ignorant. Note how Daisy is both repulsed by the pyjamas and feels almost a tenderness towards them, as, in the same sentence, she refers to her husband as “a boy the same age as herself” behaving like a child and “his fair hair” recalling their daughter’s, and contrasting this childlike appearance with his knowledge “in many things of which she hadn’t an inkling”. Then her next feeling is tenderness towards “little Tommy”, while still wanting the physical reminder of him, the pyjamas, to be taken out of her sight and in fact the next thing she does is calls for the servant to remove them.

We see this abhorrence and horror at the physical side of marriage again and again in Elizabeth von Arnim’s novels. There is often a comedic bent to the telling, but the feeling of discomfort is no less potent. This dislike of marriage is present in a number of women in this novel. See the thoughts on love by Mumsie, the mother of Rosie, who is Andrew’s wife.

Love, too, that such a fuss was made over. Nothing in that, either. She supposed she had had as much of it as most women, first and last, yet she wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t really had any. Not love. Not what you’d call love. However pleased one was each time at the beginning, fancying one had got hold of the real thing at last, it always turned out to be nothing but just another husband. If you married him or didn’t marry him, it made no difference. She had tried it all ways. Lovers didn’t exist, only husbands. By the third morning, when the bickering began, the man didn’t live who wasn’t indistinguishable from a husband. (233)

I love that line, “it always turned out to be nothing but just another husband”. Elizabeth von Arnim is so good at these humorous turns of phrase. Initially, it isn’t clear if Mumsie is talking about sex or something more innocent, until the end of this passage where she refers to “the third morning” when talking about men all being like husbands even when they aren’t husbands in the traditional sense. While we get the sense that Mumsie may enjoy sex to the extent that she is willing to welcome a man into her bed without being bound to him by marriage, we can see that men have been a disappointment to her, as they have for Daisy.

There is also a very funny exchange between two women near the end of the novel. I will resist the urge to share it here, but it makes the point quite clearly that life without a husband is preferable to life with one.

From what we find out about Rosie, she isn’t a fan of the physical aspect of marriage either. Both Rosie and her mother seem to be solely interested in Rosie’s marriage for what they can get out of it without having to put much in. Rosie, in fact, seems to prefer being left out of it. It’s Mumsie who acts the part of puppet master, keeping things running smoothly between the couple, especially once Andrew’s affair comes to light.

“And if, said Mumsie, Andrew as a husband was a wash-out, and didn’t do any of the things he ought to have done for a wife like Rosie—dress her, pet her, flaunt her,—the way of peace lay in laughing and forgetting it” (47).

Meanwhile Daisy is “sprawling on the sofa” (201), “bored dead” (202) at being stuck in the flat in the days following the affair coming out. “Why should she, Rosie, have to spend a whole summer day cooped up in doors, waiting for these developments?” (202).

While I have focused on the representations of marriage in this novel, there is an interesting dynamic between mothers and daughters. It cannot be an accident that we have two sets on either side of this affair, Terry and her mother, Daisy, and Rosie and her mother, Mumsie. Both mothers are widows, which Elizabeth von Arnim uses to both humours and potent effect. This book might not put marriage in a positive light, but in contrast it does emphasize the care and investment that mothers make in their daughters’ lives. 

Daisy’s husband died in the First World War, so he doesn’t feature in the present drama with Terry, but he does indirectly effect Daisy’s reaction to the news that her daughter is having an affair with a married man. Daisy is horrified, and quickly flees London for France. It seems like an overreaction from a spoiled, sheltered woman who cares more about appearances than she cares about her only child with whom she is supposed to have a close relationship. That is until you consider that Daisy's husband was known for his affairs. He would flaunt his relationships in public, not even bothering to hide his mistresses from his wife. In addition to knowing her husband had started cheating on her not long after they returned from their honeymoon, she had the additional upset of having all of London privy to their marital discord. After Midhurst’s death, Daisy and her daughter drew closer, making Terry’s actions all the more hurtful to her mother. Not only because Terry kept this huge secret from Daisy, but because Terry would be both acting as Midhurst did in disrespecting the married state, as well as causing discord in a marriage. Aligning her daughter with Midhurst's mistresses, must have done Daisy's head in.

I read this book along with my friend, Gina. In fact, she sent me this book so we could read it together. She is @babsbelovedbooks on Instagram and blogs over at ‘Babs' Beloved Books’. We have read a number of Elizabeth von Arnim’s books together and it’s always a pleasure to have someone with whom to share ideas about her writing. And thank you for being here, too. It's a joy and a privilege to have so many fellow book lovers to talk with about books.

It would be remiss of me if I didn't share any of Elizabeth von Arnim’s delightful descriptions of nature in this review, so I'll close with this short passage I marked. 

It was very quiet; a hot summer afternoon, hardly stirring in its sleep. Over the hills lay blandness. The single cypress might have been carved in black stone, it stood so motionless. The grass in the olive-grove below the wall was patched with lovely lights, and all the fields were spread with jasmine. (177)