Winter morning: Ian his paw stretched out to me while guarding my Xmas present to Izzy: under white protector she’s working on a puzzle: of women writers including Austen, Eliot, Woolf, Morrison. Behind him NYTimes & Wash Post for Sunday …
Dear Friends and readers,
I feel reluctant to carry on with my three blogs; the excuse here is how small and untendencious, how atypical is my existence. I can look at the world only first through my own lenses, however varied. Take this week where on facebook my long-time friend, Diana, is posting her experience of her long-time (over 50 years) beloved husband’s death, and now the long aftermath or coda of her existence. As she posts, I find myself identifying and re-living Jim’s death. We have acted comparably. A small funeral, ashes in an urn, staying within the home we made with this husband for a lifetime. Peter was a poet and wrote and gave her many poems.
This put me in mind of how Jim would find good poems and give them to me on my birthday. I even panicked slightly when I could not find one of them in my computer because I couldn’t remember the mid-18th century author’s name, nor the title of the poem nor first line accurately enough to google it. Finally there came floating into my brain faint glimmers of his name and I went to my microsoft files under “18th century” and then under “poet,” and finally, voila, there was the name “Samuel Bishop,” and the first line of the poem
Jim copied out and gave this to me when we had been married 16 years:
To Mrs Bishop, on the Anniversary of her Wedding Day, with a Ring
Thee, Mary, with this Ring I wed” —
So, fourteen Years ago, I said. —
Behold another Ring! — “for what?”
“To wed thee o’er again?” — Why not?
With that first Ring I married Youth,
Grace, Beauty, Innocence, and Truth;
Taste long admir’d, Sense long rever’d,
And all my MOLLY then appear’d.
If she, by Merit since disclos’d,
Prove twice the Woman I suppos’d,
I plead that double Merit now,
To justify a double Vow.
Here then to-day, (with Faith as sure,
With Ardor as intense, as pure,
As when, amidst the Rites divine,
I took thy Troth, and plighted mine,)
To thee, s, sweet Girl, my second Ring
A Token and a Pledge I bring:
With this I wed, till death us part,
Thy riper Virtues to my heart;
Those Virtues, which before untry’d,
The Wife has added to the Bride:
Those Virtues, whose progressive claim,
Endearing Wedlock’s very name,
My soul enjoys, my song approves,
For conscience’ sake, as well as Love’s.
And why? — They shew me every hour,
Honour’s high thought, Affection’s power,
Discretion’s deed, sound Judgment’s sentence, —
— And teach me all things — but Repentance. —
— Samuel Bishop (1731-95), he married Mary Palmer
Here is one of the costumes used in Andrew Davies’s 2009 Sense and Sensibility; worn by Hattie Morahan as Elinor — my favorite heroine still, and Morahan nowadays my favorite actress playing her
Then in on online class at OLLI at Mason, where we were discussing the recent film, Tar (Todd Fields, w/ Blanchett, Hoss, Merlant), someone said: If you could back and talk to your younger self, what would you say? the idea devastates me; of course I’m thinking of my younger self in my early 30s. I put this on facebook and people expressed astonishment at my melancholy sense of deprivation. Someone said in exemplary reply she’d give her daughter piano lessons: Me: Is that really all you think you were missing out on that mattered?, another he’d give his younger self Gray’s Anatomy. Me: That’s all you think you were missing
Tar is magnificent if perverse, for it’s rare any women is prosecuted for abuses of power; women can inflict themselves on people but it’s usually through indirect devious ways (caught in Arsenic and Old Lace where two old landladies are trying to poison Cary Grant)
In my thirties there was no Internet; I returned to teaching at age 40 — here in N. Va and DC. As to now I could never have guessed that there would be such a free and open medium, for despite all everyone says, it is still true that you can meet, encounter, write in places, be with people w/o passing the kinds of thresholds one had to pass before. Free in this sense, not in the sense of having to afford the kind of power to host a computer, the connectivity, the computer, the IT people to help … here you do need middle class money and time. My older daughter has monetized and networked a career out of this. I found a lifeline and an important support for a way of life I could endure and enjoy — with Jim’s help & Companionship at the time. I found the above puzzle because it and another (with two cats) were described on a blog about Virginia Woolf. For people like me without much visual talent who nonetheless loves doing pictures … putting them together in another medium is an intriguing delight.
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I have been carrying on a correspondence with an Irish friend now for a number of years; a real friendship has emerged (though only through emails), and somehow we got onto the topic of my name. See what a Narcissa I sometimes am. So I repeated the question impersonally, rhetorically:
Katherine Hepburn as Elinor of Acquitaine (from 1960s A Lion in Winter, Peter O’Toole as Henry II)
Where does the name Ellen come from? I was inclined to say it’s an Irish version of Helen, and said (this is true) that when I worked in England (Leeds) at John Waddington Ltd lots of people called me Helen. Since I answered to it, I was often Helen. My friend suggested an alternative of a Gaelic derivation: from Eileen (Eye-leen). I know my mother said she named me Ellen because we lived in a Bronx neighborhood then predominantly Irish. Everyone who reads 19th century novels (and some 20th) remembers that Ellen is often a servant’s name (maid, nanny &c).
But further “research” (googling on the Net) turned up other etymologies, and one I am drawn to is this. Ellen may be from middle English, a spelling variant of Helen (as of Troy), which would make sense, given English dialects’ tendency to drop initial “H”. my friend checked the traditional (if dated) Gaelic dictionary; the initial sequence “el” is not a usual Gaelic initial sequence – this is “eil”, as in Eileen. So most probably the origins of Ellen as a name are middle English or perhaps Norman-French – think Elinor of Acquitaine — embodied above by Katherine Hepburn. Whether Ellen came direct from Greek Helen into English, or via Norman French as a derivative of Helene, who can say.
I am remembering all those medieval and very early modern queens’ names which are not Elizabeth or Isabella but Elinor Vague memories of medievally spelt Ellens in Chaucer? One nickname for Elinor is Nancy …. Yes! So it comes from more than Anne — to Nan — to Nancy.. I am glad that Elena Ferrante has so many forms of Ellen in Italian for several of her heroines.
Part of the prompting of the topic for me is the heroine’s name in Elena (ahem) Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend: Elena. This name and many Italian variants thereof are everywhere in Ferrante’s books and very often the heroine. So the heroine of The Lost Daughter is Lena, the child’s name Elena. In Italian that aspirated “h” disappears. I said I lived/visited Paris in January 1968 and a week into February and I was there all alone so began to talk French and spent time with a Frenchman I met. I found I was called something like Elene which sounded to my ears like Elaine said with a French accent. Elaine is a central heroine in the Arthurian cycle — she involves herself with Lancelot. Elaine of Astolat.
In French it’s Helene (with the aigu and grave accents) or Elaine (with an accent aigu on the E). I once spent 2 weeks in Florence and again I made a few Italian acquaintances and found myself called Elena.
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Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kya (Where the Crawdad Sings, 2022)
And near the end on how I loved this movie, and how, after reading several reviews ridiculing (soggy, pretentious) mocking (it goes nowhere and so little time spent on showing us that and how she did the murder), but see! I dreaded going to the OLLI at Mason class worried the people there would complain. I should have trusted them more: all but one dim man loved it, several saw it as a feminist film (director, scriptwriter, producer, writer of original book all women): it’s the beauty & tact of the quiet performances, the resolute turning away from modern technical aggressive capitalist and patriarchal world (this is one where men beat women, rape them, and laugh, no one stops them), its racist world, with Jim Crow terror firmly in place, by a young girl and then her growing to become a naturalist-artist. Also the use of the mystery-murder and trial paradigm as endowing power because she refuses to submit on stand. And an underlying mother-daughter paradigm (fitting that course I’m now teaching, The Heroine’s Journey, going very well as far as I can see): her mother fled or was beat to death by the father, and as Kya now aged, dies is seen on the path as a vision.
It stands out against Women Talking‘s meretriciousness. For this coming week we have She Said to discuss, and we began with A Man Named Ove. The course is staying with its art-house movie type choices. Did I say I joined a Poetry Reading Group at OLLI at Mason too. Each brings a poem we love, reads it aloud (it must not be too long) and says why. They meet every-other-week inbetween terms.
It would not be a blog from me if I were to leave out some criticism, how brief, of Books. As to Spare by Prince Harry: it’s pastiche, highly literary, highly concocted and carefully arranged. I don’t believe this is Harry Windsor. It feels fake. Not until three paragraphs before the very end (acknowledgements at the back) is the name J. R. Moehringer mentioned and then as “my collaborator and friend, confessor and sometimes sparring partner about the beauty (and Sacred Obligation) of Memoir …. ” That gives a bit of the tone: continually fulsome, self-congratulatory. Yuk. I don’t know if I have the patience. It does not amuse me the way it did Andrew O’Hagan. Is this what palace & monarchy culture produces? Yes get rid of it. But see the hilarity of Andrew O’Hagan and his sympathy (the LRB).
A literary masterpiece, a woman’s holocaust memoir, Charlotte Delbo’s Auschwitz and After as translated by Rose Lamont; I must finish it (very hard) and then write about it and three other women’s holocaust memoirs as l’ecriture-femme versions of this savage tragic genre. Also from the LRB. I”ve sent away for (bought) her Convoy to Auschwitz: a collective biography of the women of the French resistance; some couple of thousand were rounded up and taken off; 49 returned alive. Their stories insofar as she can construct them.
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I am trying, gentle reader, to stay cheerful.
So I did not say until now that most unjustly Laura has lost two of her jobs (streams of income she called them). NBCThink was destroyed, eliminated by the online NBC journal: smart people are not read as much. This is called “downsizing.” For having joined the union, been pro-active, and helped to resolve that all part-time people shall get benefits, she and all other part-time people working for Daily Elite were fired.
That’s the phrase that was used to describe me; basically these employers don’t give you enough hours (just under) so that they fall under a law to protect full-time workers. I really worked full-time if you counted my hours; each term I was supposed let go and rehired the next with term-length agreements (not contracts lest the university have to honor them if they want to cancel a class to suit their needs/wants). The company is now asking full-timers to do more work for the same salary. Laura had a union meeting yesterday (zoom) but there is not much they can do. The woman Laura actually worked with (“pitched” to) was indignant for Laura and said she’d keep hiring Laura for individual assignments (w/o contract) but she may not be able to. As with Starbucks, Amazon & these places are ruthlessly fiercely punitively anti-union — for obvious reasons. Last time Laura was fired – -at the beginning of this new profession, she had no one to talk to, to turn to and now she’s in a network of different people.
And she is fine on WETA where they already give the benefits these unions demand — so they don’t have to deal with unions – this was John Waddington’s way of keeping unions out of their business (where I worked when I lived in Leeds, 1969-70). If you did join the union, and it was found out you’d be fired that day. WETA doesn’t mind if people join the union. She has a lot of work from WETA but not enough to support her and Rob, though she has now been told if they can “find” a full-time job for her this summer, they may offer her one. Good of them. She says full-time work can cut you off from contacts elsewhere and if you are “let go,” then you are without resources quickly. A friend of hers, long-time there, was fired within 10 minutes and was cut off from all her Internet accesses, which included her notes, addresses &c. Rob has hurt his shoulder now: I suspect he will have to retire early. No pension. The holiday in Haiwaii to celebrate their 10th anniversary this summer is now on hold.
Welcome to today’s world of work. She has now had a small contract offered her — fewer hours a week from Best Life. Journalism even 35 years ago was not this.
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And so I close. Off to watch more Prime Suspect for my The Heroine’s Journey class. Soon I shall find time to formulate a plan towards writing a book on Poldark/Outlander and women’s historical fiction/romance. Ghosts and Every Woman’s Protest Novel (say Mantel’s Wolf Hall). Go through all the Poldark books & films. One at a time, so much a day. Then some comparative series you see and Outlander is the natural comparison. I can do that kind of thing if I set myself the pattern. Routine is a strong point with me!
Patricia Hodge as Mrs Pumphrey, Take 2, with her beloved Tricki-Woo, just now my favorite weekly show on TV (All Creatures Great and Small Take Three — once upon a time Anthony Hopkins played Farnon)
Ellen
Under the Sign of Sylvia II 