As I mentioned, when I was up in Oregon last month, I holed up for several days at the Sylvia Beach Hotel. For my first four nights, I stayed in the Virginia Woolf room, which had a kind of French Provincial décor modeled after Woolf's country house, and on my last night I moved to the J. K. Rowling room. I worried that this room might feel too cartoonish and juvenile, but I actually LOVED it: it had a cozy canopy bed with red satin curtains, a beautiful antique drop-front desk, and plenty of memorabilia to make you feel like you're in Gryffindor Tower. I quickly got into the spirit of things, saying "Hello, Hedwig" to the plush snowy owl in its cage, and waving Hermione Granger's wand around while saying "Expecto Patronum!"
I also started re-reading Book 7 of Harry Potter, which I hadn't read since it came out. (Here's my post from August 2007 about my history with the Harry Potter series and my first impressions of Book 7.) At the same time, I was re-reading Hons and Rebels, Jessica Mitford's autobiography. (I first read it in May 2008.) I'd brought it to the coast with me because I sensed that on my Reading/Writing/Thinking retreat, it might be inspiring to read about a courageous, funny, rebellious woman. I also liked the connection that Jessica Mitford is J.K. Rowling's personal heroine (she named her first daughter "Jessica" in her honor).
Indeed, as I simultaneously re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Hons and Rebels, I spotted a detail in Rowling's book that I'm convinced was drawn from Mitford's. In the prologue to Hons and Rebels, Mitford writes, memorably, "In the windows [of my mother's house], still to be seen, are swastikas carved into the glass with a diamond ring, and for every swastika a carefully delineated hammer and sickle. They were put there by my sister Unity and myself when we were children." Later, she describes the room that she and Unity shared -- divided exactly down the middle, one half of it filled with Unity's Fascist memorabilia and literature, and the other half with Jessica's Communist stuff.
I couldn't help thinking of this when I got to Chapter 10 of Deathly Hallows, which describes the teenage bedrooms of Sirius Black and his brother Regulus at Grimmauld Place: "Sirius seemed to have gone out of his way to annoy his parents. There were several large Gryffindor banners, faded scarlet and gold, just to underline his difference from all the rest of the Slytherin family. There were many pictures of Muggle motorcycles, and also (Harry had to admire Sirius's nerve) several posters of bikini-clad Muggle girls." Meanwhile, "[though] Sirius had sought to advertise his difference from the rest of the family, Regulus had striven to emphasize the opposite. The Slytherin colors of emerald and silver were everywhere, draping the bed, the walls, and the windows. The Black family crest was painstakingly painted over the bed, along with its motto, Toujours Pur."
I need hardly point out that there's a connection between the Toujours Pur motto, Voldemort's ideas of magical blood purity, and Nazi racial ideology; nor that Gryffindor's colors, like Soviet Russia's, are scarlet and gold. In the scheme of the novel, Sirius Black basically is Jessica Mitford, and his cousins Bellatrix and Narcissa are basically Unity and Diana Mitford. (Bellatrix and Unity = mentally unstable, with a twisted, unrequited love for the Big Villain; Narcissa and Diana = beautiful cool blondes, married to the Big Villain's loyal lieutenant.)
It seems so obvious now, but I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been re-reading Mitford and Rowling's books simultaneously -- in a canopy bed in a simulacrum of Gryffindor Tower.
Showing posts with label mitford sisters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mitford sisters. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Actor Stipends and the Minimum Wage @ SF Theater Pub Blog
In my latest SF Theater Pub column, I discussed one of the ethical quandaries that faces indie-theater producers these days: how can I support a higher minimum wage and a more equitable economy, and then pay actors a stipend that is far less than minimum wage?
It's a thorny issue and I'm not sure that I got to the bottom of it in 800 words, but I wanted at least to get the conversation started; money is something that people don't like to discuss, but I believe that we have to start talking about it if there's any hope of making the system more fair.
In my last paragraph, I quoted Jessica Mitford, and that's sent me off on a bit of a Mitford sisters kick tonight. I just passed a pleasant half-hour drinking tea, eating chocolate, and listening to Jessica's Desert Island Discs episode. Any woman who loves both socialist anthems and Fred Astaire is tops in my book.
It's a thorny issue and I'm not sure that I got to the bottom of it in 800 words, but I wanted at least to get the conversation started; money is something that people don't like to discuss, but I believe that we have to start talking about it if there's any hope of making the system more fair.
In my last paragraph, I quoted Jessica Mitford, and that's sent me off on a bit of a Mitford sisters kick tonight. I just passed a pleasant half-hour drinking tea, eating chocolate, and listening to Jessica's Desert Island Discs episode. Any woman who loves both socialist anthems and Fred Astaire is tops in my book.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Degrees of Separation, Memoirists Edition
As the perspicacious Mead pointed out in a comment to my Oh the Glory of It All review, it's entirely appropriate that I have moved on to read Tales of the City, which contains lightly fictionalized versions of some of the people in Wilsey's memoir. (Wilsey's mom, Pat Montandon, becomes Armistead Maupin's character "Prue Giroux," a dilettantish woman who holds "salons" in her Russian Hill penthouse.)
I'd noticed this, and also another connection, which I think is even stranger--linking the three memoirs I have read so far this year: Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, and Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey.
I knew the latter two authors were connected--they are friends and colleagues at McSweeney's--but you can imagine my surprise when I got four pages into Wilsey's book and came across Jessica Mitford's name. Turns out that she was a frequent guest at Pat Montandon's salons! Wilsey, who was just a boy at the time, describes Mitford as "an old British woman with huge round glasses who proclaimed 'When I die I've given instructions that I want to be buried like this,' and then pulled one corner of her mouth up and dragged the other one down and eyed the other guests (the mayor, a plastic surgeon, Agnes Moorehead, Shirley Temple). 'I want to make sure you all check on it. That's the way I want to look.'"
The "six degrees of separation" theory has been largely discredited but this is enough to make you believe in it again, huh? And since I met Dave Eggers at a book signing once, that puts me somewhere in this web too. Is this the "lattice" that he writes about in his memoir? Now when I walk through San Francisco I feel myself in the footsteps of all these real and even fictional characters who have convened here in combinations that might happen nowhere else...
I'd noticed this, and also another connection, which I think is even stranger--linking the three memoirs I have read so far this year: Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, and Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey.
I knew the latter two authors were connected--they are friends and colleagues at McSweeney's--but you can imagine my surprise when I got four pages into Wilsey's book and came across Jessica Mitford's name. Turns out that she was a frequent guest at Pat Montandon's salons! Wilsey, who was just a boy at the time, describes Mitford as "an old British woman with huge round glasses who proclaimed 'When I die I've given instructions that I want to be buried like this,' and then pulled one corner of her mouth up and dragged the other one down and eyed the other guests (the mayor, a plastic surgeon, Agnes Moorehead, Shirley Temple). 'I want to make sure you all check on it. That's the way I want to look.'"
The "six degrees of separation" theory has been largely discredited but this is enough to make you believe in it again, huh? And since I met Dave Eggers at a book signing once, that puts me somewhere in this web too. Is this the "lattice" that he writes about in his memoir? Now when I walk through San Francisco I feel myself in the footsteps of all these real and even fictional characters who have convened here in combinations that might happen nowhere else...
Monday, May 19, 2008
Jessica Mitford, Red Sheep
Like many people who are intrigued by the 1930s, by British aristocrats, by women who defied expectations, I have a healthy interest in the six Mitford sisters. A few years ago I read eldest sister Nancy's comic novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, inspired by her family's history but with names changed and roles reassigned. And yesterday, I finished next-to-youngest sister Jessica's memoir Hons and Rebels.
Jessica Mitford, known as "Decca," called herself the "red sheep" of the family--an ardent Communist among conservative English aristocrats. Her older sisters Diana and Unity were famously attracted to Nazism, making Decca's position even more remarkable. At the age of 19, she used the money that she had saved for years in a "running-away fund" to flee to Civil War-riddled Spain with her second cousin Esmond Romilly. The young anti-fascists got married soon after, though their time together was cut short by Esmond's death in World War Two (Hons and Rebels stops a little before this point).
I knew the outlines of Decca's story but very much enjoyed reading it in her own words. For instance, most sources simplify things by saying that Decca and Esmond "eloped to Spain," but she tells it a little differently. She'd had a crush on the intriguingly rebellious Esmond from afar, but had never met him due to family disapproval. In 1937, Esmond was in England recuperating from an illness contracted in Spain, and by chance a mutual relative invited Decca to spend a weekend at the country house where Esmond was staying. Esmond said he planned to return to Spain in about a week and Decca begged to go with him--not as a lover, but as a fellow anti-fascist. Esmond and Decca concocted a plan and ran away together just a week later; only when they got to France did they admit they loved each other. The chapters of Hons and Rebels surrounding Decca's escape are absolutely thrilling even if you know the outcome--because of the many ways her plan could have failed, and the very romantic idea of young lovers on the run.
Hons and Rebels can be divided roughly into three sections. First, Decca discusses her isolated childhood, her eccentric family, her growing frustration, and the birth of her Communist beliefs. The Mitford parents had strange ideas about raising children, to say the least; e.g. they prohibited all doctors and medicine, except surgical operations, because of the "biblical sanction in the passage 'If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out'" (40). Decca describes the Mitford children's made-up language, their brutal teasing games, and her relationships with each of them. For a long time she is closest to her two Fascist sisters--Diana, beautiful and charming when she's not supporting Hitler, and Unity, as eccentric and frustrated as Decca, but channeling that frustration into the opposite political philosophy. This section of the book also looks humorously at upper-class traditions, a few months spent in France, and a Mediterranean cruise; Mitford has an eye for the telling detail in all these situations.
The second section of the book is the aforementioned running-away and its aftermath, which thrusts Decca into a totally different milieu. She doesn't actually spend a lot of time in Spain, but she and Esmond learn to live on not much money, first in France then in England (though Esmond has an awful weakness for get-rich-quick schemes). They have a hard time reconciling their lingering aristocratic upbringing with their downtrodden, working-class surroundings, though, and they become frustrated that they cannot do more to stop fascism.
Eventually, English snobbery and pessimism overwhelm them, so they move to America. This means no more funny Mitford anecdotes, and Decca spends a bit too much time praising the warmth and generosity of Americans as compared to Britons, but there are some great scenes in this section too. Her stories of how she and Esmond supported themselves (selling Scottish tweeds at the World's Fair, selling stockings door-to-door, bartending) are hilarious.
Decca ends the book by summing up some of the people in her life, especially Esmond and Unity. She shows an admirably nuanced attitude to her beloved older sister, wondering how "a person of enormous natural taste, an artist and poet from childhood, [could] have embraced [the Nazis'] cruel philistinism" (273). And Decca admits her own faults, as well: "[Unity] was always a terrific hater--so were all of us" (273) and "The qualities of patience, modesty, forbearance and natural self-discipline that the worker brings to his struggle for a better life, the instinctive respect for the fundamental dignity of every other human being [...] were on the whole conspicuously lacking in [Esmond and me]" (280).
Still, after reading Hons and Rebels, I admire Decca's courage, resilience, humor, and sheer nerve. I must say, though, that I identify more with Nancy: as I noted yesterday, I'm an aesthete, not a revolutionary. Nancy doesn't always come off well in Hons and Rebels--Decca has no patience for aesthetes, and describes Nancy's personality as "astringent," "cutting" etc.--though she admits that Nancy had enormous strength of character to stand up to their parents: "She had broken ground for all of us, but only at terrific cost in violent scenes followed by silence and tears" (29). I suppose it's rare that the eldest daughter is the greatest maverick in a family; so in a way, Nancy cleared a path for Decca to become the Communist rebel she always knew she'd be.
Jessica Mitford, known as "Decca," called herself the "red sheep" of the family--an ardent Communist among conservative English aristocrats. Her older sisters Diana and Unity were famously attracted to Nazism, making Decca's position even more remarkable. At the age of 19, she used the money that she had saved for years in a "running-away fund" to flee to Civil War-riddled Spain with her second cousin Esmond Romilly. The young anti-fascists got married soon after, though their time together was cut short by Esmond's death in World War Two (Hons and Rebels stops a little before this point).
I knew the outlines of Decca's story but very much enjoyed reading it in her own words. For instance, most sources simplify things by saying that Decca and Esmond "eloped to Spain," but she tells it a little differently. She'd had a crush on the intriguingly rebellious Esmond from afar, but had never met him due to family disapproval. In 1937, Esmond was in England recuperating from an illness contracted in Spain, and by chance a mutual relative invited Decca to spend a weekend at the country house where Esmond was staying. Esmond said he planned to return to Spain in about a week and Decca begged to go with him--not as a lover, but as a fellow anti-fascist. Esmond and Decca concocted a plan and ran away together just a week later; only when they got to France did they admit they loved each other. The chapters of Hons and Rebels surrounding Decca's escape are absolutely thrilling even if you know the outcome--because of the many ways her plan could have failed, and the very romantic idea of young lovers on the run.
Hons and Rebels can be divided roughly into three sections. First, Decca discusses her isolated childhood, her eccentric family, her growing frustration, and the birth of her Communist beliefs. The Mitford parents had strange ideas about raising children, to say the least; e.g. they prohibited all doctors and medicine, except surgical operations, because of the "biblical sanction in the passage 'If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out'" (40). Decca describes the Mitford children's made-up language, their brutal teasing games, and her relationships with each of them. For a long time she is closest to her two Fascist sisters--Diana, beautiful and charming when she's not supporting Hitler, and Unity, as eccentric and frustrated as Decca, but channeling that frustration into the opposite political philosophy. This section of the book also looks humorously at upper-class traditions, a few months spent in France, and a Mediterranean cruise; Mitford has an eye for the telling detail in all these situations.
The second section of the book is the aforementioned running-away and its aftermath, which thrusts Decca into a totally different milieu. She doesn't actually spend a lot of time in Spain, but she and Esmond learn to live on not much money, first in France then in England (though Esmond has an awful weakness for get-rich-quick schemes). They have a hard time reconciling their lingering aristocratic upbringing with their downtrodden, working-class surroundings, though, and they become frustrated that they cannot do more to stop fascism.
Eventually, English snobbery and pessimism overwhelm them, so they move to America. This means no more funny Mitford anecdotes, and Decca spends a bit too much time praising the warmth and generosity of Americans as compared to Britons, but there are some great scenes in this section too. Her stories of how she and Esmond supported themselves (selling Scottish tweeds at the World's Fair, selling stockings door-to-door, bartending) are hilarious.
Decca ends the book by summing up some of the people in her life, especially Esmond and Unity. She shows an admirably nuanced attitude to her beloved older sister, wondering how "a person of enormous natural taste, an artist and poet from childhood, [could] have embraced [the Nazis'] cruel philistinism" (273). And Decca admits her own faults, as well: "[Unity] was always a terrific hater--so were all of us" (273) and "The qualities of patience, modesty, forbearance and natural self-discipline that the worker brings to his struggle for a better life, the instinctive respect for the fundamental dignity of every other human being [...] were on the whole conspicuously lacking in [Esmond and me]" (280).
Still, after reading Hons and Rebels, I admire Decca's courage, resilience, humor, and sheer nerve. I must say, though, that I identify more with Nancy: as I noted yesterday, I'm an aesthete, not a revolutionary. Nancy doesn't always come off well in Hons and Rebels--Decca has no patience for aesthetes, and describes Nancy's personality as "astringent," "cutting" etc.--though she admits that Nancy had enormous strength of character to stand up to their parents: "She had broken ground for all of us, but only at terrific cost in violent scenes followed by silence and tears" (29). I suppose it's rare that the eldest daughter is the greatest maverick in a family; so in a way, Nancy cleared a path for Decca to become the Communist rebel she always knew she'd be.
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