A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson by Camille Peri 2024 399pg

 Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson1850-1894 (44 years) and his wife and muse, Fanny Van de Grift(1840-1914)                                                                          15/06/2025

Henry James considered her a termagant- a harsh-tempered or overbearing woman. Stevenson's his “Complete Works” takes up more than three feet on my bookshelf.  A credible posthumous diagnosis is bronchiectasis, which would have caused his frequent hemorrhages. Without fanny there would be no RL Stevenson.

He was an educated writer from a prominent family in Scotland while she was  high school graduate from the  rustic Mid West. This is the first book that deals with Fanny's work as we as her famous husband. Her role was to keep him alive and to keep him writing. The only medications he had laudanum (tincture of opium) and ergotin( a LSD derivative)Her younger sister Nellie van de Grift wrote The Life of Mars Robert Louis Stevenson. (Died 1935)

 Jacob Vandegrift wanted his 5 daughter to feel they could be independent. He taught to them hunting , horse riding and to use a hammer and nails. |He owned lumber and had a real estate business.

1857 Fanny married Sam Osbourne.1864 She and Sam went out west before the railroad was build via Confederates blockaded ports and Panama to S. Francisco. She had visions of women having greater status in the west and was an avid reader. Silver had been discovered in 1862 in Toiyabe range, Nevada but it was in decline when they arrived. Sam was bankrupt and in debt but Fanny thrived where there were 6000 men and less that 60 respectable women.

In San Francisco it was the prostitutes' that set women's fashion

1866 Fanny was back in Indiana at her parents. After Belle they had a son Lloyd, followed by Hervey  in 1871. Sam was living with his mistress in San Francisco. Women who divorced their philandering husband lost out in those days. Fanny enrolled Belle at what later become the San Francisco Art Institute. Fanny hired a nanny for the 2 boys and joined Belle.

1875 Fanny Osbourne left S. Francisco to get a mail steamer from NY to Europe with her children ,she wanted to be an artist. She took Belle to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Belgium. After the Franco Prussian War 1871 they moved to Paris. The person assigned to help Fanny settle in was Abigail May Alcott Louisa's whose sister wrote Little Women.

Hervey contracted tuberculosis and died  a few days after Sam arrived. Fanny Belle and Lloyd went to live in Grez- sur-Loing  on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest.

Louis had a hacking cough and his parents were concerned about him and he was largely a shut in child with a nanny as a playmate. He was an only child unusual at this time as he had 54 first cousins. His mother Margaret at the age of 70 learned to ride a bicycle.  The Stevenson's were strict  Calvinists and knew the bible, and he was terrified of sin as a young kid. Later he upset Thomas his father as he did not believe in Christianity. Alison Cunningham was his nanny was with him all the time and his second mother. From A Childs Garden of Verses  1885 we see that he was home alone and played alone. Some of his happiest days were visiting his grandfather Lewis Balfour. His mother also had chest ailment so they travelled abroad to the French and Italian Riviera's. Climatotherapy. He became a Francophile and could speak and read French perfectly. He was a story teller as a kid and wrote the only issue of School Boys Magazine at 12. Later as rebellion or adventure he hung out with seamen, chimney sweeps, thieves, and preferred prostitutes to girls.

On the Scottish coast in 1799 alone in a 3 day storm more that 70 vessels sent hundreds to their death. Grandfather Robert Stevenson build 97 light houses as he felt it a duty. Bell Rock the oldest is in a JMW. Turner picture 1819.

Louis started studying engineering in Edinburgh at his father insistence. 1870 He took apprenticeships in engineering which supplied him with stories about smuggling and shipwrecks.

Louis switched to Law as a compromise with his father. 1868 Poems of Walt Whitman published in UK but heavily censored.

1800s Edinburgh was renown for medical research but needed corpses for anatomy but religious beliefs limited the supply of cadavers. 1884 RLS wrote a short story called The Body Snatcher. 

As a writer he was a disappointment to his parents but reliant on them for financially. Later he became more famous than the Lighthouse parents. Opium was freely available in the UK and he had an experience with it. In London became a member of the Saville Club which included people like Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf's father the publisher. Louis started many stories that he never completed. 1875 he passed the Bar exam. 

Ernest Henly best known for he poem Invictus 1888.

American literature reached Britain with Uncle Toms Cabin and books by James Ferrymore Cooper , Nathaniel Hawthorne, Poe , Thoreau and Whitman. Louis met Fanny at Grez, France and  he started writing fiction again. She believed in his talent and urged him on.

Fanny's husband Sam could use her adulatory as grounds to take the children. While Louis was penniless.

1879 Louis hired a donkey and went for a12 day hike the purpose was that his parents wanted him to distance himself from Fanny in the US meanwhile he wrote the book Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. 106 pg Today this trail attract hikers to do his walk.   Meanwhile at this same time Fanny wrote an article about Chinese men attracted to the U S to work on gold mines and the railroads for low wages were seen as a threat to jobs and wages. 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Louis sailed to the US at a time of a surge of immigration there. He wanted to travel steerage for the experience but needed a  desk to write on so went Second Class and wrote The Amateur Emigrant 1895 106pg This was only published later. He took a train to California and this was the time that the railways needed immigrants to keep them busy.

Sam was prepared to divorce Fanny as long as she and Louis  lived separately for a decent amount of time. However Sam lost his job at the district court. and could no longer support her  Meanwhile living in Monterey was a opportunity for ideas for Louis and was the setting for Treasure Island. 240pg. Louis live 5 months in S. Francisco where he got ideas for The Wrecker 1892 297pg here he met Italian fishermen , Dutch merchants, Mexican vequeres, and an English schooner captain. In Scotland Louis family who build lighthouses faced hostility of wreckers.

Fanny knew Louis would get fame and fortune, and he urged her to marry him to legalize her claim to his inheritance if he should have one. When he became ill she moved him into her family home and probably saved his life. Fanny heard of an abandoned mining camp high up on mount St Helens as it would be good for his health. 1880 a year to the day that he had arrived in NY they arrived in Liverpool. Thomas Stevenson got on with Fanny even though she spoke her mind.

Since the death of John Keats in 1821 aged 25 there was considered  link between genius and consumptive. Only in 1882 was tuberculosis discovered to be a bacillus bacteria. Between 1850 and 1910, 4 million people died of tuberculosis in Britain.   Sometimes Fanny was not comfortable amongst all of Louis men circles and more than a century later Yoko Ono was blamed for the Beatle break up and ruining "a boys club" She  found it difficult to make women friends. 

The moved to Davos where almost all visitors had TB and Louis loved toboggining here. Thomas Mann described Davos sanatorium in his book Magic Mountain. A lot of patients came there for relief of symptoms and died.

Thomas Stevenson had told Louis sea stories on his long sick night, Louis was doing the same for Fanny's son reawakening the child of his own father. But Louis had many unfinished novels. Once he had good work of a serialized story over 17 installment he had to finished the novels fast. Treasure Island caused Louis to be the most read author by 1890 but many of his books were bootlegged  editions in the US. Long John Silver with his peg leg and Captain Flints parrot would become famous as a real pirate. Fanny with her adventurous spirit kept the boyishness alive in Louis. He called her" teacher , tender comrade , wife."

1885 A Childs Garden of Verses was dedicated to his nanny Alison Cunningham. He felt she would understand it the best and it showed her, his appreciation. Only after his death did this appear with drawings. He was a sickly child who knew what it was like to hear other children playing outside.

Living in France had always suited Louis as he was fluent in the French language and literature. Hyeres (close to the Cote de Azur in Southern France) was a great time of productivity. 1884 They left Hyeres as their was a plague of cholera and moved to Toulon.

Trevor Haddon a British painter said " about any art think not of what it pays, first of what pleases."

1891 Congress passed the International Copyright Act, till then despite his big sales he was always short of money.

Louis wrote plays with William Ernest Henley who was a famous poet, known for the poem Invictus but they were not successful.

1885 Feb. Dynamite Saturday bombs went off in House  of Commons , Tower of London and Westminster Hall simultaneously. This was by the IRA and it lead to the Special Irish branch of the Metropolitan police to deal with this. Louis wrote the book  the Dynamiter- More Arabian Nights short stories.

Louis lived a remarkable long time for an afflicted man and he never infected anyone. He had bronchiectasis  bronchial tubes damaged by his childhood illnesses like whooping cough, flu, croup and bronchises. Fanny suffered from PTSD from losing her son. Fanny like many caregivers neglected her own health. In the 1880s there began to be warning about addiction to pills that contained opiates cannabis and cocaine. Aspirin was first patented by Bayer in 1899.  Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Barret Browning and Elizabeth Siddal (artist 1829 to 1862) were addicted to laudanum. Louis health came first his writing second and Fanny 's needs last.

Louis on the way to Bournemouth visited Thomas Hardy in Dorchester as Louis admired Far From the Maddening Crowd which rocketed Hardy to success.

1886The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by  Louis. This book appeared first in the US and this book became the subject of countless sermons one in St Paul's. The moral message about the struggle between virtue and sin. It was a major  bestseller in its day.  Only at the end of the book do we discover that he is one person and the idea came to Oscar Wilde who wrote about a double life  person in 1890 The Picture of Dorian grey.

1885 Criminal Amendment Act . Any sexual between males became a punishably offence and made it easier to blackmail gay men and convict Oscar Wilde. This Act also strengthened the prostitution laws and raised the age of consent from 13 to 16.

Louis and Fanny had moved to Bournemouth  to be near Lloyd but he began studying at the University of Edinburgh in 1885. There, their favorite new friend was Henry James Daisy Miller and Portrait of a Lady made him a celebrity and Fanny appreciated the portrayal of ex patriot American women. James appreciated Louis works more than most Brits.

1886 Kidnapped came out in 14 weekly installments in a juvenile magazine. It is set in the period after the crushing British defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie.1746 Battle of Culloden.  

Sam Osbourne had disappeared mysteriously. He had asked his wife Rebecca Paul to have supper waiting ready for him after work at the night court and never returned. Sam's disappearance did draw Lloyd closer to Louis. In 1887 they went to the ailing  Thomas Stevenson in Edinburgh and he died 2 days later.  Louis was now freed of his fathers strict Calvinist domination, and Louis inheritance was £3,000.

Margaret, Lloyd,  Louis, Fanny and their maid Valentine travelled to Le Harve to take a cheaper less popular shipping line they discovered they were on a smelly cattle ship. In NY waiting at the dock was a crowd and reporters to greet Louis. In NY Louis met another fan Mark Twain. they were 2 authors whose boys novel confounder standard notions of Victorian masculinity - Kidnapped and Huckleberry Finn.

Magazines had offered Louis a lucrative contract for articles of his travels when they heard he was going to the South Seas. While in the Adirondacks they decided to take a South Seas voyage as an adventure but also to to to a warm climate.

In California Fanny's ex Sam Osbourne had left his wife Paulie with his debts for another women. Fanny reconciles with her daughter Belle and  her 7 year old grandson Austen. Belle's husband Joe Strong had left her.

1888 they sailed from San Francisco to French Polynesia. They visited Nuka Hiva , Fakarava and Tahiti written about by Herman Melville. Then the took a 62 ton trading schooner Equator that toured the Gilbert Islands (now Republic of Kiribati) Fanny was the only woman amongst 15 men. They decided to settle in Samoa as the climate was right for Louis's health. They bought 315 hilly acres for $10 an acre.  This was relatively close to New South Wales and had a good mail service. 

The US and Europe were carving up the region to expand their empires. David  Kalakaua the king of Hawaii had brokered a free trade agreement with the US. After meeting Edison he installed electric lights in his palace 5 years before the White House. The monarchy in Hawai was overthrown and in 1898 it was annexed to the US. Britain had annexed the Gilbert Islands. 

1890 the visited Sydney and when the wanted to leave there was a strike of seamen and dockworkers. The  Janet Nicoll  managed to get a non union crew of mostly Solomon Islanders. They found that islanders were conned by promises and taken to be slaves on mines and plantations by French German British , American labor traders.  They visited 35 islands over 4 months including the Cook , Marshall and New Caledonia. Wherever they went they got to know about the local inhabitants. Not only Western powers were changing the face of Polynesia but missionaries , beach combers, traders, and the indigenous people wad creating a new hybrid culture.

Fanny sold Skerrymore in Bournemouth a gift from Thomas Stevenson, to build their house in Samoa. Vallima had a tennis court and grass for cricket and croquet. It became the social centre of Upolu. They also had a plantation of nearly  8000 coffee trees. At this time the artist Paul Gauguin was on Tahiti fathering children with young girls and producing paintings promoting the island as a sexual paradise for Western men.

"A writer has to keep on being reborn" The story The Enchantress is of a man who married a heiress she ditches him the same day with a pledge of £300 a year. This way she can inherit and is independent of a man. It shows the length a women will go to gain independence. 

1880 a few German firms had taken over land for plantations while the Samoa's were in tribal battled. The US intervened.  Germany UK and US now formed a tripartite government with a puppet Samoan king. Louis wrote  Footnote in History : Eight years of trouble in Samoa. Galsworthy, Author Conan  Doyle, and J.M.Barry started corresponding with him. The White Company a novel by A.C.Doyle on the 100 years war. Conrad was thinking of Louis's 1894  Ebb Tide when he wrote of the charterers in Heart of Darkness a decade later.

The Beach in Falesa is what in 1953 Dylan Thomas based a screenplay and  which later Richard Burton got Christopher Isherwood to work on but it never got to the screen.

On Samoa Belle's husband Joe secretly had a Samoan wife and Fanny pushed her to divorce him. Her son Austin, Louis sent to San Francisco to be with Fanny's sister Nellie Sanchez

Later New Zealand ousted German from Western  Samoa in WW1 1914 and administered as a mandate till 1962 independence.

Louis altered his will leaving some to his brother Alan's children but most in favor of Belle , Lloyd and Austin.

Louis was a chain smoker even though he was advised against it and died of a cerebral hemorrhage.  Graham Green's grandmother was Louis first cousin.

Vallima the house was sold by Fanny to a German merchant who sold it to the German Government in 1911and became the Samoan governor's residence. Today it is the Stevenson Museum. 

Fanny got Graham Balfour to write the official biography and it came out in 1901 The life of Robert Louis Stevenson.

1907 Fanny and Ned went for a motor tour of Europe with Lloyd as driver, early car enthusiasts. Austin was becoming a successful playwright,

1914 Fanny died also of cerebral hemorrhage and Belle and Ned Field  who she later married took her ashes to Samoa to bury in Louis grave.  Lloyd edited some of Louis works and died in 1947 after 2 unsuccessful marriages and an undistinguished literary career. Belle died in 1953 aged 94 having outlived both husbands , her brother and her son Austin by a year.

Of all his work Louis is best known for his children's fiction. Walter Scott and Robert Burns were given memorials in Edinburgh but Louis only got one in 2013 as a child  sitting on a tree stump reading a book.

I am the clay by Haim Potok1992 240pg

Korean War 1950 to 1953  6/5/25

To say we are the clay is an acknowledgement of Gods work. . “Behold, like clay in the potter’s hand, so you are in my hand, O house of Israel.” Jeremiah 18:6

This is about a boy found wounded, in a ditch and a old women takes care of him despite her husband.  He is wounded and she tries to stop an ambulance to help but the driver just gives her a  bandage and packet of sulfonamide powder to put on. After a few days they find a hospital and she begs them to operate and they take a piece of shrapnel from his belly and she get the 11 years old boy back with a new bandage. The old couple have fled their village ahead of the Chinese  coming from the north. The boy was looking for his dog in the wood when his village was destroyed with his siblings and his parents who were scholars.. He is put in the cart covered with quilts and the old man is sure he will die. They survive in the cold by always keeping a brush fire burning and are always looking for brush wood.

The boy recovers and now the old man is sick. The boy breaks a hole in the lake and with a sharp stick. On the way back he has 3 dogs blocking the gap between the boulder, he throws a fish to distract the dogs and gets back. Later with fish cooked into jelly he entices the small dog to follow him into the cave where he feeds it but where the old man needs meat the she kills it for food. The set up a shack of scrap metal that they found at the battle sight. They are given packets of rice outside the US Feeding station. They later head back north to their village where all 12 families have returned. 

They have to get permission from the village carpenter for the boy to remain. The boy leaves to return to his own village but all is destroyed and he returned to the old couple. The carpenter advises him to get  a job with the American army. He goes to the camp where he is given a chest X-ray to prove he has not tuberculosis. He is given cream to cure  sores on his face, and a  week later he is given a job in the kitchen where the cook gives him leftovers to take home. that keeps the old couple healthy. He later gets a better paying job being a servant to the officers. Now the old couple regard him as a miracle.  A youth askes him where the phonograph is hidden, he tells him and the next day it is stolen. He refuses the kickback for complicity.  The old women is pulling the plough till he gives them money that he has been saving  to buy an ox which is used to plough the fields or is rented out. The old women dies and he mourns her like his mother.

He has a problem with the teenager who demands that he join him and his gang as he is useful as he has learned English. He wants to leave to become a scholar in Seoul and he spoke to the army chaplain about his troubles.  The  old man says he owes him loyalty as he saved him. He visits the grave of he old women his real savior and the one who adopted him.  The carpenter gives him his blessing and he and the old man are with him to see him onto the train to go study in Seoul. He had saved up money to become a scholar like his father. 

Chaim Potok a rabbi was a  chaplain in the US army in Korea 

 

Isola by Allegra Goodman 2025 343pg.

A story of French early settlement in Canada and Christianity 6/6/25

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. 

The novel introduces Marguerite de la Rocque, a French noblewoman born in the 1500s. Orphaned in infancy, her inheritance was squandered by her guardian, Jean-Francois de la Rocque de Roberval. He had been the kings boyhood friend.  Damienne, an older woman with an unwavering moral compass. Accustomed to  privilege, redefine herself when stripped of all material comforts and societal expectations. Contrasting the guardian’s oppressive use of religion as a tool for fear and control. 

This book deals with religion, morality, women's rights ,cruelty. The author lives a tradition Jewish life and her other books are on Jewish subjects this book is different as it is on Christianity.

 Guard against anything that will anger God. Her mother died in her childbirth and her father died fighting for the king in Pavia 1521(battle between France and Italy.) She has her chateau and estates of Périgord. Her guardian controlled everything until she could marry at aged 15. She had 3 maids looking after her and the steward collected the rents from the tenants. Ecu's d'or (gold) or later Ecu d'argent (silver)minted during the reign of Louis IX of France, in 1266. She had a music master who taught her to play and a tutor to correct her reading writing to be able a lady.

 Jaqualine d'Artois and her daughter Claire. We are ruined when a father dies. Claire had no inheritance but had seen the world with her she shared clothes and reading, she regretted she had no sister. The guardian mortgaged the  house and the Montfort's merchants moved in. Because he had reversals. 

In Greek legend  Griselda obeyed without  complaint Hypsicratea who fought alongside her in battle. Zenobia the huntress. Camilla raised in the wilderness by her exiled father Deborah and  the Judge Dido .  Queen Julia was Caesar's daughter. 

She told Claire you are Reason your mother is Rectitude and Damieone can be Justice. Your guardian lost a kingdom in his ships. The Montfort's have no title or history but are rich enough to buy both. Artemista  the queen loved her husband Mausalus and when he died she build a great tomb afterwards called a mausoleum.

Her guardian threw her a bag of gold and was astonished that she caught it.

One of the children has a drawing with a arrow through a stags heart. She saw  Claire as Penelope working at her loom while suiters paced below as hungry curs. Nicholas was interested in Claire and brought them venison and partridges but he fell when his horse reared and got crushed and died. She gave Claire her mothers Jewel as a parting gift.

1539 -1542 Roberval sent trunks for them to pack and go to a house in La Rochelle. When he was not home the creditors were hammering at the door. The servants also had to wait for Robavals return to get their wages. Claire and Madame D' Artois, and Claire would now be employed by the Montfort's. 

By now she was 20 and no longer considered a good match. The House in Périgord had been sold and was her home no longer. He had sold her lands to fund his expedition trading her future for his own. She tried to send a  message to Claire as she did not want to go on the ships. The maid given the gold for this used it to buy  her trousseau and got married on this, but her guardian was handed this note. Provisions were being readied for the ships and colonists with families recruited, they were all debtors.

She and Damieone got on one of 3 ships to head to La Nuova Francia what Cartier had called Canada. The headed towards the St. Lawrence river supposed to be the northwest passage to the Indies.  Psalms of David to the Rhyme of Clement Marot. 1496-1544 was  friendly with the kings sister, but never the less supported the reformation. Her guardian wanted her to know these  by heart. Because he was a devout person?

 Roberval was going to be the Viceroy of New France and would propagate the Catholic faith.

 1542 at sea. You had children as young as nine working learning to be seamen. They were on Anne but he also rules Lechefraye and Valentine. These ships were her inheritance and she was the instrument of her own exile. Robaval wanted greatness. She heard the sailors stories of serpents cracking hulls like walnuts and great jawed fish swallowing ships whole. Mermaids on rocks and cannibals eating seamen. They dreaded the voyage outlasting supplies. They were joining Cartiers on the established colony.

There was a brawl on a sister ship and she had to watch the 4 men being hanged. The colonist wives did as well. On the ship she begins to get friendly with Robavals secretary who tells her his story that his father was a merchant and taught him to read, but ship sailed on sank on the way to Cadiz. Now his stepfather who had him apprenticed to a tanner died and Robavel supports him. She becomes intimate with the secretary Auguste Dupre and he calls her Marguerite. What would Robaval do if he found us together. "Kill me said Auguste". "Sinners will be dammed to hell whether on the ship or the New World , I will exile them as lepers." Weevils infested the flower and rats the seed. Birds are the first sign of land. and after 8 weeks they arrived.

They saw Jacques Cartier 3 ships sailing east. The French Colony had been named Charlesbourg Royal 1541 -1543 when it was abandoned. There they were besieged by the natives who murdered all that ventured out. 35 colonist had died this way and another 20 from sickness and starvation till Cartier abandoned the settlement. Robaval instructed them not to return to France but during  the night they cut their anchors and vanished.

Augusta drew a sword against Robaval, he was tied up. She Auguste and Damieone were abandoned on an island with vegetation rather the pure granite ones they passed . The island trees were stunted but they found a nesting place for big birds and shot one, with his arquebus now they knew they had a source of food, in summer.

She felt she had to contribute and she tried to grow the seeds they brought and watered and nurtured the the plants but Damieone had warned her that the soil was too thin and just when she thought she had success the plants died.

Here they could live freely but with such uncertainty, Robaval had given them what they wanted most he gave them time, and eternity. When Augusta went to shoot a bird she went to collect eggs from their nests.

 Legendry Queen Zenovia left her palace armed with a sword and spear, while Princess Camilla grew up hunting. They fished and caught cod. Seagrass Damieone laid out to dry it became a tasty herb. The music instruments with them had warped and could not be played.

Before winter they found a narrow entrance to a granite cave. She was pregnant and dreamed of her son becoming a prince. The birds migrated away and with winter came snow and a white fox, an omen. You could walk across the ice to leave the island. Augusta became ill and died and they put him into an empty  trunk and covered it. A white bear  came and dug up the trunk and was devouring the body. She shot the bear and Damieone skinned it as a blanket and they ate the  bear but what was left was picked clean by other creatures. The hoped to kill creatures that came across the ice. A deer followed by 6 wolves but it ran away across the sea.

Her finger was thin  so that she lost Claire's ring. She gave birth to a healthy son but her milk did not come as she was starving. She used the afterbirth as bait to fish for cod in a hole in the ice. The baby died and no scripture could comfort her. Damieone cut her hand badly while cleaning a fish and she had to look after and provide for  her like she had been looked after by Damieone. Damieone told her that she had come to look after her. After Damieone's mother had died her family could not feed her on the farm. Robaval 3 vessels passed but ignored her signals he was sailing home after 1 winter. She felt he had cast her off as a thief might throw away a key.

Her ammunition would only last the season.

Damieone died of sepsis,  quietly she had been blameless for the isolation. Her body was put in the 3rd trunk and a cairn on stones was build on it. Margarita had never been alone in her life. A bear came into the cave entrance but could not fit in, and she shot it. The story of Lazarus moving the stone from the cave.

She finds Claire's ring in the cave. She sees 2 small vessels in the bay, open and with no flag, but a net and silver fish. They cleaned hundreds of cod and dried them in the sun. She discovers they are Basque fishermen and one of them can speak a plausible French from Navarre, on the French border. When they first saw her they thought she was a witch but she proved to them that she was a Christian as she repeated "Hail Mary full of grace in Latin" and she had a Royal token M for Margarita. She brought the jewels, coins , pearls secured in her pocket. She brought the picture of the lady to protect them, and watched her isle. prison, secret kingdom slip away. She slept with a knife from fear of the sailors. A storm came up and washed away half their stock of fish   as well as the virgin, rosary and new testament. They survived but their sister ship had vanished and they had to find there way , as they had been driven off course. The seaman had lost their comrades and the expedition had not paid. They met up with another larger Basque ship that had been whaling and had oil, teeth and ambergris.

The arrived at La  Rochelle and she went to the house of Jean Alfonse, her friend the navigator, but  her clothes were rags, they chased her away. In any case he was abroad. She slept in  the Cathedral till they were thrown out in the morning when she discovered she was not alone. She managed to get other cleaner used clothes and started walking to Périgord  and met with other pilgrims on the way the Camino de Santiago. When she got to the house there she pressed Claire's ring into her hand." Where did you get that? You gave it to me" I am disreputable now and have no claim on this house but charity. The Montfort's now owned the house, they had bought property and nobility. The Lady Montfort  was with the Kings sister in Bearn (in the Pyrenees)while her guardian was with the king.

Everyone knew about Charlesbourg Royal on the Isle of Canada, they had also heard of Cartier's winter there.

Marguerite had kept the bears claw  a trophy from the battle to show as everyone wanted to hear about how she dealt with the bear.

  Robaval wanted a word with her but she refused to talk to him. There was a feast for the arrival of the Queen but she could not eat any of it. She described how she survived with the Basque fishermen.

Claire would have been happy to go into a religious order but the  Queen gave Margarita  and bag of gold to set up a school for orphan girls and they 2 would go do this together.

Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut 2014, 336pg

 

 25/5/25Arctic Summer by EM Forster is only about 100 pages and unfinished. This book basically tells us the feeling that he had between  publishing his book in 1910 and  the book in 1924. He wanted to write a second book on homosexualism  after Maurice which he could not dare publish. So he could not write any novel after that finally he published Passage to India but that was his last and best novel. Galgut's understanding of the interplay between love and power animates this final section of the book. It was Forster's time in Dewas that allowed him to return to his unfinished India novel and bring it to a triumphal conclusion.

EM Forster 1879 to 1970 novel

• (1905) Where Angles Fear to tread   set in Italy
•  (1907)The Longest Journey
•   (1908)A room with a view  set in Italy
•   (1910)Howards End 
• 1913–14, Maurice. published posthumously in 1971)
•   (1924) A passage to India (Published 11 years after he started it)

Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut 2014, 336pg

The year is 1912, and the SS Birmingham is approaching India.  Edward Morgan Forster ,is 33 years old, has writing block and has to come to terms with his homosexualism.   This is only 17 years after Oscar Wilde landed up in jail1895  The novel mostly takes place between the publication of “Howard’s End” in 1910 and the publication of “A Passage to India” in 1924.

In England Morgan lives with his mother his best companion but a problemed relationship.  EM Forster was private secretary to the Maharajah at Pondicherry, 1934 

On the ship he meets Kenneth Searight and army officer on the Khyber Pass frontier who talks too openly about his having male Indian friends. Flesh was generally more visible in India than at home.

Morgan had been to Cambridge at Kings collage where Goldie was a don, their friendship slowly flowered after he left Cambridge. Morgan  had been asked to coach Masood son of a maharaja in Latin and he was now going to visit him. Discretion was the first line of defense after what happened to Oscar Wilde. Morgan had a number of encounters with boy and many Indians. Morgan knew nothing of Mohamadans and this was irksome to Masood.

His father died when he was 2 and his middle aged mother was perpetually unhappy. He had always wanted a brother, there had been another baby before his birth that had died. In religion he considered Jesus boring and lacking in intellect. His good friend and lover  Hom was a student at LSE and said that their relationship was good enough for the Greeks. However Hom as many of his lovers gets married and he feels a loss.

To Morgan most females felt a different species and scared him. He worked this theme out of himself in Where Angles Fear to Tread. He was attracted to a young shepherd who offered him a puff on his pipe and only when the boy stood up that he saw he had a clubfoot. Morgan saw himself with that foot in another life where he got married.

By the time he was married Homs role as a lover had been taken by Masood.

Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936 was always singing about the virtues of the British and inferiority of the natives and the gory glory of a patriotic death.

A friend Malcolm Darling from Kings in the Civil Service in Dewas wrote to compliment Morgan on his book. Morgan had written about marriage but when Malcolm met him accompanied by Merz just before Malcolm's marriage  asked him about himself he would not admit he was lonely.  Morgan and Merz walked towards their homes together said goodbye and the next day Merze was found hung by his own hand. Morgan had been the last to see him alive. What had befallen Ernest Merze was a warning to him.

Back home, Malcolm was married with twins could identify himself with Morgan's book they met and kissed.  

 Massood said if he came to India they could get closer than they were in England.  Masood was in London practicing for the bar. Morgan was back in Italy where he had been a number of times and had set 2 of his novels there.

After  Morgan had published a book of short stories. He now wrote some short stories not to express but to excite himself. Then went on to a novel of that nature, called Arctic Summer. Howards End was selling well and he had enough money to afford a trip to India.

In India starting in Aligath ,he visited a cave that had been polished into a temple, where you voice echoed. In England Masood was out of place but in India Morgan was. He wanted to meet Masoods mother but she kept strict purdah and cannot show herself before you. The discussed that the Balkans was the death battle of Islam and why was Sir George Grey (1911)the first to recognize Italy's colonizing Tripoli. The Bulgarian army (1912) is within 25 miles of Istanbul.

Indian men were seen walking hand in hand and hung to each other. The society was totally divided Moslems and Hindus but the Hindus were stratified with Brahman down to the untouchables. Under the British at the bottom of the heap were Eurasians, the professional men, railway employees, tea planters then army officers and floating at the top the Viceroy. They had clubs that did not allow in Indians. The English are bored in India and their bad manners towards the Indians upset Morgan.

1912 The Capital of India moved from Calcutta to New Delhi announced by George V.  A bomb thrown at Lord Charles Hardinge's  elephant in a procession into the new capital. He suffered only flesh wounds. Delhi was a predominantly Muslim area at the time. Morgan explained that much of Brittan's foreign policy was fear of German and not hatred of Islam. 

Masood was getting married which was much more inevitable here than in Britain.  He visited Lucknow whose Residency  was the site of the Mutiny outbreak  and siege against the British East India company in 1857.

"Do the English think that they will rule us forever?" The Raj will be defeated it will take 50 to 500 years. He was not proud of the treatment the English meted out to the locals, his anger of this showed in his writings. The subject of power , racial power and its ugliness.

Edward Carpenter 35 years older than Morgan had supported ideas like socialism, vegetarianism and women's rights. He spoke of male companionship that went back to the Greeks and shared his home with a younger working class man for over 20 years. Finally he found another person that understood his attitude to India. 

In Aligath Morgan visited the Anglo-Oriental Collage had 2 Muslim men students who loved each other and when the were forced to part killed themselves. One drowned himself and the other ran in front of a train.

1854 The Working Men's collage was set up in London and many of Morgan's friends worked there. By now his Indian book had been forgotten and he had writing on homosexualism  material that he could never publish, Goldie asked him what is the purpose of writing stuff you can't publish? He couldn't even show it to many people. "There will be a time when I can." He was starting middle age with 3 unfinished novels in his hands.

1914 Britain was at war and everyone else was volunteering. He observed European civilization set back 30 years. He could not see himself working as a nurse. He was offered a job cataloguing at the National Gallery.

He got on well with the young novelist DH Lawrence who had a young German wife. 

Duncan Grant a Scottish artist 1885-1978. His father was an army major and his childhood was in India and Burma. He was part of the Bloomsbury group.

Alexandria

Morgan heard that they needed researches in the war hospital for soldiers who were lost or missing. He went for an interview with Gertrude Bell (1868 -1926) He was sent to Alexandria. This was the city founded by Alexander the Great home of Callimachus and Theocritus and death place of  Cleopatra. He traveled around the hospital wards and made notes of who had been reported killed. He was responsible to Miss Victoria Grant Duff the head of the Wounded and Missing Department. After 3 weeks she told him his were the best reports of the team of 4 and London was pleased with them.

One of his very good friend here was C.P. Cavafy a leading Greek poet of  Constantinople extraction and Morgan translated and introduced his poems to the English speaking world in 1923. Morgan and Cavafy never discussed the secret they had in common. The hospital in Montazah had once been the Khedival palace, build in 1892.

Morgan has a close  relation to Mohammod el Adi a tram conductor. With a letter to the Government Employment Bureau he got Mohammod a better paying job. In bed with Mohammod one night who told him he planned to marry his late brothers wife, a common practice, cheaper as no dowry is needed and there is a child that needs a father. Mohammod was diagnosed with consumption and Morgan paid for a private doctor who said it was caught it time and could be cured.

A letter came from London making Morgan head researcher and this upset Miss Duff, he did not want the status and the conflict this caused.

1914 Nov. Armistice signed and Morgan returned to London. When Mahomed landed up in jail Morgan sent him £10 to pay his fine.

1919 Amritsar Punjab  massacre's this marked  the start of the end of the Raj. caused through stupidity and arrogance of a British General in dealing with a big crowd. 

His friend Malcolm brought an invitation from the Maharaja Bapu Sahib  for Morgan to be his secretary.. Morgan now went to India and stopped in Egypt where he saw Mohamad who was in debt and very ill of consumption.

In the Maharaja's palace every festival was celebrated lavishly and opulently, while the palace building was falling apart. Rumors' were going about the palace of Morgan's gay partners. When Morgan told the Maharaja that he was prepared to resign, he told Morgan he had heard nothing about it, and he would find somebody reliable of the hereditary servants to come to him. Asked if he had learned this habit in England. Morgan said it was not possible there. In fact it was illegal. Did you learn it in Egypt - looking for a thing to blame onto Muslims. Kanaya the barber was sent to him by the  Maharaja. This supplied his need of lust for both of them and they looked forward to it.

The Ghoul Ashtami Festival celebrated the birth of Krishna perhaps this could provide the material that Morgan's book needed. He had read   the Bhagavud Purena (written between 500 to 1000CE)and knew the Krishna story.

1921 Prince Edward of Wales visit to India at a time when Mahatma Ghandi was urging Indians not to wear foreign imported clothes. Morgan decided it was time to return home as he all projects he was involved in for the Maharaja stopped because of lack of funds. He would miss the daily lust with Kanaya.

The Muslims had been upset by the break up of the Turkish Empire after WW1. Muslims were united behind The Congress Party supported Ghandis civil disobedience. Everyone in Masood circle objected to the royal visit. The Empires dream was dying Morgan said because of rudeness in Railway carriages.

Going back trough Egypt Mohammad was not able to meet him as he was too ill and he had to go to Mansourah and he knew his friend was dying. 

  Passage to India this would be dedicated to Masood as he was the reason Morgan went to India. They had , had 17 years of friendship.

Back in London Leonard Woolf suggested he read through what he had written and try to finish it. he realized that what he had written was more substantial than he thought but he has not touched it since 1914.

In Egypt he had loved Mohammed but what could Mohammed have felt in return, he had been excited and flattered to be courted by an Englishman and had been eager for the financial help.

Suddenly he thought the answer was to turn the book into a mystery of violence and ghosts. Leonard wanted to publish it through his Horgath press but Morgan was bound to Edward Arnold (Mathew Arnold the poet was his uncle) 2 of his travel books came out to raving reviews.

 Alexandria: A History and Guide (1922)

Pharos and Pharillon (A Novelist's Sketchbook of Alexandria Through the Ages) (1923)

When Morgan visited Edward Carpenter,(1844 to 1929 early activist of gay rights) he was the one who had suggested the title Passage to India from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Rumour was that Whitman and Carpenter had been lovers.

With the publication Morgan found himself famous and wealthy. Letters from Civil Servants said he did not know India but was just a visitor there. In the book he never portrayed the British in a very good light. At Lyons Corner House he heard a women saying you must read his book. Look at EM Forster he is not well dressed." I've heard that his life is unhappy, he lives with his mother and is not the adventurous type.. A timid soul who has only lived in his mind."   

He returned to India aged in 1945 aged 66. He was now able to meet the loftier echelons of British society and dined with the Viceroy(1943-1947) Lord  Archibald  Wavell.  It took him 3 days to get to India in a flying boat via France, Italy and Egypt.

 Masood had become vice Chancellor of the Aligath Muslim University previously the Anglo- Oriental Collage. Then Minister of Education for Bhopal State. He died in 1929 of kidney failure. The Maharajah of Dewas had died 6 months later as he had brought his estate deep into debt. This university bestowed on Morgan an honoree life membership. Finally he visited Masood grave which had been totally neglected and overgrown with weeds.

Note Damon Galgut the author is openly gay. Born 1963 Won Booker prize in 1921 for The Promise.

 

The Promise by Damon Galgut 2021 256pg

6/2/22

There are 3 promises 1) That Salome will get the land that her hut is built  on. 2) That Anton will lead the nation and eat the world. 3) That in the new South Africa we bring the freedom expected.

The story takes place over 4 decades with the family getting together over 4 funerals.  1)Jewish 2)Calvinist Afrikaner 3)Catholic 4) African ancestral worship.

1)  You have the Apartheid era 2) Mandela era Rugby World Cup 3)Mabeki era 4)Zuma era.

It deals with religion, aesthetics in SA , and politics is only a part of the story.

Just as today the US people are looking for an Oranja. (A white only country) The narrator acts as a camera.

Cape Town is characterized by being around a mountain.

The Karoo is a sparsely populated semi desert that once could have been a shallow lake.

Story of Mom, Dad Anton , older brother and 2 sisters.  The mother dies promising a small piece of  land to Salome, the family servant.

Democracy is wasted as the blacks get political power but not economic power.

 Time Line for the Promise 

1835-1846  The Voortrekkers (white Boer pioneers )leave the Cape and settle in the Transvaal and Orange Free State. 

1838 "Kill the Wizards" The Voortrekker delegation were invited to Dingane Zulu's kraal to negotiate an agreement and were massecred. This was followed by

1838 Dec 16 Battle of Blood River (Ncomo River) where the Boers managed to defeat the Zulu's. This remembered as Dinganes Day, later called the Day of the Covenant and now called Day of Reconciliation.

1925 Afrikaan became and official language of South Africa replacing written Dutch.

         N P van Wyk Louw one of the team of Afrikaans poets that made Afrikaans a written language.

 1948 Nationalist Party comes to power with the Apartheid platform and ruled till end of white rule.

1950 Group Area Act segregation law determining where non white races could live or own land.

1954 Johannes Strijdom PM died in office, his bust is where Anton gets a ride to the farm.

1958 Hendrk Verwoed PM The designer of the Apartheid policy.

1960 Sharpeville massacre and  State of Emergency

1961 Union of South Africa becomes Republic of South Africa and leaves the British Commonwealth

  1962  to 1981 Chrysler Valiant cars available      

        

1966 Verwoed is assassinated by Tzafendas, locked up without a trial to avoid and uprising. 

          John Voster becomes PM

1971 S. Africa metricized weights, distance etc. fully by then with liters and kilograms.

1975 Portugal gives Angola independence and South Africa has troops in the Civil War that follows against Cuban's sent by Russia. 

1976 Seweto Uprising. Youth Day a  National Holiday will celebrate this later on.

         Toyota Cresida  or Mark2 car became available from then.

1978 Pieter Botha PM

1979 "Sun City" Sol Kerzner set up this hotel and casino, entertainment complex in nominally indepandant black state.

1986  Funeral 1. Jewish.   Anton is 19. 1986 police massacre resulting in State of Emergency

1989President Frederick deKlerk last White Minority leader.

1994  President Nelson Mandela and ANC   African National Congress take over.

1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa   funeral 2 Calvinist

1996 Truth and Reconciliation Commission TRC set up by Mandela, headed by Bishop Desmond Tutu. Any political crime could get amnesty by revealing what was done, and showing remorse.

1999President Thabo Mbeki 

2004 ANC in power 10years    Funeral 3 Catholic

2005 AIDS the government finally starts dealing with this problem

2009 President Jacob Zuma.

2013  Zuma involved the Gupta family in a $6 billion deal with paybacks in mining, railways and the state electricity company.

2015 2018 Water shortage in Cape Town, electrical cuts.

2018 Zuma forced to resign  Funeral 4 Spiritual

        President  Cyril Ramaphosa

Ma has betrayed the whole family by reverting back to Judaism. Amor examines the medicine cabinet of every home she enters.

Majority rule in South Africa during the Cold War meant Communism.

Okie imagines himself as one of his Voortrekker ancestors. Brandy and Coke are my favorite  . The farm is halfway between Pretoria and Hartbeespoort Dam. Rumours of Kruger War gold buried in this area. 

Because Mannie married Rachel their children are fuckups. Oupa drowned in the dam and Pa inherited the farm.

Rachel is not heavy as the sickness hollowed her out,  she has been dying for half a year. She came to the farm as a pregnant bride 20years ago.

Salome came with the land to Pa and she looked after Ma through her illness, but she is apparently invisible. Her son Lukas ' father died in the gold mines. Salome lives in \a house that Opa bought to stop an Indian family moving in when Mrs Lambard died.

Dean De Wet's father died and he helps on the farm with the horses and has a relationship with Astrid. Amor was born when Pa marriage was in trouble and was not planned. Mannie is worried perhaps he is not her child.

Troops in the townships .Anton gets a 7 day pass to go to his mothers funeral and get hit by a rock going the direct route to the farm. He says his parents should never have married.  In Pretoria he waits at bust of Strydom for Lexington to fetch him. Stones hits him on the short way home and with a wound he now looks like a soldier.

The Rabbi finds the Swart family obtuse. Ockie - congratulations instead of condolences. Desiree's father is a cabinet minister who is physically and morally repugnant. All 3 children got names with A's. They slaughter a lamb to soak in the sadness of their loss. Not always possible to please 2 white people simultaneously, when Lexington won't talk about the Swarts family.  Blood is the thickest glue of them all. Funeral with Jewish non Jewish, English and Afrikaans speakers. 

Metal detectors to get into the shopping mall. It's against the law for Salome to own the house. Anton  fell out with his father, desserts the army and becomes a wonderer. Oom Okie is a hollow emphysema husk from working on the mines.

40 years before Alwyn Simmers and his sister Laetitia had an incestious relationship a thing Christians don't do, and he sold his soul on the Altar of Mammon.  At the funeral a troop of baboons come to the food and Anton shoots and them causing the guests to run. Marina turned vegetarian as a result of this braai showing a "communist sentiment"

Cherise her divorce settlement left her lonely and well fed. Pa's girlfriend Lorrain Louw who he never married so gave her no respectability is a beneficiary. Bad news desires transmission like a virus. Amor's taxi driver home is from the Congo. She and Salome have a real feeling for each other. 

Even those who don't like rugby due to a deficiency in their character are watching today. Mandela appears in a Springbok Jersey. SA won in this religion, and the whole country wakes up with a hangover. SA now back in international Rugby.

Mannie died, he thought god would protect him in a glass cage with poisonous snakes.  Amor who left London to come to the funeral now goes to Durban to be with her friend Susan and both become nurses. She goes by bus - only those who are struggling and down on luck travel that way. Amor works with AIDS which the government neglected. Voortrekker shaman burying my father and the prodigal son Anton/ Andrew has to apologize to him to be able to inherit, capitulation was easy. The Abuntu casket represents the open nature of Africa. for Salome the howling jackals in a bad omen.

Astrid was pregnant with Dean before they married in front of the magistrate.

Astrid's husband Jake is in business with a well known politician neighbour. They live in a gated community, and they are invited to the re-inauguration of Thabo Mbeki where they see Castro and Gaddafi, ten years of democracy in SA. Approval matters to Astrid.  Astrid is having an affair with Jake's business partner (a black man)

. A man having a heart attack in the supermarket. This last sight in this world is a bag of dog food. Astrid is hijacked, pushed into the car boot and killed.    dagga and Mandrax (drugs)

Anton has to identify the body and says he shot a woman when he was in the army.  SA they kill each other for fun or  any reason , sometimes for small change. Jake has not been to confession for years and hears from the Father Batty that Astrid was at him the day she was killed, Her divorce from Dean was an offence against god. She had twins with him and they now go to their father. The Priest in a moment of weakness reveals that Astrid had a lover. Anton has been to therapy for a couple of years.  Amor is always drawn to the underclasses and victims.

People who died are always at peace so says the rabbi, dominee, priest.  The homeless man could have had a position of respect once.

It was always Astrid that kept in touch with both Anton and Amor and was the glue of the family. Anton is in debt and is planning to sell part of the farm that near the Church to spite the dominee.

Deseree's father got amnesty by admitting to political crimes. Emphysema takes Okie. Anton goes to the casino and pubs instead of looking after the farm which is falling apart. He is bored by almost everything these days. People and leaving for Perth. The Snake Park partner leaves with the money and goes abroad. Property value is falling all the time. 20 years spent on his novel, wasted his life and killed himself with the  shotgun. Leaves in his will he wants a spiritual cremation no religion.

Desiree's father has dementia. Funerals are for the living, not the dead.  Mowgli /Moti gives a speech at the funeral with very few people. Salome had Amor's phone number but nobody asked her for it. 

Moti's voice has got him further than just the side of the bed. Amor turns up a month later

Amor keeps vanishing. Salome is the only one with her phone number. Amor has no driving license and is vegan. She turns up a month later. Anton was not fertile before he was impotent.  Two life policies that won't pay out as he died by his own hand, and he owes a lot of money to many.

Amor was struck by lightning on the koppie. It is coming back to get her unfinished business.  Moti didn't I tell you the place has energy. Antons novel will get its title last thing. The childhood is well written, then the shooting accident and he wants to run away from himself. With his return to the farm the novel collapses as he loses his way, and all he left was a mess.

There is a community claiming the land that they say they were forcible moved from and the gift to Salome might be a poisoned chalice. Salome at 71 passes from her home to the big house between the 2 and belongs to neither. She originates from Mahikeng (Mafiking) and is Setwana. 

 Luke - the land you are on is ours not yours after he went to jail was never the same again. She askes Salome for her bank account number.. Amor no longer get periods.

Austen Roberts bird sanctuary near Pretoria?

_______________________________ 

Damon Galgut

Born 1963 and won Booker prize 1921. The 3rd SA writer to win the Booker prize after  Nadin Gordimer and JM Coetzee .From  Pretoria , his mother converted to Judiasm, he is gay. He wrote his first novel at the age of 17.

Arctic summer is a fictionalised book on EM Forster, a repressed Edwardian gay who can quietly come out when he is abroad in India Egypt, with WW1 in between. With Nadine Gordimer politics is everything. Whereas he writes about ordinary families but has to place it into a political background .  Influenced by Faulkner and Virginia Woolf.