Dear Off-Topicers,
In a newsletter last year, I mentioned I’d had to make drastic cuts to wedge that edition into your inbox,1 so today, I’m finally sweeping up the offcuts - hopefully with all the lint and loose bits of thread carefully removed - to share with you now2.
Nb. Actually, I think the lint and thread has turned into footnotes, which today are almost as long as the letter itself - I know this will please the majority of readers, who aren’t really here for the main newsletter at all ;)
But onwards. I have form for mismatching my reading to my environment, so it’s not entirely surprising that as I was travelling to Florence last October, I found myself listening to the audiobook of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, set in the cold smog of 1850s industrial Manchester. Weirdly, I loved it, but I wonder if being already-immersed was essential to this - perhaps if you start a really good book in one country, it’s capable of carrying you into the next. But beginning a brand new book that’s seasonally or location-inappropriate, no matter how good, can be jarring. (Particularly upsetting examples have been attempting to read J.L Carr’s quintessentially english A Month in the Country in Spain, and Graham Greene’s rain-soaked The End of the Affair beside a pool in 38 degree heat).
Towards the end of last year I was running out of Audible credits, when I realised many of the classics are included free3. Initially, I listened to Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey, which were good, although I didn’t think either was as brilliant as Jane Austen’s other novels. But as I was really enjoying existing in a different era to our own, I kept going and found my way to Elizabeth Gaskell…which sparked a sort of mania and I ended up listening to three of her novels back-to-back: North & South; Ruth; and Mary Barton.
When it comes to classics, I am so totally there for debutante balls, but I love that Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels are more grounded and focus on the gritty day-to-day of ordinary people’s lives. She’s just so good at writing stories that share her radical ideas around how society could function; about strong, independently-minded women; but also, strong men, too. John Thornton, the brooding mill-owner in North and South, is such a unique hero - someone willing to change his whole way of thinking, and so utterly dedicated and constant in his love, who declares it more earnestly than any man I’ve come across in fiction (and possibly, life). It’s just delightful. And I don’t mean delightful in a lace doilies sort of way - I mean delightful in a considering having his name tattooed on the inside of my forearm kind of way.
If I have a criticism of North & South, it’s that the ending was a little too brief for me. Although I rectified that by reading it twice - the second time very slowly over an enormous bowl of soup to fill the initial gap left by its brevity. The next day, I tried to buy a Penguin clothbound version as I wanted to possess it in a more tangible way (it’s that kind of novel), but found it’s been completely omitted from the range. Crushed, I wrote to Penguin and asked if they had any plans to bring one out, but they didn’t reply - I’m hoping this is because all hands are simply too busy squeezing Elizabeth’s gorgeous words into a cloth cover to get distracted by typing out messages to customers…4
Mary Barton is probably my least favourite of the three, just because it covers many of the same issues in North & South, but with slightly less engaging characters and plot (although still brilliant), so I’ll move straight onto Ruth, which is set first in the welsh countryside and later a town I can’t remember the location of (perhaps near Oxford, but I could be making that up). Ruth is less factories, and more matters of integrity and the complexities of taking an enlightened moral stance within a religious framework (I really do seem to find it almost impossible to write about the issues in Elizabeth’s novels without making them sound like dry crusts, but this is absolutely not how she makes them seem, so please just reimagine my words into something more enticing). It’s quite a soft and gentle sort of book when set against the urban grit of the other two, but one that again seems way ahead of its time. Elizabeth was apparently the first mainstream novelist to cast a ‘fallen woman’ as the heroine and it must have been ridiculously subversive when it was published in 1853. What a total wonderhorse she was.
I find it really odd that quite gritty novels like this can feel like such comfort reads56. Part of it must come from being set in an era removed from our own news cycle (even though many of the issues remain), but I think there’s also some other more illusive quality, maybe in the language or the absence of technology, I'm not sure.
Anyway, if you have thoughts on Elizabeth’s novels or any other bits of lint or thread you might wish to share, please do leave a comment7, otherwise, wishing you a lovey week.
With love,
Florence x
Ps. If you’re not in a reading mood, the 2004 BBC adaptation of North & South was amazing.
And yes, I always feel slightly judged when the newsletter-writing software suggests I’m getting close to the email size limit - it transports me straight back to Giles at the recruitment agency telling me my CV was verbose… weirdly, I actually came across that CV in a file of old papers recently* and was surprised to find it was just one side of A4! And that I seemed like a regular twenty-one-year-old just hoping to find a job! (The slightly hysterical exclamation marks are just because I was so surprised by this). I thought about what I’d edit or cut now, and realised I’d leave it the way it was. And then wondered if Giles just liked using words he thought I might have to look up in the dictionary (I did, but that’s beside the point). But then pondered if this wasn’t the edited version of my CV once Giles had taken his red pen to it…😂.
Isn’t it weird how sometimes random comments lodge in your head for years after like this? I really hope nothing I’ve said is stuck in anyone else’s head in this way. Although it seems inevitable that we might all be the unintentional stuck / stuckee at different times, just because it’s so hard to find exactly the right words in every situation.
* Finding a CV from 1998 might sound like hoarding, but it was actually anti-hoarding and I had a paper shredder nearby.
** apologies to newer readers who may not be familiar with Giles, a fleeting character in my life from a few decades ago, who seems to be referenced here with bizarre regularity (writing that, I’ve realised he really does exist in my head more as a character than a real person).
Although the lint and thread I was talking about were metaphorical, last year I bought one of these and it’s excellent for getting cat hair off chairs and dog hair off the second-to-top step where Nell likes to lie so she can keep an eye on both floors at once. Somehow quicker and more thorough than a vacuum cleaner in a small area.
I’ve since found the same is true of Kindle. AND that I can borrow books electronically from my local library - a magical solution for anyone with a tendency to rack up fines larger than the cost of the actual book, meaning the library has previously been too expensive to risk using 🙈.
What’s strange and lovely, is that shortly after this, one of my book groups exchanged secret Santa gifts (I told you this newsletter was from the archives) and mine was the beautiful copy of North & South in the photo, given by someone who’d had no idea how much I was craving a physical copy, or even that I’d recently read it. I nearly cried when I opened it. And what’s really lovely about now having the book is that North & South has wonderful quotes at the head of each chapter, which I hadn’t been able to properly absorb while listening to the audio version.
Nb. that’s my not-too-far-off-being-finished Paintscape in the background of the photo - sewing pattern here if you fancy making one. It includes all the papers you’ll need ready to print and cut out, a colouring sheet for planning, lots of tips, and step-by-step illustrations :)
Which can really only be compared to those times when my mum made macaroni cheese and let me eat it in front of the television - wholemeal pasta (which sounds awful, but 1980s wholemeal pasta had a really welcome heaviness to it), a ridiculously thick cheese sauce, and the crisp contrast of little gem lettuce on the side. Somehow the memory of this is exactly akin to being curled up with a comforting book as an adult.
I’m wondering about a newsletter containing lots of comfort reads - although possibly featuring novels from this century, too?
I’ve realised this is what Fi & Jane would refer to as the chuff of life. Talking with friends one evening, someone who hadn’t heard this term said, ‘They must be meaning chaff.’ But they’re not. And either way, you might like to know that quite serendipitously*, I cleaned out the utensils and cutlery drawer last week.
* It is only serendipitous in as far as that I am now talking about the chuff of life, but a crumb of serendipity works especially well for these purposes.
** This particular footnote was written last October…so there’s no longer any serendipity and my cutlery drawer probably needs cleaning again. Which might be a bit depressing if I had any intention of actually doing something about it, but I think the impetus for tasks like that really has to seize you - in a coursing through your entire body and can’t be left a moment longer sort of way. But as it is, I’m sitting up in my loft typing away to you and the cutlery drawer feels a very long way away. x
If you haven’t read them, I recommend Wives and Daughters and Cranford if you want more Mrs Gaskell. Her house in Manchester at Plymouth Grove is a really interesting house to visit. The Unitarian Church bought it for their minister to live in as a piece of PR to demonstrate that a nonconformist minister could live as elegantly as any C of E vicar. Were you to stay in Manchester to visit the house, you could also visit Knutsford, the town that inspired Cranford. It’s a bit more “footballers’ wives” now than it was in Mrs Gaskell’s day but none the worse for that.
I love Mrs Gaskell's novels, particularly Ruth. They're so beautifully written, with such loving detail given to the homes and settings as well as the characters themselves. If you've not already listened, I'd also recommend 'Cranford' narrated by Prunella Scales - she does a wonderful job of the gentle-yet-hilarious comedy in her narration (not sounding at all like Sybil).