Bloomin' Brilliant

I have had a very culturally bereft week, I am afraid. We went away for a city break and I mainly shopped and quaffed wine which, although delightful pursuits both, caused me to neglect my book reading, film watching and pop medleys on the hairbrush microphone.

After the lovely 'smush' of loads of mail behind the door when you first open it, the best thing about returning home after a holiday is the change in your garden. When I left, it was a vale of bluebells, but now it is studded with cheery yellow poppies. Every thing is a little higher, fuller and greener and the sparrows have hatched another nestful of chicks in the bird box. When I stand underneath it, I can hear their tiny squeaks and see the nest material which includes grasses, hairs from our heads and threads from our house and garden, poking through the corners and seams.

The thought of people deriving joy from bird watching used to make me weak with mirth. I once went over to some one's house and his parents had special high chairs which they placed by the window especially for the purpose of spying on blue tits and thrushes. Ha! I thought that this was the saddest, most ludicrous thing that I had ever seen and my friend was extremely embarrassed about these, the uncoolest chairs in the world. Now I quite want them. Birds are great and we have a tame blackbird who  we spy on like a couple of creeps as he leaps over our flowers and pecks at crumbs and worms.

Musing upon gardens has led me to look out Weeds and Wild Flowers, a collaboration between poet Alice Oswald and printmaker Jessica Greenman. The poems and etchings are all about flowers with titles such as Stinking Goose Foot, Narcissus, Bastard Toadflax and Rambling Rose complemented by etchings of orchids, wildflowers, foxgloves, nettles and snowdrops.

The etchings are incredible and represent what must have been months of work. Etching is a slow and exacting process. The copper or zinc plate is coated with a thick wax which is then scratched into with a metal implement. As with most printing methods, the image on the plate must be a reverse of the desired finished print.

The worked plate is placed into a bath of acid and the exposed sections are corroded by the acid while the wax coating protects the rest of the plate. Some printmakers use feathers to brush the bubbles of fizzing acid away from the plate so that they can judge how far the plate has been bitten into.

This resulting positive image, when the plate is cleaned, is recessed from the surface of the plate and therfore, ink needs to be rubbed into the deep grooves before damp paper is placed over the plate and the whole thing is rolled through a printing press and squeezed between blankets and a roller. It is only when the paper is removed on the other side that the artist can see if their labour has been worth it and the image works.

I am particularly impressed by the etchings that Jessica Greenman has made which contain only hand-lettered versions of Oswald's poems as it is very difficult to get an entire page of lettering right when you are scratching its mirror image into a black surface revealing silver letters. I have spotted one mistake but that is pretty good going.

The poems are anthropomorphic. Bastard Toadflax is a 'Ponderous, obstinate, cold skinned person', Narcissus relates her own tale ( 'yes once I was half frail, half glittering...I was half skin half breath') and Hairy Bittercress is described as a drunk who sits in watching TV who 'when she pulls off her tights ... sits with her white feet bare and her legs a-prickle with hair'.)

The Runaway by Elizabeth Anna Hart

The Runaway is a children's story which was first published in 1872 and was then re released in 1935 with a series of wood cut illustrations by the artist Gwen Raverat.

I had chosen The Runaway as my first Persephone mainly because of the beautiful pictures and on that front, I was not disappointed. There are 60 woodcuts interspersed with the text of this book and they range from tiny images of each character as he or she is introduced, larger full page illustrations or extensive two-page wide images which stretch above and below the text.

There is a particularly lovely one which shows Olga, the eponymous character in a tree which stretches its branches across two pages and Clarice, Olga's accomplice standing on a path below which fades into the distance.

Woodcut is an extremely unforgiving discipline; one cut out of place and you can ruin hours of work. Each cut that has been made in the wooden printing block avoids being inked up, so the artist is creating his or her lights and shades in reverse. The image itself must also be reversed. It requires incredible amounts of skill, concentration and physical stamina, as the tools are tiny and cramped, blistered fingers are inevitable. I point all this out only to make clear the incredible achievement of Gwen Raverat. This book is an artistic masterpiece.

She is capable of carving solid wooden furniture, draperies, faces, shadows and gossamer thin imaginary spirits with an equal amount of skill. The pictures not only support and illustrate the text, but also show scenes in the book that are only mentioned in retrospect (Olga being spotted on the roof by policemen, for example.)

The eagle-eyed reader may have noticed that I do not yet mention the story. This is because I was not very impressed. Apparently this work was a labour of love for Gwen R. as she had adored The Runaway as a child and pushed for it to be republished twice in her life time. I cannot see why, but then we all have beloved children's books that don't really stand up to much scrutiny (Hi Malory Towers!).

Olga, the runaway child is obviously supposed to delight the reader with her mischievous, devil-may-care ways but, quite frankly, I found her to be a complete arse and have never wanted to punch a fictional character in the face more keenly than when reading this book. Selfish, snobbish and completely ungrateful, Olga comes close to causing her supposedly dear friend and protector Clarice to have a nervous break down.

I was fond of Clarice. A painfully conscientious and lonely girl, she undertakes to keep Olga hidden from her father, servants and eventually policemen. She is wise and kind, anxious to be good and to protect the feelings of those she loves

"Olga opened her blue eyes wide, and stared about her. 'I don't know what you are talking about,' said she; 'it sounds like gibberish.'

' Never mind' said Clarice. 'We all speak gibberish to others, I think, when we say what we really feel'

'I feel very sleepy,' said Olga, 'but that is not gibberish is it?'

'No', said Clarice smiling, 'because I am getting sleepy too; when people feel alike they don't talk gibberish'"

There are some quite amusing moments in the book, like when Olga dresses up as a policeman and is outraged when Clarice derides her efforts and another occasion when Clarice worries to herself that Olga may actually be 'deficient' rather than just jolly and careless.

It is not a great book and I can see why the rather patronising overview of Elizabeth Anna Hart's works was put in as an after word rather than a fore word. At one point, the story looks like it is going to take an interesting turn which would make the character of Olga far more interesting and sympathetic, but it soon returns to its snobby and predictable path. It is an easy read, however, a book very much of its time and is eccentric and event-filled enough to carry you to the end.

At points, the friendship between the two girls seems like an intense love affair, with Olga teasing and flirting and pouting her way out of trouble with Clarice who takes the younger girl on her knee where Olga "began kissing her with dainty little kisses, as a bird might with it's beak peck sugar from her lips."

Olga's pouting lips and dainty white body are described again and again and Clarice is a slave to the younger girl's whims. "She (Clarice) thought of the money, and the jewels, and her heart sank within her, and she felt as if it must break... oh that she had never seen her! Oh that she had never listened to her!" At one point, Olga declares that she and Clarice will both go and live in an old cottage together "like those two old creatures in North Wales." where they will keep geraniums and "wear men's hats."

I was not sure if this aspect of the book was a heavily disguised reference to homosexuality. It is hard to find details about author Elizabeth Anna Hart's life despite her prolific output and she and her husband never had children. Homosexuality could not be openly discussed in the late 1800s but it has a pervasive yet subdued presence in the literature of the time. It is this, and the feminist moments, "It's girls that are kept under and kept down..." that most intrigued me about this book.

To sum up, this book is definitely worth buying for the gorgeous illustrations alone but the story, although original and lively, is not of the same quality.

This book was read as part of Persephone reading week, hosted by Paperback Reader and the B Files.