A Reader's Shelf

2 3 A READER’S SHELF Compiled by J. L. HERRERA 4 To the Memory of Michele Turner Oral historian, writer, activist, special person And with Special Thanks to Bronwen Meredith, Madge Portwin, Ken Herrera, Penny Parish, Joyce Keam, David Goodrick and Rob Rands Introduction It took nearly five years to be borne in on me that publishers simply weren’t very interested in my views on books. Strictly speaking, there is no reason why they should be. Suburban housewives occasionally acquire a moment of fame—but very rarely for their views on books. I wrote A Writer’s Calendar principally for my mother—though, sadly, she died only days before the bound manuscript reached her—and A Book Circle began as the overflow from the first book. But this book, though it too is partly overflow, is simply a labour of love, a place to let off steam, pages to explore ideas ... It is mine and if anyone else should wish to browse in it, then they must excuse a certain degree of self-indulgence. Along the way I have come upon various bits of information which would have fitted nicely into the earlier books; such as Vance Palmer’s memories of meeting the notorious Frank Harris or this little bit on how Brian O’Nolan came to use the name Myles na Gopaleen, ‘O’Nolan borrowed the name from a character in Gerald Griffin’s novel, The Collegians (1829). It means Myles of the ponies’. But it is rather like writing a biography; at some point you have to say ‘finis’ even though new and fascinating information is almost certainly still out there for the collecting. For Pleasant Hours. J. L. Herrera 2001 5 A WRITER’S SHELF January 1st: Ouida Joe Orton * * * * * Isn’t it funny how Ouida pops up in all sorts of places? ‘Now “New Woman” fiction—that term was invented by the popular novelist “Ouida” in the 1890s—looked at the way women, offered greater independence by improving educational and work opportunities, changing mores and better birth control began, in life and fiction too, to claim more control of their lives and aspirations.’ (Malcolm Bradbury in The Modern British Novel) And Anne Haverty says in Constance Markievicz, ‘A book she read aroused rather anguished reflections on love and its elusiveness. This was Ariadne by Ouida, the pen- name of novelist Marie Louise de la Ramee, the popular and rather risqué novelist. Maria Bashkirtseff had also read Ariadne and was no less unsettled by it: ‘It is ... in the highest degree sensational—the agitation it caused me three or four years ago. It treats of art and love and the scene is set in Rome.’ Constance, who, like Bashkirtseff, had a sense of destiny and wanted to be an artist, was just as susceptible to the theme of Ariadne which concerns the fate of a young sculptor, Gioja. Gioja has been brought up on Homer and Virgil and lives for art alone until she meets Hilarion the capricious and sublime poet for whom she dies. Constance wrote: I have read Ariadne and loved it, unnatural and overstrained it may be, but there is a spark somewhere, the indescribable touch that carries one away and makes one believe in love—real true love—God is love and I do not know Him.’ It was not only women who used hyperbole in their descriptions; ‘Morrison of Peking’ (Dr George Morrison) called her that “eccentric egotist of genius”. Ouida’s dry wit pops up here and there. ‘Cant, naked, is honoured throughout England, cant, clothed in gold, is a king in England never resisted’ and ‘The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity’. She was perhaps thinking of her good friends Isabel and Richard Burton when she wrote of absence. And yet Ouida herself remains largely hidden and her own books, including Ariadne, are now extremely difficult to find. The best I could do was her 1867 novel Under Two Flags ... * * * * * Many fascinating characters touch the lives of the famous British explorers; touch, and then somehow disappear again as though they cannot be given the space they deserve, perhaps lest they absorb a little lustre from those famed figures. There is for instance Sidi Bombay, the ex-slave from Zanzibar who went exploring with Burton and Speke and also, briefly, with Livingstone and Stanley, and of whom William Harrison in his novelised Burton and Speke says, “He became the only man in the nineteenth century to cross Africa from both south to north and east to west.” The first game warden of Kruger National Park, Harry Wolhuter, wrote of coming upon the ruins of a well-built old stone house said to have been the home of one João Albassini; in trying to find out more he came upon Colonel Stevenson-Hamilton’s book The Low Veld: Its Wild Life and Its People and its tantalisingly brief statement: “Few white men have led a more remarkable existence in Africa, and a full account of his life and history, should it ever become available for publication, would be of great interest.” Alas, I could find no more … And there is the Emin Pasha, not a Turk as the name might suggest, but the governor 6 of a province in the southern Sudan, whose life and fate became important to both Stanley and the British Government. Adam Hochschild says the “beleaguered pasha was a slight, short German Jew, originally named Eduard Schnitzer … a physician by training, the pasha was a brilliant linguist and an eccentric; besides trying to govern his province, heal the sick, and hold out against the Mahdist rebels, he was painstakingly gathering specimens of plant and animal life and assembling a collection of stuffed birds for the British Museum.” Judith Listowel in The other Livingstone chronicles the lives of some of the men who either preceded Livingstone or helped him in some other way. Cotton Oswell and Mungo Murray accompanied Livingstone on his first major travels and their knowledge of the countryside and organisational abilities were of immense help to Livingstone, but Tim Jeal in his biography of Livingstone says of them, “Oswell was no mindless young man with a private fortune and little else. He was exceptionally generous, modest and completely lacking in personal ambition. The last two qualities provide the key to the success of his relationship with Livingstone, who had already proved himself incapable of suffering any European whose views conflicted with his own. Livingstone liked to get his full measure of praise for what he did, and Oswell conveniently never saw fit to press his own claims. Oswell’s companion, Mungo Murray, who also came on the 1849 journey to Lake Ngami, was a man of similar character, who preferred doing things to talking about them afterwards.” Hungarian explorer László Magyar had also visited much of the country that Livingstone made his own explorational fiefdom; but he was even less able to press for any share of the glory, being remote from the scientific figures of his own country and even further from Livingstone’s lionisers in London. (Though as Magyar’s descendants still live in Angola it might be said that he belonged more truly to Africa than Livingstone ever could.) Then there were the Portuguese such as Silva Porto and, particularly, Candido Cardoso. Basil Davidson says of Silva Porto that three Zanzibari traders turned up in Benguela in Angola in 1852 which was a “signal for a greatly renewed Portuguese interest in establishing a trans-African trading route between Angola and Mozambique. Silva Porto was sent off to pioneer the trail. He got no further than the Zambesi, although that was no mean feat.” Cardoso nursed Livingstone back to health, he provided generous hospitality to not only Livingstone but all his porters for months on end, and for his pains, Livingstone’s “violent criticisms of the Portuguese were to lose him the support of people who could have helped him; his disgraceful treatment of Cardoso was not only to hurt a friend, but one who was in a position to advise and to explain the difficulties against which the missionaries would have to battle.” Livingstone said of the Portuguese, “The Portuguese cultivate skin diseases and drunkenness more than horseflesh and are asses themselves.” He was critical of their involvement in the slave trade but carefully avoided recognising that his own ignorant forced entry into African kingdoms that had kept the slavers out opened the door to slavery; he also avoided mentioning his own willingness to accept the hospitality of slave traders such as Muhamid bin Gharib. Livingstone was a brave man and an exceptionally obstinate one. His obsession with being the first European to see certain key landmarks may have grown out of a sense of inferiority rooted in his poverty-stricken childhood but it also lead him to do almost anything to avoid recognising that other Europeans might have preceded him. Listowel concludes with a letter sent to her in 1973: “It is obvious that prior to Livingstone the Shire river and Lake Maravi were frequently visited by the Portuguese. Candido da Costa Cardoso was one of these travellers, who became famous because of Livingstone’s ingratitude. Had the Doctor been honest about the information he had received from 7 Cardoso, he would have been a great explorer.” * * * * * While David Livingstone was in my thoughts I came across an old book called The Livingstone of South America by the Rev. R. J. Hunt. Who, I wondered, was ‘The Livingstone’? He turned out to be a Scottish missionary called Wilfrid Barbrooke Grubb who, under the auspices of the South American Missionary Society, worked first on Keppel Island in the Falklands, arriving in 1886, then in the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay almost up until his death in 1930.

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