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Bird On The Wire
an online column by Carmel Bird

No. 6
28 June 1998

Previous columns
The future of the book
Time Slices
Outside In
The Tried and Tested
The Man Behind The Woman
Sometimes part of the attraction a book has for a reader depends on the time and place where the reader first read the book, the circumstances surrounding the event. The ambience gets into the memory of the book, and never goes away. My father used to read Wind in the Willows to my little brother, and I used to listen in; the story is woven into the experience of the reading. I always think fondly of those times whenever I read or hear someone read the book. When I was fifteen I had a crush on a boy who gave me a Penguin copy of the first volume of The Divine Comedy which I then read with a special weird fascination. I used to sit on the front veranda reading The Divine Comedy and this boy would come past and we would try to discuss the verse.
Sydney. May 1998. Early evening. I'm waiting for a cab at the wharf, going back to the hotel after a session at the Writers' Festival. It's raining like mad and I am sharing a black umbrella with a man I have just met. Auberon Waugh. I have admired his writing since the sixties, and I'm an avid reader of his magazine, The Literary Review. He doesn't seem to me to resemble the cartoon of himself in the magazine.
The cab doesn't come and I begin to tell AW about the first time I read his work.
It was in the summer, 1963, in Massachussets. I was staying with friends of friends in a tall serene old house surrounded by European trees. My bedroom was an attic, and beside the bed was a low white bookcase. It was there I found The Foxglove Saga by Auberon Waugh.
The novel is a bit like a sharply farcical Brideshead Revisited -- sly, ruthlessly subversive and very funny. I was captivated by the characters and the turns of phrase. The action moves from a religious community and school to hospitals, madhouses, the army and various dens of iniquity. The aristocratic Martin Foxglove is matched by Kenneth Stoat, the repellent and unprepossessing son of a dentist. The ridiculously Catholic Lady Foxglove is a magnificent hypocrite whose antics and manipulations are described with a breathless glee. 'She took out her little notebook in which she wrote her day's good works. On each page was printed a little list: Bury the Dead, Visit the Imprisoned, Clothe the Naked -- goodness she must remember about Martin's new uniform -- give Food to the Hungry -- well, that's myself, she thought humorously.' She knows the best make-up to wear in times of disaster. She makes at least one fatal mistake when she puts two letters in the wrong envelopes.
Nobody is really redeemed in The Foxglove Saga ; people start out bad and just get worse. To spite his mother Martin loses his faith. When she is slowly fading away in a nursing home he sends her a jar of gooseberry jam each Christmas. The Brothers are devious and spiteful; the nurses are criminal.
I loved that book, and I sometimes re-read it with great pleasure. Its principal subject is really mortality.
And as we stand in the gloom under the umbrella, AW reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a small book. He hands it to me and says he would like me to have it. It is a slightly battered uncorrected proof copy of The Foxglove Saga bound in manilla, with burnt umber type. Chapman & Hall. Lg. Crown 8vo. pp.240 Approx. price 15s. 0d. To be published September 1960.
I am amazed. Dazed. One of my favourite novels by one of my favourite authors, and here is the author handing me a rare and precious copy. An unimagined thrill. I really like bound proofs, their spare design and simplicity. No blurbs, no guff, no cover illustration.
In the proof of The Foxglove Saga there's a black and white line drawing on the title page. This is an unusual flourish, even for the real thing, but very odd in a proof. A sketch of a foxglove in bloom, with a stoat on its back legs gazing into the lowest floret, like and illustration in a children's book.
The first time I read the novel in Massachussetts, I liked it so much my hosts said I could keep it. So it seems to be charmed. First the desired copy became mine; thirty-odd years later, the bound proof.
The cosy attic bedroom in Massachussetts is wrapped around me and The Foxglove Saga. Then this is brought forward in my consciousness as I stand with the author in the rain at the wharf. And as if by magic the buff and russet book, soft, faintly ragged, discoloured at the edges, rusting at the seams, lifts from the briefcase and is put into my hands.
All this, for a compulsive reader, is dreamy, really dreamy.
Lady Foxglove died, you may like to know, as she had lived, in the odour of sanctity. Stoat joined the order.

HOME
Copyright © Carmel Bird 1998. All rights reserved.


	Bird On The Wire an online column by Carmel Bird No. 6 28 June 1998
Previous columns The future of the book Time Slices Outside In The Tried and Tested The Man Behind The Woman	Sometimes part of the attraction a book has for a reader depends on the time and place where the reader first read the book, the circumstances surrounding the event. The ambience gets into the memory of the book, and never goes away. My father used to read Wind in the Willows to my little brother, and I used to listen in; the story is woven into the experience of the reading. I always think fondly of those times whenever I read or hear someone read the book. When I was fifteen I had a crush on a boy who gave me a Penguin copy of the first volume of The Divine Comedy which I then read with a special weird fascination. I used to sit on the front veranda reading The Divine Comedy and this boy would come past and we would try to discuss the verse. Sydney. May 1998. Early evening. I'm waiting for a cab at the wharf, going back to the hotel after a session at the Writers' Festival. It's raining like mad and I am sharing a black umbrella with a man I have just met. Auberon Waugh. I have admired his writing since the sixties, and I'm an avid reader of his magazine, The Literary Review. He doesn't seem to me to resemble the cartoon of himself in the magazine. The cab doesn't come and I begin to tell AW about the first time I read his work. It was in the summer, 1963, in Massachussets. I was staying with friends of friends in a tall serene old house surrounded by European trees. My bedroom was an attic, and beside the bed was a low white bookcase. It was there I found The Foxglove Saga by Auberon Waugh. The novel is a bit like a sharply farcical Brideshead Revisited -- sly, ruthlessly subversive and very funny. I was captivated by the characters and the turns of phrase. The action moves from a religious community and school to hospitals, madhouses, the army and various dens of iniquity. The aristocratic Martin Foxglove is matched by Kenneth Stoat, the repellent and unprepossessing son of a dentist. The ridiculously Catholic Lady Foxglove is a magnificent hypocrite whose antics and manipulations are described with a breathless glee. 'She took out her little notebook in which she wrote her day's good works. On each page was printed a little list: Bury the Dead, Visit the Imprisoned, Clothe the Naked -- goodness she must remember about Martin's new uniform -- give Food to the Hungry -- well, that's myself, she thought humorously.' She knows the best make-up to wear in times of disaster. She makes at least one fatal mistake when she puts two letters in the wrong envelopes. Nobody is really redeemed in The Foxglove Saga ; people start out bad and just get worse. To spite his mother Martin loses his faith. When she is slowly fading away in a nursing home he sends her a jar of gooseberry jam each Christmas. The Brothers are devious and spiteful; the nurses are criminal. I loved that book, and I sometimes re-read it with great pleasure. Its principal subject is really mortality. And as we stand in the gloom under the umbrella, AW reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a small book. He hands it to me and says he would like me to have it. It is a slightly battered uncorrected proof copy of The Foxglove Saga bound in manilla, with burnt umber type. Chapman & Hall. Lg. Crown 8vo. pp.240 Approx. price 15s. 0d. To be published September 1960. I am amazed. Dazed. One of my favourite novels by one of my favourite authors, and here is the author handing me a rare and precious copy. An unimagined thrill. I really like bound proofs, their spare design and simplicity. No blurbs, no guff, no cover illustration. In the proof of The Foxglove Saga there's a black and white line drawing on the title page. This is an unusual flourish, even for the real thing, but very odd in a proof. A sketch of a foxglove in bloom, with a stoat on its back legs gazing into the lowest floret, like and illustration in a children's book. The first time I read the novel in Massachussetts, I liked it so much my hosts said I could keep it. So it seems to be charmed. First the desired copy became mine; thirty-odd years later, the bound proof. The cosy attic bedroom in Massachussetts is wrapped around me and The Foxglove Saga. Then this is brought forward in my consciousness as I stand with the author in the rain at the wharf. And as if by magic the buff and russet book, soft, faintly ragged, discoloured at the edges, rusting at the seams, lifts from the briefcase and is put into my hands. All this, for a compulsive reader, is dreamy, really dreamy. Lady Foxglove died, you may like to know, as she had lived, in the odour of sanctity. Stoat joined the order.


HOME	Copyright © Carmel Bird 1998. All rights reserved.