Being Slightly Foxed Makes Delightful Reading by Griselda Heppel
Thanks to a clever company called Slightly Foxed, I find myself reading a lot of memoirs nowadays. For those who haven’t yet discovered it, Slightly Foxed brings out a quarterly magazine of essays about books - fiction, non-fiction, all genres - particularly prized by the contributors. Not recently published ones, no Booker shortlist here, but ones that have stood the test of time and become personal favourites. Reading these articles have not only reminded me of much-loved titles, but got me tracking down others I’d never heard of before.
It was a
natural progression, then, for Slightly Foxed to start its own imprint, Slightly
Foxed Editions, a delightfully produced series of pocket hardback reprints of
classic memoirs, unjacketed, each with a different colour binding, so that a
whole shelf of them gives a pleasingly harmonious look. I know this because we
have two and half shelves full, and have just taken delivery of No. 72 (First
Light by Geoffrey Wellum, since you ask). Some of these titles I’d read already
– Christabel Bielenberg’s The Past is Myself, Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie (No. 53) –
but most I’d never heard of, and picking the odd one off the shelf for a
holiday read (they pack easily) has been a revelation. Nella Last’s War (No.60), for
instance, the extraordinary diary of a supposedly ordinary (but far from, in
her writing abilities) Barrow-in-Furness housewife, giving a fascinating record
of people’s lives during World War Two. Or To War with Whitaker (No.50), by the intrepid
Hermione Ranfurley, who, refusing to keep the home fires burning while her
husband was fighting in the middle east,
followed him out, ending up as secretary to Winston Churchill in North Africa. What I didn’t do (because until my helpful
grandson reordered the collection according to the numbers elegantly printed in
gold on the spine, it wasn’t possible) was read the books in Slightly Foxed’s own
publication sequence. This I have resolved to put right, beginning with No.1.Slightly Foxed Editions: pleasingly harmonious.
(from foxedquarterly.com)
Which gave
me my first disappointment. When I tell you that No. 1 is Blue Remembered Hills
by, Rosemary Sutcliff, you may think me a very mean critic of this highly
esteemed writer of children’s historical fiction. I have to admit I’ve never
read The Eagle of the Ninth, or any of her books, but I do know they are
admired as classics of the genre. So I couldn’t understand why Sutcliff’s
memoir of her unusual childhood, full of pain and loneliness (she contracted juvenile arthritis as a toddler, and while she eventually grew out of it, the
effects led to lifelong disability) failed to engage me. Perhaps the stoic
matter-of-fact tone works too well, keeping the reader at arm’s length, rendering
her memoir a rather prosaic account of her growing years. She didn’t excel at
school and made no friends, so that part of her life is a blank.
Only her parents are given a flesh and blood depiction, and even there it’s a
matter of telling, not showing, with her mother’s selfish, manipulative personality
laid out squarely in the first couple of pages. The intense, sparkling quality
of memoirs I’ve enjoyed, where I’ve really felt part of the writer’s life, experiencing
her feelings and fears as events happen, was lacking. The Eagle of the Ninth
Chronicles by
Rosemary Sutcliff
And I think I know why.
The best
memoirs I’ve read tend to be by writers of non-fiction, or people for whom
writing is secondary to their main areas of interest. Priscilla Napier’s
beautifully written A Late Beginner (Slightly Foxed No.5) is one of the best
depictions of the charmingly ridiculous but utterly necessary self-absorption of young children I’ve ever
read, alongside her heart-rending account of the loss of a whole generation of
cheerful young men in the Great War.
Katherine Everett’s Bricks and Flowers (not yet issued as a Slightly Foxed Edition but one can hope) is the quite extraordinary memoir of a
young Anglo-Irish woman whose feckless parents and husband leave her to support
herself and her young family; she does this, very successfully, by learning how
to build houses and becoming a building contractor. In Edwardian England. She
also designed gardens. (Why is this woman not better known? Her houses were
well planned and built and several still stand.) By contrast, memoirs by fiction authors I’ve read have been – with one
notable exception* – surprisingly dull. A Backward Glance by Edith Wharton
Charles Dickens - look in David Copperfield forhis autobiography.
By Jeremiah Gurney - Heritage Auction Gallery, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8451549
It’s obvious
really. Fiction writers keep it all for their stories. That’s how the greatest,
the most entertaining, exciting, moving, enthralling novels are written.
Charles Dickens never wrote an autobiography; but if you want to know the agony
he felt when his childhood effectively ended at age 12, with his being forced
to earn his living in a shoe factory, look no further than David Copperfield.
Similarly in Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte mines the experience of being sent
away with her sisters to a dreadful boarding school for her creation of Lowood,
the grim, spartan place Jane is banished to at the beginning of the story.
All of which points me to something I should have done years ago: read Rosemary Sutcliff’s children’s books. As it happens, Slightly Foxed have just issued them all in their Foxed Cubs series for younger readers, so I could start straight away.
Or just as
soon as I’ve reached No 72 in Slightly Foxed Editions. I’m sure it won’t take
long.
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| What to Look for in Winter by Candia McWilliam |
*What to Look for in Winter by Candia McWilliam. Astonishingly beautifully crafted account of the novelist’s painful childhood and experience of blindness.
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