The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton

There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy. ~ Socrates

Penguin Classics describes this book as one of the ‘best books ever written’. A strong claim, and a person could be forgiven for indulging in a spot of cynicism over it. Until suddenly you’re transported back to New York’s upper crust 1870s society with descriptions so vivid and characters so real you feel like you’re truly sitting down to dinner with them rather than spying  through the pages of a book.

Edith Wharton wrote The Age of Innocence in 1920. It was her Pulitzer Prize winning crowning glory. From the first page you feel her world springing to life around you. You become acutely aware of the importance of honour, duty and reputation. Of society ranking, ancestry and wealth.  And so begins a heart breaking glimpse into the small universe of Mr Newland Archer.

Newland Archer isn’t immediately a man who naturally draws sympathy. A well to do Manhattan resident with a career in law and a pretty fiancée he adores, Archer appears rather set when we first tune into his life. And then his head is turned by his wife’s rather beautiful cousin Ellen Mingott, who is in possession of the rather more glamorous and suiting title of Countess Olenska.

What unfolds afterwards is Newland’s struggle between fulfilling his duty to wife May and maintaining his reputation in the process, or throwing caution to the wind, declaring his love for Ellen and abandoning ship (or island) with her. What he eventually decides to do I shan’t reveal here in case anyone has not yet read it. And if you haven’t, you really should. Wharton beautifully captures Newland’s emotional turmoil leaving you desperately willing him on. And the ending is the most touchingly frustrating finishing to a novel I’ve read since Gone with the Wind.

This brings us to the focus of this blog. Our ladies. May and Ellen, connected through their grandmother, the family matriarch Mrs. Mingott, the former Catherine Spicer.

May Welland is as uncontroversial as can be. Ellen Olenska is as unconventional as can be. Ellen is welcomed back into New York life having left her titled husband in Europe and fleeing home. She is cloaked in scandal, and, ironically, shielded from negative comments and society’s shunning only by respectable family connections made through her cousin May’s engagement to Newland. She is thirty, beautiful and exotic. Newland, who is portrayed as something of a feminist, is drawn to her vivaciousness and lust for life. He wants her because she is different to the other ‘wife material’ girls he has been consorting with.

Before Ellen sweeps onto the scene Newland is quite happily aboard a ship going full steam ahead into his marriage to May. He begs her family to bring the marriage forward, desperate to be with her as quick as possible. May is portrayed as everything expected from a good nineteenth century society wife. Bland, apparently lacking opinions, deeply concerned with outward appearances and the comfort of her own life. As Ellen crashes into Newland’s world like a hurricane he begins to realise this about the woman he is set to marry. He subscribes to the idea that women should be able to do as they please, making a mental note to allow his wife to be ‘free’ rather than kept at home like his society believed a good wife should be. May, to Newland’s frustration and disappointment, doesn’t appear to realise she’s been set free. She is happy to play the part he has come to despise.

On the other hand Ellen has defied all the rules by leaving her husband when she was unhappy and absolutely refuses to get back together with him whatever the cost to her finances and reputation. She lives in a part of town upper class sort wouldn’t normally delve in, and does it happily. She mixes with disreputable people, the kind whom ‘nice’ people wouldn’t enjoy the company of.  And Newland falls in love with her for it. And the feelings are mutual. The two begin an emotional, if not physical, affair.

So far, so classic story. The man falls in love with another woman. One who is exciting, different to anyone he’s ever met before, and worlds away from the monotony of life with his wife. But Newland can’t shake off the old bonds that tie him to convention and duty. Firstly, he is engaged, and he feels he must see that through. Then, the marriage he has harassed his wife’s family to bring forward IS brought forward. By this time he knows he does not love May, at least not to the extent he loves Ellen. But he marries her still. Out of duty and awareness of how easily reputations are damaged.

Now, I am usually 100% in favour of the anti-heroine figure. The one who Ellen represents. The different, not conventionally womanly one. But here I am torn. I feel that May is greatly underestimated and both admire and pity her equally. Whilst Newland is running about dealing with his angst over his love for his wife’s cousin, his wife, not being stupid, is aware of his dwindling love for her and the usurping of his affections by her own cousin, the one she herself welcomed and tried to protect from a mass society rebuff.

At one point, just prior to her marriage, May even offers Newland a get-out-of-jail-free card. She suspects him of loving another woman, albeit at this point she believes it to be an ex flame of his rather than Ellen. She explains she does not want to set up her married life, her future, on a foundation of someone else’s unhappiness, and that if he wanted someone else then he should go to her. Newland refuses and marries her, despite not wanting to and May having hit the nail on the head in a roundabout way.

Newland’s love for Ellen continues after his wedding and for a couple of years into it. May comes in for a lot of criticism: she does not care for the splendour of Europe, she is interested in clothes. She does not indulge in many intellectual pursuits, instead preferring sports. Negatives in Newland’s eyes, but they always will be when he believes her a vacant, immature airhead, and one that is never going to measure up to his beloved Countess Olenska.

And so Newland continues to underestimate his wife whilst taking good care of his growing desire for Ellen, until, finally, he decides he would rather cause waves of scandal and leave. By this point, May has beautifully manipulated the situation so Ellen is fleeing overseas believing May to be pregnant, and Newland is once again forced to stay by his wife’s side when she finds out she really is going to have a baby.

May knows what is going on under her own nose the whole time. She knows her husband would prefer to be with another woman, and yet does everything in her power to keep him anyway. Whether for love of him or in an attempt to maintain her own reputation is debatable. Either way it is deeply sad, and I feel sorry for her even as I wonder why she doesn’t just leave him as her cousin Ellen left her husband when she discovered he was cheating on her.

Which leaves me with respect for Ellen, Countess Olenska. Though she is clearly after Newland from the start, it is family loyalty that prevents her from stealing away with him early on in the book, and it is an acknowledgment that May is having a child who needs Newland that causes her to leave New York. Her moral compass does not point as firmly north as it could, but it is this that makes her an appealing, interesting and exciting character. Even if May is not the wish-wash character Newland thinks she is, Ellen still trumps her in having the guts to think it better to go it alone in life without a husband she’s unhappy with despite what damage it might do to her reputation than May, who so desperately wants a husband and a perfect looking life that she stays with a man who loves another woman.

 

I promised earlier not to mention how Wharton resolves the situation, so I won’t. But the thread of duty and appearance that runs through Ellen, May and Newland’s lives leads a trail of devastation, heart ache and tears which perhaps would not happen in today’s world. Though it is of course debatable whether that is a good or bad thing. Ellen and May are two women who I think are more alike than common consensus gives credit for. Both do, or at least offer, to sacrifice Newland to another woman. And both show steely determination in getting what they want. Both are hurt in the process. Ellen and Newland hurt May in their obvious love for each other. May hurts Ellen and Newland in her bittersweet ploy to keep them apart.

 

Three captivating, endearing, frustrating and very human characters, beautifully written by Wharton.

The Great Reporters, By David Randall

I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets. ~ Napoleon

Between these pages is a list comprised of the thirteen greatest reporters of all time.

From those who tackled corrupt authorities, unflinchingly forcing the truth into the public realm, to those who marched into war zones, determined to provide the truth to those at home, these thirteen greats show wily determination topped with a layer of world class writing. 

The list includes ten men and three women. Between them, they have toppled empires, reformed the prison service, witnessed dictators' regimes fall to their knees and seen unimaginable horrors as man turned on man. The male reporters' stories are every bit as admirable and impressive as their female counterparts' are, but it is, of course,  the three women who make the cut who Brazen Women will be concentrating on.

Edna Buchanan. Nellie Bly. Ann Leslie. The best three female reporters in history.

While the excellence of their writing and determination to not only find a story but penetrate the very heart of it was something they had in common, their styles and subjects were worlds apart.

Nellie Bly was one of the original female reporters, paving the way for Edna and Ann to follow in her footsteps. Edna Buchanan wrote so well about crime in Florida that readers would sit down and read her articles as if they were reading a novel. And Ann Leslie, the British reporter who, it seems, appeared at every major world event from the 1960s onwards.

Nellie was born Elizabeth Anne Cochran. She was born in Pennsylvania in 1864, during a century which was not kind to its ambitious women. And Nellie was ambitious. She was also a bloody good writer. When she wrote to her local paper, the Pittsburgh Dispatch, having taken issue with one columnist's view that women should be kept indoors making themselves and their homes pretty for their husbands, the editor saw such promise he immediately contacted her to ask for more publishable writing.

And so began the career of 'the best undercover reporter in history'. 

After Nellie had tired of the Pittsburgh Dispatch she made her way to New York, ready to start reporting for national newspapers. Here she hit a wall. No paper would employ a female reporter. It was unheard of. As New York World's editor put it, the idea of a woman working in journalism on a national newspaper was 'almost too far fetched for words.'

Undeterred, Nellie blagged her way into the New York World's offices and proposed an undercover operation. She would pretend to be mad in order to be imprisoned on Blackwell Island, the infamous compound housing those classified as mentally insane. 

Her plan worked. She was hired. Her undercover operation was a huge success. She reported back on the appalling conditions on Blackwell Island, leading to $1 million being ploughed into mental health care. It was a huge story for an unknown reporter, and a female one at that. The rarity of being a woman in journalism worked in her favour too. She managed to find story after story operating as an undercover reporter, no one suspecting that a woman could be a reporter.

By this time other female journalists were emerging to challenge her crown. So, to make sure she continued her role as queen, she made a suggestion met by scandalised shock. She was going to travel the world in less than eighty days. Alone. Without a chaperone. 

It was unheard of. A single woman could not possibly travel alone. But Nellie could, and she would. And despite delays, detours and missing visas, she beat the eighty day deadline by twelve days, returning to American shores to a celebrity reception.

Nellie had opened doors to women in the journalism industry, showing with single minded determinism that women could report just as well as the very best of the men. And it was through these doors that Edna Buchanan strolled seventy two years after Nellie set off to navigate the globe.

In 1961 a 22 year old Edna moved to he warm climates of Miami and secured her first job in the press. She was untrained, her jobs prior to this having been behind the counters at Woolworths and a dry cleaners. Yet the Miami Beach Daily Sun was correct in giving her her first break, as Edna rose through the ranks to emerge as 'the best crime reporter there's ever been.'

After comprising the entire reporting team on the Miami Beach for a number of years, Edna made a move to a larger newspaper where she began to concentrate on her specialist subject. Always interested in criminals, preferring to read the crime pages to fairy tales as a child, her early interest held her in good stead as she began to investigate illegal activity which at the time, was rife in Florida.

Murder followed robberies that followed drug rings. Edna was forging a career as crime correspondent in a state which was red hot with underhand dealings. In 1981 the murder count stood at 621 on Edna's patch alone, and still Edna pursued the story on each one, blatantly disregarding her personal safety. Drug gang warfare had broken out. There was shootings, abductions and rapes. Edna kept investigating and continued reporting, whether these dangerous figures wanted her poking her nose into their business or not. If Edna had a story she could release, she released it. Whether it was concerning a local teenager fresh from committing his first crime, or evidence of a police cover up on the highest level, Edna released it.

Whatever she was writing, her trick, or perhaps her skill, was writing opening lines that leaves a reader desperate for more. Time and time again Randall quotes examples of articles that capture your attention and refuse to loosen their grip. Edna Buchanan was told by one of her teachers that she would amount to nothing, 'not even a good housewife.' Edna Buchanan did amount to something. She is a Pulitzer Prize winner, a successful author, and considered, by David Randall at least, as the second best reporter of all time.

The third woman to make Randall's list is the only non-American female on it. Ann Leslie was born in Pakistan in 1941, to British parents.

In contrast to the untrained Edna, who had left school at 16, Ann was a graduate of the prominent Oxford University, having won a scholarship to study English. Also unlike Edna, Ann was not at all enthusiastic about reporting, applying for a journalism job solely because it seemed 'the least unappealing of available options while she decided what she really wanted to do with her life.'

It would have been a huge loss not only to the world of journalism, but to the world as a whole if Ann had indeed found something else she wanted to do. Happily for us, she didn't. Instead she caught the reporting bug and became 'the most versatile reporter ever'. 

It was in 1962 that Ann started her first reporting job, working in the Daily Express's Manchester office. Almost exactly the same age as Nellie had been when she had been trying to get someone to hire her in New York, Ann rang into similar attitudes to those Nellie had encountered. It was eighty five years later, but Anne felt some men were no happier to have a woman in the office than they were in the 1870s.

As a young woman, she wasn't taken seriously, often fobbed off to report on none stories. Until the 1960s rolled through Britain and suddenly Ann's youth seemed rather desirable. She could be the way for the Express to appeal to those young readers somewhere between childhood and middle age.

Despite this change of attitude, Ann was still deployed to cover soft stories. This isn't what she wanted. By this time, the reporting bug held her firmly in its grasp and she longed to travel the world reporting on serious stories that mattered.

Ann went freelance for a while, but was soon lured back under the roof of the mainstream press by the Daily Mail's then editor, David English. It may be said here that then 'the rest was history'. Indeed, Ann spent the next few decades almost literally following history around the globe. 

She was there when the Berlin Wall fell, following the story from the press conference (incorrectly) announcing the border to the west was open, all the way through to the triumphant drive through Checkpoint Charlie, a night Ann describes as the most emotional of her life. She was there when the shock not guilty verdict was announced at the end of the OJ Simpson trial, and she was there when Nelson Mandela was finally released from prison.

But it is the stories Ann had to dig to get, the ones that bubbled away deep under the surface, which makes Ann so impressively brazen. She was the only journalist to reach the front line at Gorazde, after convincing the Serb soldiers she longed to see an old orthodox church there. It was a risky play, but one that paid off when she had her scoop. 

She reported from Haiti, bitterly damning the spoilt attitude of the Haitian princesses who complained about being inconvenienced by the oil and weapon embargo imposed upon them as men in their thousands died around their luxury palaces. Ann reported this regardless of any consequence that might face her from upset authorities. 

She was in China when North Koreans began crossing the border, desperate to escape what Ann felt was a 'massive, largely unreported famine'. But, in my opinion, she is at her most brave and brazen during her report in Bethlehem in 2002.

Randall writes how 200 armed Palestinians were holed up inside the Church of the Nativity. The media were being kept away, allowed no where near the church.

In typical Ann Leslie style, she shed all safety equipment and attempted to get through the checkpoints as a 'dingbat middle aged mum'. She was successful. With nerves of steal she walked through the heavily armed guards who were prodding other journalists back with their guns. At one point she even convinces guards to present her with a map of Bethlehem. She gets within 50 yards of the Nativity Church itself before gunfire rings out and she is advised strongly to leave. This is just one occasion where she risks her life to bring the story to the masses.

I feel a notable mention must also go out to the men on the list. It would be wrong to not acknowledge them. 

George Seldes, whose determination to expose truth and corruption annoyed and frustrated public figures so much that he became a target of Joseph McCarthy's communist-witch hunt in a bid to get rid of him. 

J.A. Macgahan, who spurred the collapse of the Turkish Empire by exposing their barbaric treatment of the Bulgarians, causing the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-78 the aftershocks of which can still be felt today. 

Ernie Pyle. The American travel writer who covered World War Two from the front line, sending home articles with the personal touch, so much so that American citizens took him to their hearts. Ernie fell during the war and is buried alongside soldiers as one of them.

And William Howard Russell; A.J. Liebling; Richard Harding Davis; James Cameron; Floyd Gibbons; Hugh McIlvanney and Meyer Berger. Each of them changing society for the better using the pen as their weapon.

Brave, inspirational, brazen. The kind of reporters any writer wishes to be.

The Viceroy's Daughters, by Anne de Courcy

Irene, Cimmie and Baba: The Curzon Sisters.

Born to arguably India's greatest viceroy, the Curzon sisters grew up in the former half of the twentieth century. Their lives read as a who's who and where's where of one of Europe's most politically turbulant periods.

From Britain's mining strike, through the First World War, to the aristocracy's last hurrah and the Second World War, the Curzon sisters lived through it all.

As like each other as they were polar opposites, the sisters' religious, political and personal differences divide them as often as they unite them. All deeply engrained in the 1900s political landscape, they have flirtations with socialism, capitalism and fascism, and even heavier flirtations with the powerful men running these movements, which gives them as insight only few people at the time would have been privvy to.

Irene, 2nd Baroness Ravensdale, the eldest sister, enjoyed a life indulging in her passions for hunting, drinking and men. Cimmie, the middle sister, married Mr Oswald Mosley, and rose through political ranks alongside him before having her life cut tragically short at the age of just 34. Baba, the youngest and most brazen of the three, lived her life in a blaze of selfish glamour. Often cruel to her family and patronizing to her husband, with a penchant for unsuitable men, Baba's strong personality shines through the book, threatening to overshine even the most famous of the historical figures who crop up between the pages.

The Curzon sisters were always destined to be recorded by history. Born to their mega rich American mother, Mary Leiter, and their famous politician father, George Curzon, the girls inherited their mother's wealth and their father's sharp tongue and sharper mind.

This similarity in personality led to a clash beween father and daughters, and at the time of George's death his two eldest daughters were estranged from him, Irene having even been turned away as she arrived to see him on his death bed.

Irene was already a woman of eighteen when World War 1 started. She watched in horror as friends and suitors marched to their deaths. Irene then turned her attention upon the two things that would come to dominate her life: hunting and drinking. Part of the fashionable Melton Mowbray set, Irene rubbed shoulders with Princes, Dukes and other men high up the social ladder. After a good day's hunting and a hard night's drinking, Irene would spend the night with one of the lucky men: the Melton Mowbray set's loves lives become so criss crossed it's almost impossible to untangle.

Alcohol became a forced that would stalk Irene through her life; it developed from casual drinking to a problem Irene attempted to give up countless times.

As Irene threw herself into her social life, her younger sister Cimmie was to meet and marry the man who would impact upon all three sisters' lives. Oswald Mosley, always referred to by the sisters as Tom. Now remembered for his stint as the British Union of Fascists leader and husband of the infamous Diana Mitford, Cimmie met him shortly after Armistice Day 1918, when his dark reputation with its sinister Nazi overtones were still a long way in the future

Cimmie married Tom in 1920. In 1924, Tom left the Conservative benches to cross the floor, and, with Cimmie, joined the Labour Party. Tom perceived greater opportunity for promotion in Labour than in the Conservatives, his personal ambition triumphing over his political beliefs.

Cimmie was eventually elected Member of Parliament for Stoke-On-Trent after a hard fought battle for a seat no one expected her to win. The year was 1929. Cimmie was a female politician in a world heavily dominated by men.

Her success was short lived as her husband's desire for greater power marched on. In 1931, Tom founded the New Party and several members of Labour, including Cimmie, defected to it. Turning her back on Labour did not go down well with her constituents, who felt they had been betrayed. Nevertheless, The New Party fought in the general election of that year. All of the candidates lost their seats. During this time, Cimmie bore Tom three children, and stood by him as The New Party began showing Fascist tendancies. Tom repaid her by having numerous affairs, about which Cimmie knew and tolerated, albeit unhappily.

Anne de Courcey writes how Tom, in a sudden attack of conscience, told Cimmie about all the women he'd ever cheated on her with. Except, of course, her sister and step mother – referring to earlier affairs he’d had with his father in law’s wife, Grace Hinds, and our very own Irene.

However, any doubts one might have about Irene’s morality are firmly swept to one side when we move on to Baba. Irene had a one night stand with her sister’s husband: Baba has a fully blown affair with him on the run up to and years after her sister’s death.

Baba Curzon develops from the quiet, youngest sister, her father’s favourite, into a force to be reckoned with. She marries King Edward VIII’s best friend, Edward ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe, a man eighteen year her senior, and proceeds to dominate him with her overbearing personality and much greater wealth. Fruity strikes quite a sad figure in the book. He goes from being a Prince’s favourite with a glittering career in front of him and a beautiful heiress on his arm, to being trampled on by Edward VIII, the man he loved most, and cheated on by the woman he loved most.

Fruity watches as Baba conducts her affair with Tom Mosley, furious but helpless to stop it, as he was with all the many, many other men Baba selected to have affairs with.

Among these men was Dino Grandi, Mussolini’s ambassador to London, whilst simultaneously enjoying flirtatious exchanges with Lord Halifax, Britain’s foreign secretary. Her marriage is finally brought to an end when she falls for the 3^rd Earl of Feversham, Charles Duncombe.

Time and time again Baba, along with Mosley, takes advantage of Irene’s good nature and love of their respective children. Something of a hands off mother, Baba would leave her children with Irene at any opportunity in order to enjoy a holiday with her latest love.

Irene became bitterly jealous of Baba, frustrated at how selfish Baba had the husband, children and glamourous lifestyle Irene so longed for. But Baba was not without heartbreak. She was furious when Tom, newly emerged from the prison in which he had spent World War Two, chose Diana over her, and she was humiliated when Charles Duncombe refused to leave his wife for her after she had divorced Fruity.

Irene and Baba, after the turbulent first half of the 20^th Century, went on to be well respected women. Irene became of the first four women to be selected as a life peer and allowed to sit in the House of Lords, while in 1975 Baba was awarded an Order of the British Empire for her work for the Save the Children Fund.

The Curzon sisters lived fast and loose, applying this attitude to their men, money, alcohol and morals. Trailblazers with little regard for their reputation, they both suffered and thrived on the back of their brazenness.

A Dinner of Herbs, by Catherine Cookson

 

Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. ~ Proverbs 15:17

I’ve fancied reading a Catherine Cookson book for quite some time, but have never seemed to get round to it. But, having spotted one at a market for a mere £1, I decided to finally give one a try.

Short of purchasing a lottery ticket, there is no better way I could have spent said pound.  A Dinner of Herbs is also known as the Bannaman Saga, and saga is perhaps a better description of it.

Stretching over almost sixty years and four generations, A Dinner of Herbs tells the story of Roddy Greenbank, Hal Roystan and Mary Ellen Lee, whose pasts, presents and futures are forever inexorably linked with the cursed Bannaman family.

But in this blog the attention is on the women, and the brazen ones at that. Having no knowledge of Catherine Cookson books, aside from vague memories of television adaptations, I was doubtful of whether it would provide me with anything to write about. Happily, I could not have been more wrong.

Set in North East England (my part of the woods – the familiar dialect was particularly enjoyable to read) in the 1800s, all of the women centre around Mary Ellen. Her rebellious spirit shines through from when we’re first introduced to her as a child. Defiant of her parents’ attempts to curb her into a more ladylike manner, Mary Ellen still has this spirit 600 pages and 50 years later.

Aged ten, she goes into service as a housemaid for a rich family. Although the family is fond of her, she is worked hard, with her mistress given to showing a spiteful streak. We pick up with her again as a young woman; one passionately in love with her young playmate, Roddy.

Several times he spurns her advances, but she ploughs valiantly on; she puts up with his often cruel jibes, she prevents him from being transported to Australia for murder, and eventually she seduces him on a moor, just prior to him leaving to seek his fortune in the big cities of Newcastle and London.

Left pregnant by this night, Mary Ellen contemplates life married to her mistress’ kind-but-dull grandson, seeing it as a way out of her predicament. However, enraged by the looks of disgust plastered on the family’s faces when they discover her pregnancy, Mary Ellen tells them what they can do with their job and their grandson, and returns home to her father’s house.

More disappointment is in store for her as her father finds the stigma of his daughter having a child out of wedlock too shameful to allow her to move back in with him. By now distraught, Mary Ellen flees to Kate Makepeace, the old wise woman who had raised Roddy as her own since his father was brutally murdered by a Bannaman.

Kate takes Mary Ellen in, and it is Kate who hardens Mary Ellen’s resolve to defy the world. Kate begins teaching Mary Ellen the tricks of the medicine trade in which Kate practises, and insists Mary Ellen always charges for whatever remedy she is providing, therefore ensuring Mary Ellen can live independently without having man or having to resort to prostitution, the career path a lot of desperate women fell into.

Kate insists Mary Ellen isn’t to cry about her fate, but instead is to hold her head high and look the world in the face of its disapproval. Mary Ellen does, and so the candle of leading brazen woman is passed from Kate to Mary Ellen.

And then the book jumps ahead again, hurtling through the decades till Mary Ellen is middle aged. It is revealed she married Hal Roystan, her and Roddy’s old friend. Mary Ellen’s baby daughter, named Kate in honour of old Kate Makepeace, is now a grown woman in her twenties. Mary Ellen has several other children, but it is Kate and her second daughter, Maggie, who we shall turn to next.

Despite both having very much inherited their mother’s attitude, the girls are as different as sisters can be. Kate, plain looking but charming and kind, runs opposite to the beautiful but sharp tongued and spiteful Maggie. However, their fates are almost identical; and both fates require a good dose of brazenness. Kate, on one random ride through the countryside, meets Benjamin Hamilton. It is revealed, eventually, that Mr Hamilton is the grandson of Mr Bannaman, the man who murdered both Hal and Roddy’s fathers; and the son of Mary Bannaman, the woman who almost tortured Hal to death. Despite knowing that her relationship with him will never be acceptable to her father, step father, or mother, Kate announces she is in love with him and intends to marry him, even if that means turning her back on the rest of her family.

Similarly, Maggie falls in love with a worker on her father’s farm, Willie. Her parents are unhappy with this union due them considering Willie a lower class than Maggie, despite both Kate and Hal coming from poor, underprivileged backgrounds (something they rather snobbishly forget as they begin their climb up the financial ladder).  Like Kate, Maggie tells her parents she will be marrying Willie, regardless of their opinions on the matter. Mary Ellen, by this time left with a crippled husband and no children remaining in her house, begs Maggie not to leave her, even promising her beloved farm and house to Maggie and Willie if they remain with her. Maggie agrees, shocked at how broken her mother seems. But still, on the final page Mary Ellen recovers her old spirit and warns them to make sure they also have their own land and house, just in case…

Kate Makepeace, Mary Ellen Lee, Kate Roystan and Maggie Roystan. Four women who all oppose convention in their own unique ways. Flawed, selfish, naïve, loyal and headstrong, Cookson’s book is littered with examples of strong female women, acting in a way considered brazen, yet unrepentant and convinced that their own actions are the right ones.

I am told Cookson based a lot of these women on those she grew up surrounded by. So therefore, stay tuned for a Catherine Cookson biography coming soon!

The Rare and the Beautiful: The Lives of the Garmans, by Cressida Connolly

Here’s a book with so many brazen characters in it I barely know where to start. The Rare and the Beautiful gives an insight into the lives of one infamous family. Mary, Kathleen, Douglas, Helen, Sylvia, Rosalind, Mavin, Ruth and Lorna. The nine siblings who together comprised the Garman family.

Several adjectives are used to describe them; ‘amoral’, ‘sadistic’ and ‘manipulative’ being but a few. The women of the family, especially Mary, Kathleen and Lorna, are particularly wild. I am, therefore, going to concentrate on these three. The more brazen the better here on WomenBetweenThePages. Mary, who married and had children, but nonetheless enjoyed lesbian flings, not least with her own brother’s wife; Kathleen, who enjoyed a longing running affair with a married man which resulted in a gun wound, four children and a ladyship; and Lorna, who is rumoured to have indulged in incest before seducing her husband aged just 14, topping this by having a child with another man then selflessly passing said man to her niece.

Mary, the eldest, escaped the family home, along with Kathleen, when they were 21 and 17 respectively. They fled to London right on the cusp of the flapping 20s, arriving there penniless in 1919.

Always rebellious, Mary and Kathleen had already defied their parents by taking to regularly drinking and smoking before making the decision to live in self imposed poverty in Bloomsbury, a stark contrast to the privileged lifestyle their upbringing had accustomed them to.

When Mary was twenty six she married Ignatius Royston Dunnachie Campbell, better known as the poet Roy Campbell. But settling down was not for her. Roy did try valiantly to quash her free spirit, even dangling her from a window from her ankles in an attempt to instil a bit of wifely obedience (something Mary didn’t seem to mind), but a hot blooded Garman she would remain.

In 1927 the Campbells’ paths crossed with that of Vita Sackville-West. Best remembered for her affair with Virginia Woolf, Vita proved irresistible to Mary, and the two embarked upon a passionate affair. When Roy found out, he was initially reluctantly accepting before flying into a rage about it. Roy demanded the affair be stopped. Mary promptly took not a blind bit of notice and continued sleeping with Vita whilst she and Roy continued living on Vita’s land.

Mary’s marriage to Roy produced two children; Tess and Anna. In what appears to be a family trait, Mary and Roy are described as negligent parents. Several times Cressida Connolly, author of this book, talks about how the two girls were left to wander free and fend for themselves. As their daughter Anna put it 'we were never told how to sit at a table... or how important it was to change our knickers every so often.'

The Garman siblings’ attitude towards their assorted offspring leads, or at least contributes, to a tragic outcome for many of the younger generation. Depression, anorexia and schizophrenia all make themselves known, more of which will be discussed soon.

Mary’s accomplice during her formative years was Kathleen. Like Mary, Kathleen found love with a man whose talents lay in the arts. Kathleen, arguably the most infamous of the Garman sisters, became embroiled in a long running affair with Jacob Epstein, the renowned sculptor. Jacob himself was involved in a somewhat laissez faire marriage, with his wife content for him to bring back beautiful women who would model for him and then sleep with him.

Mrs Epstein even raised two children Epstein had fathered with these models. However, her relaxed attitude did not extend to Kathleen. Mrs Epstein was bitterly jealous of her husband’s relationship with Kathleen, correctly believing it transcended his usual admiration for a beautiful woman. Mrs Epstein knew her husband was in love, and in a fit of completely understandable annoyance, invited Kathleen to the house she shared with Jacob.

Twenty two year old Kathleen, nothing if not brave, accepted the invitation, bringing along her brother Douglas as back up. He was needed when suddenly Mrs Epstein produced a pearl handled pistol, told Kathleen she was going to shoot her, and proceeded to fire a bullet through Kathleen’s shoulder. Panic stricken, Mrs Epstein fled, leaving Kathleen to struggle outside for help.

Apparently viewing this episode as a trifle inconvenient, rather than as a worrying attempt to end her life, Kathleen continued to see Jacob, eventually bearing him three children; Theo, Kitty and Esther. Decades later, Mrs Epstein passes away and the newly knighted Jacob finally marries Kathleen, making her the respectable Lady Epstein.

Here in the lives of the three young Epsteins the tragedy of the Garman siblings’ children once again makes itself apparent. Theo is diagnosed with schizophrenia and eventually dies aged just thirty of a heart attack. However, rumours still persist about there being poison found in Theo’s food…

Esther, devastated by her brother’s death, is pushed over the edge when she meets a man named Mike Rutherston. Mike falls in love with Esther and proposes to her. Esther turns him down, and, distraught by this rejection, Mike puts his head an oven, turns the gas on, and kills himself. Esther then visits France and Italy in an attempt by her friends to cheer her up but, upon return to England, she attempts to kill herself. She is found in time, hospitalised and saved. Once released from hospital, Kathleen, perhaps rather misguidedly, decides to give her some space and independence and installs Esther into her own flat. Esther once again attempts to kill herself, and this time she succeeds.

Kitty, the only child of Kathleen’s not to die young, married artist Lucien Freud, grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Kitty was not the first Garman female Lucien had fallen in love with. The complex sexual relations of the Garman family drops into the younger generation here: Lucien had already enjoyed a lustful relationship with Kitty’s aunt, Lorna.

Lucien is not the only lover of Lorna’s who went on to marry one of her nieces. The poet, novelist, and screenwriter Laurie Lee had a long running relationship with Lorna. Utterly captivated by her, the two embarked upon a passionate, jealous, concupiscent relationship. They two even had a child together, who was raised as Lorna’s husband’s child.

After his relationship with Lorna came to an end, Laurie married Lorna’s sister Helen’s daughter, Kathy Polge. Ironically, Laurie’s child with Kathy was born on the same day as his grandchild with Lorna. It is strange that Lorna did not seem to mind Lucien and Laurie’s relationships with her nieces. She is spoken of as being very possessive of her men, writing to Laurie that she wished him to grow older as quickly as possible so no other women would be attracted to him.

Glamourous, charming and fascinating, Lorna is described as the most strikingly beautiful of the sisters. The youngest of the nine, it is suggested early on in the book that she, sister Ruth and brother Mavin were involved in an incestuous ménage a trois. Although this is denied by the family, Connolly writes that this is not due to taboo or any moral scruples, but rather that there being three of them prevented pairing. Their own mother admitted to Lorna that even she was apprehensive about their relationship. With a fondness for horseback riding in the dead of night, and a penchant for stripping naked and swimming wherever and whenever the mood took her, Lorna was utterly devoid of self consciousness and completely defiant of societal expectations.

All the sisters were.

They wore their hair long and straight instead of in the rigid up do popular at the time. They dressed in capes and cloaks, cutting startlingly different figures from the norm.

Even the men of the family are brazen. They oldest brother, Douglas, rejects his inheritance by settling on an ‘ungentlemanly’ career path and joining the communist party. His love life becomes inexorably linked with Mary’s when his sisters begins a relationship with his wife, continuing the trend of criss-crossing family relationships.

So, there we have it. Immoral, negligent, seductive and repulsive, the Garman sisters’ sordid world is spread out over 261 fast paced pages. Connolly seamlessly fast forwards and rewinds the decades, bringing the Garmans back to life in all their glory. In return for their lack of care of those around them, they were rewarded by having everyone fall in love with them due to their great lust for life.

Some parts of their story are fascinating; others bewildering, some parts sickening, but I doubt the sisters would have cared. They lived completely unconcerned with what anyone thought of them, be it their children, friends, parents or husbands. And it is that attitude rather than their personalities that leaves behind a trail of admiration at the sheer brazenness of it all.

Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother, by Anne Sebba

Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother reveals the life of the mother of Winston Churchill, arguably the United Kingdom's most famous Prime Minister. Born Jennie Jerome in 19th century America, Jennie blazed through life defying her friends, her family and the rest of her society.

Rumoured to have slept with over 200 men, Jennie eventually married three of them, each time in the face of staunch opposition. She embraced politics, driving both her husband and her son forward at a time when women were thought to know so little about politics that they were not yet entrusted to vote. She also had literary successes, if financial failures; failures which were compounded by her spendthrift ways and seemingly unfailing trust that somehow money would always be found to fund her lifestyle.

Yet for all of Jennie's failings, author Anne Sebba does an excellent job of making her appear a loyal and sympathetic character, as well as captivatingly interesting and, of course, brazen.

Jennie's first husband was Winston Churchill's father, Lord Randolph Churchill. Here the young couple faced opposition from both sides of their families: Jennie's parents felt that she could do better than marrying the second son of a Duke - perhaps she could marry someone with a bit more money? Randolph's family felt he could do better by marrying a girl whose father was willing to provide a larger dowry - perhaps he could marry someone with a bit more money?

However, when Jennie and Randolph made it clear they would be pressing ahead with the wedding, a financial settlement was finally hammered out between the two families.

It is through this financial settlement I got a glimpse of what helped shape Jennie's headstrong, independent character. Her fiancé, Randolph, wrangles for Jennie's father to put the financial contribution to the couple into his name rather than Jennie's. English law was still dictating that a married woman's possessions became the property of her husband, so Randolph would have been following convention by making this demand. Jennie's forward thinking father outright refuses Randolph's request, stating it is an archaic English custom he nor his daughter will be following and advises Randolph that some of the money given by him will be solely in Jennie's name, unable to be touched by Randolph.

Growing up with the influence of a father who did not abide by all of the UK's repressive customs regarding women must have nurtured, if not bred in Jennie her defiant spirit with regards to her husbands and her lovers, none of whom were able to control or calm her.

When her marriage to Randolph was still in its infancy, Jennie was quite openly engaging in a number of affairs. It is rumoured her second son, Winston's younger brother Jack, was not fathered by Randolph. The Churchills were leading increasingly separate lives, and London society was openly discussing the possibility of divorce between Lord and Lady Churchill, at a time when divorce was considered scandalous and divorced women ran the risk of being forever shunned by society.

However, divorce Jennie would. Though not from Randolph. The Churchills remained married until Randolph's death, even when he was completely aware she was sleeping with and sometimes even living with other men. No, the man she divorced was named George Cornwallis-West, having married him when she was aged forty six and George, twenty years her junior, was twenty six.

This marriage too was once again met with opposition from both sides. Surprisingly, her sons, who were almost the same age as George, did not lead the cries of horror when their mother’s engagement was announced. They were not thrilled, but they were accepting.

Instead, the protests came from Jennie's friends and George’s family, led by his mother. The then Prince of Wales, who  went on to become King Edward VII, was one of the friends who put into words his opposition to the marriage. The Prince of Wales himself was one man Jennie had already been rumoured to be enjoying an affair with in years previous; as too, ironically, had George’s mother. In any case, Jennie did not care. She went ahead and married George.

The marriage was not a success and eventually Jennie would divorce George and replace him with a younger model, Montagu Phippen Porch. This last marriage took place when Jennie was sixty four. This time Jennie defied convention in a different way, refusing to take Porch as her married name.

In the background of this illustrious personal life was her husband’s, and later her son’s, political career. Randolph, like Winston, was a Member of Parliament. Ambitious and determined until illness took hold of him (it is said Randolph had contracted syphilis), behind Randolph was Jennie, persuading and advising him, campaigning for him and raging at him when he made his rash decision to quit government. Years later, her concentration shifted to her previously attention deprived sons, especially to her eldest, Winston. She threw herself into Winston’s future prospects, writing numerous letters to male acquaintances who she felt could advance his career, trying with all her power to get Winston noticed.

In later years one of Winston’s adversaries is reported to have commented that his ‘politics are as rotten as his mother’s morals’. The two go hand in hand more than the speaker imagined. Jennie executed determined, hell bent behaviour of a woman who seethed with ambition for her son. And, however she done it, her plan to get Winston noticed undoubtedly worked. I wonder, though, what Jennie would have become with today’s opportunities, in a world where women do not need to seek to fulfill their political ambitions through male family members.

Last weekend I visited the House of Commons in London, where political debates take place in the UK. On the ground floor is the politicians’ seats, above which is a spectator’s gallery. This is where Jennie would have sat when visited the House. I was interested to hear that the knee high curtain surrounding the gallery was a ‘modesty curtain’, introduced to prevent the male MPs catching a glimpse of ladies’ legs. I wonder if Jennie, such a passionate, forward speaking woman, wished she could step in front of the modesty curtain and join the political debate herself. If she could have, imagine what she, the driving force behind one of the most successful political careers ever, may have become. Alas, we will never know.

During her years supporting Winston she also started writing, eventually founding her own magazine, Anglo-Saxon Review. Unfortunately, it had to be scrapped after ten issues due to the financial loss it was incurring. It was not the first time she was faced with money worries. Jennie Churchill contains many references to Jennie’s money problems as she struggles to reconcile being frugal with spending £200 (a small fortune at the time) on a dress. In fairness to her, her assumption that money would always be found does tend to come to fruition.

Jennie lived her life knowing what she was doing wrong, recognising the opposition towards it and realising she was garnering a reputation. Yet she tossed those thoughts aside and done it anyway.

Jennie Churchill was clever, beautiful and ambitious, rushing through life engulfed in a cloud of scandal, about which she did not give a damn. A brazen women indeed.

Coming Soon...

Find out about Jennie Jerome. More famously known as Lady Churchill, Winston's mother, she is rumoured to have slept with more than 200 men. Jennie was a driving force behind Winston's political success. Or rather, her colourful love life was...

In the mean time, check out my other posts for more brazen women.