She is of interest to me mainly because of
her book An Enemy at Green Knowe. The
enemy in the title is the scholar, black magician and demon-possessed witch Dr.
Melanie Powers, who has been mentioned in passing in a few articles. This is
the only book in which Lucy M. Boston writes about the battle between good and
evil.
There is little in Lucy M. Boston’s life to
explain where Melanie Powers and her very familiar characteristics and
behaviour came from; unlike Nicholas Stuart Gray’s and Diana Wynne Jones’s witches,
she was not based on the author’s mother: Lucy M. Boston’s mother was unhappy
and neglectful, but not cruel and evil.
However, the magical house Green Knowe, whose
name appears in the titles of her series of children’s fantasy books, is taken directly
from Manor House, which was built by the Normans around the year 1130 and was
her home for almost 50 years.
Manor House is still in the Boston family and
is now open to the public. Maybe I will go to see it some time.
Perverse and Foolish
Lucy M. Boston’s autobiographical work Perverse
and Foolish: A Memoir of Childhood and Youth describes her life up to the time
of her marriage.
I discovered this book by accident many years
ago when I was walking past what looked like a seedy cut-price bookshop. I saw the
name L. M. Boston on a book that was at eye-level on a circular stand, positioned
right in the window where I would see it. I thought that, yet again where books
are concerned, the universe had arranged things for my benefit.
My mild attack of positive paranoia wore off
a bit when I went to buy the book and realised that I had wandered into an
‘adult’ bookshop. The real stock was downstairs; the ground floor just contained
an assortment of miscellaneous shelf and stand fillers, including remainders
and cheap, trashy children’s, gardening and cookery books.
I didn’t like the look of anyone in the shop,
so came out quickly with what was possibly the only book they had that I would want
to read.
Lucy M. Boston’s memoir of childhood and
youth
I hoped that the book would be a goldmine,
but it is slightly disappointing in that, unlike biographical works by or about
such people as Ayn Rand, Rudyard Kipling, Stella Gibbons, Diana Wynne Jones and
Kathleen Raine, it doesn’t contain much in the way of material that resonates
and inspires commentary.
She has little in common with other writers
whose lives are of particular interest to me, and there are few clues to where
her writing talent came from.
She does say that she later knew ‘cold,
biting Hell’, but does not go into details. Perhaps it was when her husband
left her.
Lucy M. Boston comes across as extroverted
and not particularly sensitive or introspective; she had huge amounts of
physical energy, and she must have been very tough and resilient to have
endured the horrors of life as a volunteer nurse in France during the First
World War.
It is informative to read about the lives that
children and young people from families such as hers used to lead in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, and depressing to read about the lives that women
with few options were forced to lead.
So while there isn’t much about unseen
influences, Lucy M. Boston’s memoir is of interest for other reasons.
