“There is no honour in politics”

A recent article features a statement from the Scottish writer George MacDonald to the effect that as no good person would go into politics, anyone who is elected to power will not be a decent human being. 

His words may be unwelcome and depressing, but there are many recent examples in both the UK and the US that support them.

Other people mentioned on here have said much the same thing.

This is from Benjamin Disraeli, who saw it all from the inside:

Taylor Caldwell, who had something to say about the causes of major wars, also said this in her historical novel Captains and the Kings:

“...politics and moral ethics never mix. Politics and ethics are a contradiction in terms. An honest politician is either a hypocrite—or he is doomed.”

Although Captains and the Kings is set in the United States and the story starts in the 1850s, much of the material has wider applications.

Some Halloween pictures from Malcolm Bird

Some of cartoonist and illustrator Malcolm Bird's amusing witch pictures were featured earlier.

This post contains a few more examples of his work in the form of pictures with a Halloween theme.

This witch is proud of her pumpkins:

These pictures are from The Witch's Handbook:

Information about Malcolm Bird and his works can be found on his website:

www.malcolm-bird.co.uk

A little more about being prevented from reading

A previous article has something to say about the pain of being interrupted while reading. It contains an extract from Frances Hodgson Burnett's Little Princess that describes very well how annoying such intrusions can be.

Being interrupted while immersed in a book is bad enough; being discouraged or even prevented from reading it in the first place is even worse! 

Acting out of concern for the reader
Just as some of the people who interrupt readers are well intentioned, so are some of the people who try to discourage others from reading. As this further extract from A Little Princess shows, they may be trying to enhance the reader's life:

"I am not in the least anxious about her education," Captain Crewe said, with his gay laugh, as he held Sara's hand and patted it. "The difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books—great, big, fat ones—French and German as well as English—history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things. Drag her away from her books when she reads too much. Make her ride her pony in the Row or go out and buy a new doll. She ought to play more with dolls." 

Captain Crewe buys a doll for his daughter Sara:

The head of the girls' school in Charlotte Brontë's Villette is concerned about the detrimental effect that the amount of reading Lucy Snowe does might have on her health:

“Madame Beck...often and solemnly used to warn me not to study too much, lest “the blood should all go to my head.”"

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part XXX: Richard Barham's Ingoldsby Legends

My first encounter with Richard Barham's Ingoldsby Legends was in the pages of Rider Haggard's exciting adventure story King Solomon's Mines. 

The hero Allan Quatermain says that while he is not a literary man, he is very devoted to the Old Testament and the Ingoldsby Legends. He reads these two books for the comfort of the familiar and the wisdom that they contain. 

He refers to and quotes from the Legends several times, and in the sequel Allan Quatermain says that he often reads them when awake at night.

Intrigued by these references and hoping to find a new source of good reading material, I decided to get the book so that I could experience its attractions for myself. I found a very old copy in a second-hand bookshop and opened it eagerly when I got home. 

There was much more material in the book than I was expecting, and I wasn't disappointed in the stories either. I found many of the Legends very amusing and enjoyable to read. I could now understand why this book always accompanied Allan Quatermain in his wanderings.

An overvew of the Ingoldsby Legends
The Ingoldsby Legends, or Mirth and Marvels, to give the book its full and very appropriate title, is a collection of around 65 miscellaneous stories and poems, many with a supernatural element. 

The Legends are attributed to 'Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor', but they were actually written by the Reverend Richard Harris Barham. 

Much of the material in the Legends is based on traditional Kentish myths, legends and folklore. 

There are many references to ghosts, witches and demons, and Old Nick i.e. the devil makes many appearances. However, as the Legends are intended to entertain the readers they are just as funny as they are frightening. 

More memorable material from Dion Fortune's occult novels

This is yet another article in the series inspired by Dion Fortune's occult novels. It contains a few more of her thought-provoking propositions.

Three essential qualities
The Demon Lover contains what might be called a person specification for advanced occult work:

“Dr Latimer had brains and kindness, but no strength; the hard-faced man had brains and strength, but no kindness; the newcomer had all three, and Veronica knew by this that he was a far greater man in every way than either of the others was ever likely to be.” 

Each of these qualities needs to be developed to a far greater than average degree. Finding people who meet two of the requirements must be difficult enough; good luck with finding someone who meets all three! Such people may exist in fiction, but how many are to be found in real life? 

Balancing the qualities
Assuming that kindness includes mercy and that strength includes justice, this further extract from The Demon Lover is of interest because it reminds me of of a very similar statement in a very different novel:

“...although unbalanced mercy is but weakness, unbalanced justice is cruelty and oppression.”

When I first saw this, I immediately thought of some words from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre that support the above proposition:

“Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.”

Feeling that is not balanced with rationality may well be not much good to anyone on the receiving end, and judgement that is not balanced with compassion may indeed be too harsh for most people to digest.

Inspiration and creativity in Conan Doyle's Magic Door

This is yet another article in the series inspired by Through the Magic Door, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's little volume of essays about books, reading and associated topics.

This post highlights two propositions that Conan Doyle makes about inspiration and creative people: he suggests that inspiration comes from outside and that creative people are often frail and die young.  

It also mentions a few other writers in connection with these topics. 

Inspiration comes from outside
Conan Doyle says this about the source of inspiration:

“...the feeling which every writer of imaginative work must have, that his supreme work comes to him in some strange way from without, and that he is only the medium for placing it upon the paper...Is it possible that we are indeed but conduit pipes from the infinite reservoir of the unknown? Certainly it is always our best work which leaves the least sense of personal effort.”

That last sentence is often very true. Rudyard Kipling said something similar when he gave his Daemon credit for assisting and inspiring him in his work: he said that the writing he did under this influence was 'frictionless'. 

Conan Doyle's mention of a conduit pipe reminds me of another of Rudyard Kipling's Daemon-related images: he likens the end of a good run of genuine, friction-free creativity to “the water-hammer click of a tap turned off.”

Many other writers have speculated about where their inspiration might come from. 

Robert Louis Stevenson for example said that it came from vivid dreams caused by the Brownies!

Frances Hodgson Burnett thought of herself as just the custodian rather than the originator of her gift. So where did this gift come from then?

Maybe some fiction writers really do channel or download their works and ideas from somewhere.

Fifteen years of blogging and still a little more to come

As mentioned in the article that marks the tenth anniversary of this blog, the very first post is dated September 9th 2009, the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of the century.

It is worth repeating that the number nine is associated with magic and with Odin, or Woden, the seeker after knowledge and wisdom who is associated with magic and mystery and is said to inspire creativity.

Another five years have passed; today is the fifteenth anniversary of the launch of this blog, and once again it is time to take stock.

A little more about the viewing figures

In the article about the mystery of the most popular posts, I said that I monitor the blog statistics. This is just for interest's sake: I am not influenced by these figures when deciding what to write about. 

I have since seen a huge increase in the number of views for the article about Princess Margaret's death. I found that this happened just after one of the TV programmes that dramatise the royal family had featured her. People had been searching online for more information and found my article!

I was very surprised to see the first article about Madeleine L'Engle's Zachary Grey or Gray suddenly appear in the top ten list. I discovered that this is a case of mistaken identity: there are a few real-life Zachary Greys and Grays of interest!  

While it is understandable why the greatest number of views will always come from the US, it is still a mystery why this blog gets more readers from Germany than from the UK.

How many more articles will there be in the future? 

I have been mining the past for inspiration for many years now, and the returns have been slowly and steadily diminishing.