Born at the end of November

Some of the writers who have been mentioned in previous articles were born during the last two days of November. 

Here is some interesting information to mark the occasion.

Born on the 29th
November 29th is the 333rd day of the year (except in leap years). 

Amos Bronson Alcott entered this world on the 29th November 1799; Louisa May Alcott, his daughter, was born in the early hours of the 29th in 1832, thus they were born exactly 33 years apart.

C. S. Lewis was born on the 29th November 1898.

Madeleine L’Engle was born on the 29th November 1918.

Born on the 30th
Angela Brazil was born on the 30th November 1868.

L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery was born on the 30th November 1874.

Influences and connections
For the Alcotts, sharing the same birthday was not the only connection. Bronson died in March 1888; Louisa died 2 days later.

C. S. Lewis died one week short of his 65th birthday and one hour before President John F. Kennedy died.

Louisa M. Alcott, L. M. Montgomery and Angela Brazil all wrote classic girls’ books.

One of Madeleine L’Engle’s main characters is called Meg; so is one of Louisa M. Alcott’s.

Madeleine L’Engle said this about books she read in childhood:

“My favorite was Emily of New Moon by Lucy Maude Montgomery, who is better known for her Anne of Green Gables books. Emily wanted to be a writer. Emily and I had a lot in common. Emily lived on Prince Edward Island and I live on Manhattan Island. Both are islands! Emily's father was dying of bad lungs and so was mine…“

Both C. S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle have been called Christian myth-makers. When asked whether her work has been compared to his, she replied:

“Yes, it has. I think that the main difference is that C. S. Lewis has more answers and I have more questions…”

C. S. Lewis created a flying horse, wrote a book called Surprised by Joy and married an American called Joy.

Madeleine L’Engle’s winged unicorn is called Gaudior, which has a meaning connected with joy and rejoicing. 

Being born at the end of November means that they were born under the astrological sign of Sagittarius. 

Flying horses, centaurs, philosophy, joyful religion and angels are all very Sagittarian. 

Two positive propositions

Accepting that unseen influences are at work in people’s lives can result in depression - and even paranoia - where some of the negative influences are concerned. Here are some positive ideas to help balance the books.

Reversing the minus sign

A while back, the idea came to me that some of the people who have a very negative effect on others could have an equally positive effect if they would only decide to clean up their act and be a force for good instead of evil.

The more innate power to influence people and events someone has, the greater their potential for either causing damage and destruction or making the world a better place.  The more power they have, the more people they can either save or lead to disaster.

This is similar to being overdrawn at the bank: if the sign were changed from minus to plus, a small deficit would become a small credit but a huge overdraft would become a huge credit balance.

Yet another string of minor incidents

I recently experienced a string of minor misfortunes while out on a shopping trip.There was a time when such incidents would have been very jarring but not any more; I was not affected at all. I even tried to mentally bring some positivity into the atmosphere.

The first incident happened when the bus I was on swept past a bus stop without stopping. A woman who had wanted to get off there became very angry, all the more because the next stop was a fair distance away so she had a long walk back. She swore at the driver.  He said that she should have rung the bell; she insisted that she had rung it. She seemed a bit disturbed and disconnected, and her voice had a strange, unpleasant tone.

The next incident took place in a small supermarket. A woman left her queue to go back and get some item she had forgotten. She took her time, leaving a lot of people waiting. Someone mentioned this, quite politely, to her when she came back – without apologising for the delay - and she took offence and got into an argument with him. Staff had to intervene.

When I was on the bus on the return journey, there was trouble involving a man in a wheelchair who wanted to get off and a passenger who intervened on his behalf. The driver closed the doors to let the ramp down, but she jumped to the wrong conclusion and thought that he was going to move on without letting the man off. She shouted for him to stop. 

It was just a misunderstanding, but the bus driver got annoyed and said, "I'm not blind!" She got annoyed and said there was no need for him to be so rude. As she got off a few stops later, she told the driver that he should not have spoken like that to someone who was just trying to help. 

Soon after that, the bus made a sudden, violent swerve and I was thrown forwards.

A young tourist asked me if she was on the right bus. I tried to help, but it seemed that her English wasn’t good enough for her to understand what I said, despite all my efforts. This was frustrating. I showed her a stop where she could change to a better bus; she produced a map and other papers and said that she knew where she was; I realised that she didn’t really need any help after all. She seemed rather vague. A very minor incident indeed, but I suspect that it was part of the string.

Ayn Rand: chance events, lucky breaks and unseen influences

After reading through Barbara Branden’s biography The Passion of Ayn Rand yet again, I noticed that she had some lucky breaks in her life. Although she knew what she wanted and was very pro-active in preparing herself for and going about getting it, her life might have been very different and we might never have heard of her without some fortuitous incidents that helped her along her way and got her through some key stages in her life.

Reprieve from university expulsion

When Ayn Rand was studying at university in Russia, there was a plan to expel some socially undesirables. Ayn was on the list; she would not be permitted to attend any other college ever again; being without a degree would have been a death warrant for her future plans. Luckily, a delegation of foreign visitors heard about the proposed purge and they were very indignant about it. In an attempt to make a good impression on the prominent visitors, the expulsions were cancelled for some of the students, including Ayn. A reversal of this kind was a unique occurrence.

Getting a visa to enter the USA

Ayn Rand knew that she just had to go to America. It seemed like her only chance to make something of her life. She could never live under the oppressive Communist regime.

She had a difficult interview with an American consul; she needed to convince him that she planned to return to Russia after her trip to the US. (She actually intended to leave for ever.) She happened to notice a card on his desk. It said that she was going to marry an American. This gave her an idea: she said that it was a mistake and that she was going to marry a Russian man on her return. She was thinking of her still-beloved Leo. The consul realised that her details had been confused with someone else’s; he had been about to refuse her a visa, but her quick thinking made him revise his decision.

She was doubly lucky: she got out before the doors were closed and Russian citizens were prohibited from leaving their country.

Robin Jarvis’s witchmaster Nathaniel Crozier: Part III

The return of Nathaniel Crozier

A Warlock in Whitby ended with the defeat and destruction of Nathaniel Crozier. He left two devastated people behind him: Jennet is shattered emotionally and Miss Boston physically.

The Whitby Child, the final book in the Whitby Witches trilogy, describes Crozier’s efforts to return from the dead. He has done a deal with an evil supernatural entity: he will be restored to life in return for Ben’s death.

Crozier uses his coven of witches to perform rituals and run his errands, which include more attempts to murder Ben. Jennet is drawn into the coven; Nathaniel has left her in such a bad state that she has no defences against their plots.

It all – eventually - ends well for most of the characters, but only after a lot of action, horrific incidents, suffering and supernatural intervention, both malign and benign.

Roselyn Crozier returns temporarily to get her revenge; Nathaniel Crozier is permanently destroyed. The members of his coven are released from his control to make whatever new lives they can for themselves. Miss Boston, who early in the story recovers from her stroke, cheats death a few more times but her life finally comes to an end. She is 93 years old, and she is no longer needed to defend the children.

The future for Jennet and Ben is very good: their parents are restored to life.

The only thing that Nathaniel Crozier ever did to make the world a better place was to (inadvertently) redeem the Gregsons. There is a happy ending for this couple, who continued to be good neighbours to Miss Boston while she was still alive. They repair the relationship with their estranged son. They go to visit him and see their grandchildren for the first time.

Perhaps a horrible experience is necessary before some people can see the light, appreciate and make the best of what they have and change for the better.

Ayn Rand: some more thoughts about her life

Barbara Branden’s biography The Passion of Ayn Rand is inspiring a whole series of articles. It is uncanny how so many aspects of her life resemble mine.

Some more similarities

Ayn Rand loved light classical music and operettas; so do I. When she first encountered them, they provided a magical form of temporary escape from a life of squalour, poverty, fear, pain and humiliation; this was my experience too. She would queue for hours in freezing weather to get the cheapest tickets, walking miles to save her fare money; I did exactly the same.

Ayn Rand pinned all her hopes for the future, for escape from a life of blank nothingness, for freedom, for any kind of life, on one thing: moving to the USA; I did the same with the profession of computing. She knew that she just had to go there; I knew that too.  The terrible suspense, the hopes, fears and disappointments and uncertainty that she had to live through before she finally got what she wanted are very familiar; I endured all that too.

She felt at home in New York as she loved the city lights, the city streets, the buildings and the big city atmosphere; I feel exactly the same about city life, as opposed to the suburbs and the countryside. Just knowing that it is all there, just outside the window, really does give fuel to the spirit.

While her mental energy was limitless, she always struggled with the problem of low physical energy; I have the same problem. She once worked continuously for 30 hours with no sleep; I used to do that all the time.

Ayn Rand almost never drank alcohol, disliking both the taste and the effect; I am the same. She disapproved strongly of the drug culture; it didn’t make sense to damage or destroy one’s most precious attribute, the clarity and precision of one’s rational mind; I share her views. She was a heavy smoker though; I have always been a non-smoker.

She had a few lessons, but was unable to learn how to drive a car; I have never even wanted to learn.

The life of Ayn Rand: some more familiar features

Barbara Branden’s biography The Passion of Ayn Rand provided the source material for the article about some familiar features from

Ayn Rand's childhood.

There are many more examples of characteristics, viewpoints and experiences that Ayn Rand shares with other people, including me, to be found in this book.

Some more basic elements of Ayn Rand’s personality

There is little evidence that Ayn Rand possessed a sense of humour. She may not have had much common sense either. This is very reminiscent of Elizabeth Taylor’s character Angel.

She needed to control others.

She could be selfish and thoughtless, for example when she uprooted her husband from a life he loved and that suited him perfectly because she wanted to move to New York. This is very like what Angel did to her mother.

Just like Angel, Ayn Rand lacked introspection and showed no humility.

Ayn Rand considered herself to be the supreme authority on what had worth and what did not and what was right and what was wrong; she judged people by her own standards and was contemptuous and intolerant of and dismissive towards people who didn’t make the grade.

Where she saw no unusual intelligence – nor the capacity for dedicated productive work that she believed to be its consequence – she saw no value.

She had little understanding of family ties, emotional connections and people’s feelings. Very few people mattered to her in a personal way. To the end of her life, she dismissed anyone who had a deep need for the company of other people as being essentially without value.

Ayn Rand was passionately anti mysticism and pro reason.

The childhood of Ayn Rand: some very familiar features

We may not be as unique, unusual or individual as we thnk we are.

I have seen many examples online of people saying such things as, “I could have written that myself” and, “Are you me?” and, “That is a perfect description of MY mother.” They seem surprised to find that there are others out there who are just like them or who have had exactly the same experiences.

I have been reading about the early life of Ayn Rand. Her generation, nationality and family situation are very different from mine, yet much of her early life seems like a description of my early life. Many of her characteristics, views and experiences are very familiar; some of it reminds me of what I have read about the early lives of some writers of interest.

Some basic elements of her personality

In her biography The Passion of Ayn Rand, Barbara Branden tells us that Ayn Rand was not very interested in other children and didn’t fit in with or get on well with them; I was much the same: on the whole, they seemed alien, boring, incomprehensible and sometimes dangerous.

She was very serious and intense, too much so for the liking of her fellow schoolgirls. I was too. She felt that she failed them by not reacting, responding or behaving according to their expectations. Some of us are wired very differently on the inside from the majority of our contemporaries and just cannot fit in with them.

Ayn Rand obtained positive attention from the people around her only because of the qualities of her mind. The only time I got positive attention was when I repeated the ridiculous political ideas that I was force-fed and brainwashed with.

Ayn Rand’s intelligence ‘created a pressure to be fed’. My mind too demanded huge amounts of food and fuel in the form of books and information. I was always hungry for more.

She felt a driving ambition from an early age; I did too.

She was future-oriented from earliest childhood; I was too.

She loathed physical activity; I hated some of it too, although in my case it was not only because organised exercises and games in school seemed pointless but also because I was weakened by being eaten alive by energy vampires. Stella Gibbons too hated being forced to play team games at school; she had no interest in them and didn’t care who won.

Robin Jarvis’s witchmaster Nathaniel Crozier: Part II

The end of Nathaniel Crozier’s visit to Whitby

We left Nathaniel Crozier just after he had tortured and killed poor old Mr Roper.

His next evil deed is to send the horrible fish demon he has secured to his service to kill Ben so that he can then destroy the magical artefact that Mr Roper passed on to the little boy.

Luckily, the monster follows the wrong trail; it kills another boy instead. ‘By chance’, this is someone who has bullied Ben in the past.

Miss Boston returns from a harrowing visit to London, and finds that all hell has broken loose because Nathaniel Crozier has destroyed two of Whitby’s guardians. Once again, she decides that she must confront an evil newcomer who is about to destroy Whitby. This at the age of 92: if she isn’t a good role model for older ladies, I don’t know who is.

Miss Boston knows that she has taken on what looks like an impossible task, but she sees it as a good sign, a sign of weakness, that the appalling man wanted her out of the way and used his agents to try to destroy her in London.

She has an advantage in that Nathaniel Crozier underestimates her. He never has a good word to say about anyone - he called his wife Roselyn stupid and greedy and Miss Boston an odious hag - and he thinks of Miss Boston as a senile, dabbling amateur.

Crozier would get on well with Lord Voldemort, who also underestimates the opposition and believes that “there is no good and evil, there is nothing but power and those too weak to seek it”. Crozier boasts of being a master of control and domination; he scorns limits and warnings – they are for the weak.

Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel: witches and writers

Elizabeth Taylor’s novel Angel has inspired two previous articles:

Angel’s Imagination covers the ways in which a very strong, active imagination can be a liability in everyday life.

Angel’s Life and Personality describes Angel and her life mainly in modern-day, this-world terms.

Much of Angel is familiar not only because I have read the biographies of Ouida and Marie Corelli that were the source of some of the material in Elizabeth Taylor’s novel, but also because it reminds me of what I have read, and sometimes written, about other people of interest.

Angel Deverell has many characteristics and events in her life in common with both fictional witches and real-life creative writers.

Angel and some fictional witches

I had read only a few pages of the book when Diana Wynne Jones’s young witch Gwendolen Chant came to mind. They have selfishness, an abrupt manner and single-mindedness in common. Gwendolen wants to rule the world; Angel wants to dominate the world.

There is a scene in Angel where she visits her publisher at his home; she ignores his wife. This reminds me of something I quoted about C. S. Lewis’s witch Jadis in the article about Gwendolen Chant: 

“In Charn she [Jadis] had taken no notice of Polly (till the very end) because Digory was the one she wanted to make use of. Now that she had Uncle Andrew, she took no notice of Digory. I expect most witches are like that. They are not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical." 
From The Magician’s Nephew

Both Gwendolen and Angel are quick to take offence and become furious when thwarted. Both hate to see others in possession of things they want for themselves. Both are outraged when they don’t get the recognition they think they deserve.

Neither girl is interested in academic achievement; they just concentrate on their one obsession to the exclusion of everything else, with Angel exercising her imagination and Gwendolen her magical powers.

Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel: her life and personality

Angel Deverell is the main character in Elizabeth Taylor’s novel Angel.  She has provided much more article material than I was expecting. After describing how she lives in her imagination rather than in the real world, we will now cover something of her life, personality and behaviour.

We left Angel at the point where her lies have been exposed and she escapes into illness and her imagination.

Angel Deverell becomes a romance writer

When her mother confronts her, Angel faces blankness and despair and longs for death, seeing no other way out.

When certain people feel that all avenues are closed and cry out on the inside for a miraculous deliverance, something may hear them and come to their rescue, offering what seems like a possible way out…for a price. It may even be that the avenues were deliberately closed, so that the victim chooses the path that they were intended to take all along.

Angel remembers something that for once made her feel happy: it was when she wrote an essay. She decides to write a book. It comes easily: the words flow effortlessly because she just gets some of her fantasies down on paper. Angel’s imaginings are all very visual, pictures seen in the mind’s eye. The words and narrative are not important to her.

Angel has never grieved over any human beings and doesn’t care that a neighbour’s daughter might be dying, but she cries over the funeral she writes about. Seeing real life as unreal, treating the inner world as the real world and the outer world as just a dream is yet another occupational hazard for people with very strong imaginations and unsatisfactory lives.

Angel refuses to return to school; she won’t look for work either: she disdains the suggestion that she could get an office job. She will write books and become rich and famous!

Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel: her imagination

I first heard about Elizabeth Taylor’s novel Angel when it turned up in the results of a Google Search for “Marie Corelli”. 

I had never read any of Taylor’s books, but I got a copy from my library after reading in reviews that Angel was based in part on the lives of the Victorian romance writers Marie Corelli and Ouida. I had read biographies of both of these best-selling writers and was curious to see how much of their biographical material had been used in Angel.

Much of the book is very familiar; I recognised many elements from the biographies. Angel Deverell, the main character, is obviously a composite of Marie Corelli and Ouida. Some of the descriptions of her personality, behaviour and events in her life were taken directly from the biographies.

Angel Deverell is a classic textbook case. She is a type of person who appears in the human race from time to time. I see them as a kind of witch. They may get what they wish for, but the price may be very high and it may all turn to dust and ashes.

Reading about Marie Corelli’s, Ouida’s and now Angel’s life has confirmed some of my ideas about sinister unseen influences that might be at work in people’s lives. There is a lot of material of interest in the book; it will take more than one article to cover it.

Angel Deverell and the dangers of too much imagination

We first meet Angel when she is a schoolgirl of 15. Her colouring is striking, but she is not beautiful. She is not very good at her lessons either, although she can fool people who know much less than she does into thinking that she is a good student.

The only attribute Angel has that is above average is her imagination, and she uses it all the time. It plays a much greater part in her life than her senses do. To Angel, her experiences are a makeshift substitute for her imagination.

She concentrates very hard and visualises her ideal life, one of nobility, glamour and splendour, very clearly. She daydreams whenever she can, as she dislikes the people around her and the environment she lives in. She wants, and feels entitled to, something much better.

The Gap in the Curtain: John Buchan nails it once again

The Gap in the Curtain is not one of John Buchan’s best-known works. It is not a story of excitement and adventure either: no thriller, it has a supernatural or paranormal theme and has been described as borderline science fiction. 

The Gap in the Curtain features the lawyer Sir Edward Leithen, another of Buchan’s heroes and narrator of the story, and Professor August Moe, a brilliant physicist and mathematician. 

The story starts with a dinner party. Leithen, who is extremely tired from overworking and close to the end of his tether, had been in two minds about accepting the invitation. He feels a little better when he notices that several other guests around the table are not looking too good either: they seem nervous, under the weather, ill, tired or even exhausted:

“I was free to look about me. Suddenly I got a queer impression. A dividing line seemed to zigzag in and out among us, separating the vital from the devitalised. There was a steady cackle of talk, but I felt that there were silent spaces in it. Most of the people were cheerful, eupeptic souls who were enjoying life... But I realised that there were people here who were as much at odds with life as myself...”

Mr Standfast: John Buchan nails a problem

I was much more interested in the exciting action and adventure than the philosophising when I first read John Buchan’s books; now it is the subtle elements that hold my attention. 

Something I read in Mr Standfast recently really hit home this time around: it is a soul-baring speech made by the character Launcelot Wake.

“'I see more than other people see,' he went on, 'and I feel more. That's the curse on me. You're a happy man and you get things done, because you only see one side of a case, one thing at a time. How would you like it if a thousand strings were always tugging at you, if you saw that every course meant the sacrifice of lovely and desirable things, or even the shattering of what you know to be unreplaceable? I'm the kind of stuff poets are made of, but I haven't the poet's gift, so I stagger about the world left-handed and game-legged... 

I'm not as good a man as you, Hannay, who have never thought out anything in your life. My time in the Labour battalion taught me something. I knew that with all my fine aspirations I wasn't as true a man as fellows whose talk was silly oaths and who didn't care a tinker's curse about their soul… I'd give all I have to be an ordinary cog in the wheel, instead of a confounded outsider who finds fault with the machinery...'”

“I'm the kind of stuff poets are made of, but I haven't the poet's gift...”

This goes right to the heart of the matter; it is the essence of the problem that some people have. 

Life is very difficult for anyone who is unfortunate enough to have the creative temperament without much in the way of creative abilities to go with it. Such people may feel stuck between two worlds, getting the worst of both and not fully belonging to either. 

Unable to function as well in everyday life as the ordinary people in the outer world do, unable to create anything or demonstrate any particular talent, gift or genius as the artists of various kinds who are in touch with other dimensions and the inner world do, they may feel inferior to the inhabitants of both worlds. 

Being able to demonstrate abilities far above normal in some areas may be compensation for and explanation of being obviously far below normal in others; having creative abilities may be some compensation for having to endure the torment of a creative temperament, while being able to function well in the ordinary world may be some compensation for being collective-minded and not having any special talents.

Considering that the highlighted words quoted above were spoken by someone who says he has no gift for poetry, it is ironic that, with the addition of a line or two, they could be part of a poem, perhaps something written by Rudyard Kipling! 

The Lament of Launcelot Wake 

I'm the kind of stuff poets are made of,

  But I haven't the poet's gift.

Between me and the world of the poets,

  There lies an unbridgeable rift!