Angel Deverell and Esmé Scarron the sorcerer
These two people have generated many articles
between them; it would be very easy to produce some more, but enough is enough!
By coincidence, Esmé is the name of Angel’s
debt-ridden wastrel of a husband, but she bears more resemblance to Stella
Gibbons’s villain Esmé Scarron from The Shadow of a Sorcerer than he does!
Angel shares Scarron’s arrogance and
preference for having admiring followers or even worshippers rather than real
friends.
She too has a bad effect on the people around
her, her mother and husband in particular.
Angel could have improved her inner state and
become a better person, but just like Scarron she lacks the necessary humility.
Brothers and sisters
Angel’s husband’s full name is Esmé
Howe-Nevinson. He is the brother of Nora Howe-Nevinson, Angel’s companion and
assistant.
It is not just Esmé’s name that has a connection to Stella Gibbons: his personality and behaviour resemble those of
her younger brother Lewis.
As mentioned in the first article in the
series, the novelist Marie Corelli was one of the inspirations for Angel. Corelli’s half-brother Eric was a wastrel who
was always demanding money from her; Elizabeth Taylor probably created Esmé
from what she knew of Eric, but he is also a classic, textbook case.
Many of us will encounter people like Esmé,
who go through life leaving a trail of failures, debt and destruction behind
them and who are forever taking on new initiatives without the resources and reserves
to back them up. They make life hell for anyone they can get a hold over.
Both Stella and the fictional Nora kept house
for their brothers;
Both Stella Gibbon’s brother Lewis and the
fictional Esmé were unstable; they got into financial and other messes and left
it to their sisters to sort it all out.
Same game, different players yet again.
Black and white and inverted values
The reversal of values, making black look
like white and vice versa, is said to be one of the characteristics of evil.
Making a victim feel guilty is one of the
games that witches play. Aunt Maria does this and so does Angel, who is
hypocritical and delusional. Nothing is ever her fault.
As an example, when Angel’s huge and
badly-trained dog attacks and kills a tiny Yorkshire Terrier, Angel blames the
owner of the other dog. When talking to a journalist, she says:
“...before you go, I will give you a report
for your newspaper of an incident that took place this afternoon. You can print
it with a few comments I will add for you on dog-owners who let their vicious
pets loose to roam the roads and savage other dogs.”
She is the one who let her dog run
wild!
She blames Esmé’s female victims rather than
him. She even takes his side against his unfortunate sister, who has had to
bail him out many times and can’t take any more.
Angel the infuriating
Angel Deverell is very different from Diana
Wynne Jones’s witch Aunt Maria but they are both extremely exasperating
people. Just reading about their behaviour makes me want to explode!
When Angel says something outrageous,
something completely off the mark that shows how out of touch with reality she
is, people are overwhelmed with exasperation and frustrated fury:
"Lord Norley felt, as Theo so often had, the
kind of exasperation that is stupefying. He did not know which way to turn or
where he could begin to explain his disagreement, and he left without making
his request and without being offered any tea."
Aunt Maria’s behaviour makes her visitors
want to explode. Even the sweet-tempered mother of the children sometimes wants
to kill her.
This exasperation, which I have often felt in
real life, is a sign that something is very wrong. Perhaps we feel it because we sense that someone is trying to use their powers to influence or silence us. People who make us feel like that are best
avoided.
Evil has a hypnotising, paralysing effect. As
an extreme case, the black witch Madame Delubovoska can suffocate people
without even touching them.
Mouldy peaches and bad sandwiches
Angel does sometimes provide good food and
drink, often by lucky accident or when she makes a special effort, but on other
occasions she hands out very unpalatable foodstuffs. She adds insult to injury by expecting the
recipients to be grateful and enjoy them.
She offers inedible peaches to one guest, some
overripe and mouldy, some still hard and green.
The crab paste sandwiches she provides for a journalist who comes to interview her are ‘off’ and make him sick, and she doesn’t apologise.
She and her companion make dreadful jam, and she plays Lady Bountiful, dispensing it to the poorer locals. She thinks they are grateful; they despise her and her unwelcome offerings and resent her intrusive visits.
There is something symbolic about the way she offers very low quality food as if it were something very special and she were doing the recipients a great favour; it could apply to Angel herself, her conversation and even her writing.
The cactus symbolism
There is a scene where Angel’s publisher sees
a large cactus in a flower-shop window:
From one barbed shoot had sprung a huge glowering bloom. It looked solitary and incongruous, a freakish accident; it reminded him of Angel.
She certainly is a prickly person, with her writing the equivalent of the huge flower.
Red, white and black
Angel has black hair and a white face. In one
scene she wears a red dress.
These colours are associated with cartoon characters, some of them malevolent.
One of Angel’s visitors sees her as a bad fairy, a wicked stepmother. He feels under a spell.
Monstrous narcissist, evil witch - whatever
she was, Angel Deverell made her presence felt.
One of the many editions of Angel:
