Hurrying People: another nightmare for Stella Gibbons's Amy Lee

In her novel My American, Stella Gibbons goes into great detail when describing a journey home that is one long endurance test for her young writer Amy Lee.

Amy Lee experiences another kind of nightmare in the form of a horrible recurring dream about Hurrying People and daytime reminders of it. 

A foretaste of the nightmare

Amy Lee is on the way to her father's funeral:

“She had cried so much in the last two days that her head felt empty and light. She was so dreadfully lonely! She peeped out of the window as the car moved along the Holloway Road, staring at the crowds hurrying past in the spring sunshine. So many people, in so many cities all over the huge world! and not one of them belonged to her or would know who you meant if you said, “Amy Lee.” For the first time in her life she wondered what was going to become of her.”

No wonder that she seeks comfort and compensation in her inner world.

The Hurrying People nightmare

The nightmare is first mentioned when Amy Lee has been living with the Beeding family for two years. Her parents are dead; she is often lonely, depressed and desolate. She has a reasonably good home with the Beedings, but despite their kindness this foster family is not enough. Perhaps having to hide her writing and her real self is another factor that contributes to the nightmare she occasionally experiences:

“Then she dreamed that the crowds in the streets could not see her, because they were all hurrying past her on their way back to happy homes. She dreamed she stood in front of them screaming: “I’m Amy Lee! Look, I’m Amy Lee!” but nobody saw her or stopped, and she awoke crying heart brokenly in the dark bedroom.”

L. M. Montgomery, curses and two suspicious deaths

The article about the novelist Mary Webb contains an account of what happened some years after her death to her husband and his second wife. This is a good example of the 'curse or coincidence?' scenario, which is featured in several other articles.

I was reminded of this case by something that I recently read in a biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery: there are two similar, possibly suspicious, deaths in her life too.

Each case is all the more significant in the light of the other one, and even more so when put into the wider context of suspicious deaths involving other creative people who might have used unseen influences against someone who injured them.

A summary of the Mary Webb affair

Mary Webb's husband Henry became more and more distant from her: she was difficult to live with and he was attached to an attractive young pupil of his.  When Mary Webb died, the sales of her books took off; her husband soon married the ex-pupil and they got all the royalties. Their new life of luxury came to an end when Henry Webb died prematurely after an 'accident' while mountain climbing. His widow remarried, but just like Mary Webb she died of an incurable disease at the age of forty-six.

A summary of the L. M. Montgomery affair

When she was around 23 years old, L. M. Montgomery became infatuated with a very attractive man called Herman Leard. They enjoyed each other's company, but nothing came of it. Her side of the story, which she mentioned in journals written for eventual publication, is that despite being overwhelmed by her feelings for him, she rejected him because he was unworthy of her. She considered him beneath her socially, intellectually and educationally. 

Herman Leard died in 1899, one year after she had last seen him, possibly of complications from influenza. He was almost 29 years old. He had been engaged to a very beautiful young woman who mourned him for some years, married someone else and died 10 years after Leard's death.

Daydreams and the imagination in Stella Gibbons's My American

There is some material about daydreams and the imagination in Stella Gibbons's My American that reminds me of points I have made in various articles in the past, articles written long before I had read this novel. The contexts and the people may be very different but the principles are the same.

The young writer Amy Lee in My American spends much of her time in a trance-like state; her life is one long waking dream. What Stella Gibbons tells us about Amy's imagination and the imaginary people she dreams about provides independent confirmation of and adds to material in articles such as the ones about Stella Benson's imagination and Stella Benson's imaginary friends.

Stella Gibbons's words provide further support for the proposition that a strong, vivid imagination can be a two-edged sword, a handicap or even a curse that ruins lives and destroys its possessor. She mentions the dangers of having a super-developed imagination: it can cause mild delusions; it can create a mist that shuts the owner away from the world; it can prevent the owner from growing up, getting on well with people and acting effectively in the real world. The article about Terry Pratchett's sinister Fairyland is relevant here.

Amy Lee's imaginary companions

Stella Gibbons says this about Amy's attitude towards the characters she created for her stories:

“Day by day she cared less for people and more for imaginary pictures so strong that they were more like feelings or dreams than ideas inside her head. She felt only a passive affection for the Beedings. Indeed, she did not feel active affection for anyone living; she only loved the memory of her mother, while for the dream-people in her mind she felt such a strong interest and concern that it could have been described as love.”

This is exactly how some people feel about fictional and imaginary characters who are much more glamorous and  interesting and do more exciting things than the real people in the dreamers' and readers' lives. 

Protesting against local library closures in 2016

The previously mentioned thread on a now closed forum about the value or otherwise of public libraries was created in 2016 by someone who had received a series of appeals to protest against the closure of his local public library. He thought that the protesters were making a fuss about nothing; I disagreed.

This is how it all started:

“I'm constantly receiving junk mail through my letterbox, informing me of protests to save the local library, which the district council has announced will be closed down. I'm completely apathetic towards the library; this is a small village and no one ever uses it. The situation is the same across the district: this is a rural district with no big towns, and the council have announced they're closing down several other small village libraries...”

He went on to say that public libraries are an outdated luxury and there are better options available. He alleged that people who protest against funding cuts and library closures are virtue-signalling, do-gooding, politically correct, lefty liberal middle-class Guardian readers acting out of pretended concern for 'the poor'!

I found an article that tells a very different story. 

A protest against closures in Cornwall

Here is a cry from the heart from a retired Cornishman who used to run library services; it shows how essential public libraries are for some people:

“Cornwall's library service was a high performer at a low cost compared to almost every council service down here and library services elsewhere.

It will surprise no one that I am dismayed that two thirds of libraries in Cornwall are recommended for the chop. My dismay may not matter very much; it's much more important for the parent who wants books for her children.

It's much more important if, like my mother, you are losing your sight and won't find large print and audio books anywhere else.

It's much more important if you're one of the 800 housebound people in Cornwall waiting in vain for a volunteer to bring you books from the library.

If you're a suit in County Hall, yes, you can order a book from Amazon in your lunch hour to read on your Kindle.