Lucy M. Boston's witch Melanie Powers and Green Knowe revisited

The children's writer Lucy M. Boston, author of the Green Knowe series, has been featured in an article about her birthday and her memoirs. There are brief references to her witch Dr. Melanie Powers in a few other places, and some elements that this evil woman has in common with fellow fictional modern-day witch Miss Heckatty are described in the article about Linwood Sleigh's witches. 

I re-read An Enemy at Green Knowe recently, and, just as happened when I took another look at Beverley Nichols's books about the witch Miss Smith, I found some more material to comment on.

Starting with some coincidences

The main story begins when the boy Ping asks old Mrs Oldknow if she knows anything about a 17th-century man called Piers Madely. She says that this is odd, because she had been thinking about Madely earlier that day!

She tells the disturbing story of the good vicar Piers Madely and the unprepossessing occult scholar, alchemist and necromancer Dr. Vogel, whose evil books and manuscripts were all burned, to Ping and his friend Tolly, who is her great-grandson. The very next day, a letter arrives from a Dr. Melanie D. Powers enquiring about Dr. Vogel's collection!

Before the letter comes:

“The queer thing about Grand's stories," Tolly explained to Ping, "is that bits of them keep coming true now, although they are all so old.“

After the letter comes:

"There you are, Ping!" Tolly exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you part of Grand's stories always come true? She no sooner mentions Dr. Wolfgang Vogel than Dr. Melanie D. Powers comes asking about him."

Perhaps Mrs Oldknow had been thinking about Dr. Vogel because she subconsciously sensed that the letter was coming.

Lucy M. Boston, her birthday and her memoirs

The English novelist Lucy M. Boston, who is often known as L. M. Boston, was born on December 10th 1892. She was over 60 when her first book was published, and she lived to the age of 97.

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 at length 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.

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.