Fear of the New Year!

Seasonal  sadness has been covered in a few articles; there is a post about depression at Christmas and one about depression at the Autumn Equinox for example.

Now it is time to say something about the malaise that comes upon some people at the time of the New Year. 

Ogden Nash's little poem about the New Year, Good Riddance, But Now What?, suggests that while it is good to see the back of the old year, what is coming may be even worse.

Another of his pessimistic New Year poems asserts that the night of December 31st is by far the worst night of the year.

Although Ogden Nash's poems make the impending New Year seem rather sinister, the humour takes the edge off his proposition that New Year's Eve is not a good time.

There is nothing remotely amusing about the following extract from Stella Gibbons's novel Starlight. It is Christmas Eve and someone isn't very happy:

“Peggy stood in silence, struggling with such a feeling of boredom and despair as seldom assailed even her. She could walk out of here to-morrow morning; nothing need stop her.

What was she doing in this hot room, with these fools, living their half-life?

Oh it was something to do – it passed the time – it made a break. The language of boredom and despair. “

Her employer's son notices her distress and asks her what's wrong:

“... just the feeling there’s another year nearly gone,’ she answered, paling.”

He replies:

“Here, here – you save that up for New Year’s Eve – that’s the time that really gets into its stride.”

People have such terrible feelings on New Year's Eve for many reasons. Some are afraid of what might happen; others are afraid that nothing will happen and the coming year will just be more of the – unsatisfactory – same. They may feel that time is running out.

I have learned recently that there is even a word for this fear of the New Year: neoannophobia! 

Starlight is not a good novel to read at this time of year:

A last look at May Sinclair's Flaw in the Crystal

This article highlights some unconvincing elements in May Sinclair's The Flaw in the Crystal and lists some similarities between The Parasite by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and May Sinclair's novella. These similarities and some other connections I noticed make the effort needed to decode the obscurities in The Flaw in the Crystal seem worthwhile. 

First, two extracts that seem significant to me:

Playing the 'as if' game

There is no humour in The Flaw in the Crystal, but I find this passage where Milly Powell writes to Agatha about her husband Harding both interesting and amusing:

“She wrote as if it was Agatha's fault that he had become dependent; as if Agatha had nothing, had nobody in the world to think of but Harding; as if nobody, as if nothing in the world beside Harding mattered. And Agatha found herself resenting Milly's view. As if to her anything in the world mattered beside Rodney Lanyon.“

Off-the-mark, 'as if' messages are a special interest of mine. It was an unexpected treat to come across such a good specimen in a story written in 1912. 

It is a pity that the whole story is not written in the  straightforward style that we see in this passage.

Intention is everything 

Just as many other people involved with unseen influences have done, Agatha Verrall realises that there is a dimension where thoughts have power. There, the wish or intention to do something is at least as effective as actually doing it in the real world:

“...that world where to think was to will, and to will was to create.“

“For thought went wider and deeper than any deed; it was of the very order of the Powers intangible wherewith she had worked. Why, thoughts unborn and shapeless, that ran under the threshold and hid there, counted more in that world where It, the Unuttered, the Hidden and the Secret, reigned.”

Despite what Agatha Verrall believes, this dimension, this world, is not necessarily a good place and the Powers that can be contacted there are not necessarily benevolent.

Two birthdays for two Stellas

Stella Gibbons and her books have been mentioned many times on here. One article compares her and her life with Georgette Heyer and her life; they were both born in 1902.

Stella Gibbons was born on January 5th. A much less well-known writer called Stella Benson was born 10 years earlier on January 6th.

As in previous comparisons, there are some common elements and some large differences in the lives of the two Stellas.

Stella Benson came from a much higher social class than Stella Gibbons. 

Stella Benson suffered from ill-health for much of her life whereas Stella Gibbons was fairly robust. 

Both writers had alcoholic fathers. Stella Gibbons was 24 years old when her father died; Stella Benson was 19 at the time of her father’s death,

Stella Gibbons was sent to school for the first time when she was 13; Stella Benson was 14 when she first attended school.

Stella Gibbons was brought up an atheist. She converted to Christianity after meeting the man who would become her husband. Stella Benson was brought up in a church-going family, but she came to reject Christianity - and other religions.

Stella Benson was a great traveller and lived in the USA and China, while Stella Gibbons just went to Europe for holidays and lived in the Hampstead area of London for her entire life.

Stella Benson won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for English writers in 1932; Stella Gibbons won this prize in 1933.

Stella Gibbons died in December a few weeks before her 88th birthday; Stella Benson died in December a few weeks before her 42nd birthday.

Stella Benson wrote two books that sound promising as a source of material about unseen influences: Tobit Transplanted and Living Alone.

White magic and black magic and the books of Stella Gibbons

My first encounter with the books of Stella Gibbons
It was my stepmother who introduced me to many of the works of Stella Gibbons. I have never much liked romance novels or books that are primarily about personal relationships, but my stepmother was so enthusiastic about the books that I decided to give them a try.  

I felt an attraction that I could not have put into words at the time. I found them civilised, elegant, witty and interesting; I liked the glimpses they gave me into other people’s lives: this expanded my horizons. I liked the descriptions of London and the natural world. I was only ten years old at the time, so I was too young to understand the undercurrents and subtle references to dark topics. This was the stage when a foundation was laid and seeds were sown for the future. 

My second encounter with the books of Stella Gibbons
A time came much later in my life when I decided to return to the past and salvage some good things I remembered. This operation included renewing my acquaintance with books I had enjoyed reading many years earlier.  I re-read many of Stella Gibbons’s novels and short stories. I also found some of her books that I had never read before in second-hand bookshops.

I got much more out of reading them as an adult with some experience of life than I had in the past as a child – the reverse was true for some of the other authors I revisited.