More 'coincidences': how the Farjeons found some books

I have on several occasions experienced something that I think of as positive paranoia: this is when people believe that the universe favours them and looks after their interests, often by ensuring that they are in the right place at the right time and giving them things that they need. 

The universe has often helped me to get a lot of good-quality reading material and to find specific books that I wanted for producing articles for this blog. Useful books that I didn't even know existed have also been put in a good position to attract my attention.

As a child I always lived close to a good public library, and one librarian told me that I could go down to the stockroom and take whatever I liked; then there was the occasion when I felt a sudden inner prompting to visit a small town in Kent, where I found a fantasy book by Sheri S. Tepper that I had long been searching for without success; there were also the books that had been put in the right place and at just the right height to ensure that I would see them as I walked past, including one by L. M. Boston.

Finding the right books 'by chance' and people who were helpful without even being asked are experiences of particular interest and significance to me. I found some examples of other people who were favoured by fate in this way in A Nursery in the Nineties (1935), an autobiographical work by the writer, poet and playwright Eleanor Farjeon.

Benjamin Farjeon and the helpful bookseller
Eleanor Farjeon tells us about something that happened to her father, Benjamin Farjeon, when he was a boy of 14 and working in the printing trade:

“On his way to the office, Ben had to pass a second-hand bookshop. Books were his passion, and he possessed none. In the shop-window one stood open, with two pages of reading exposed. One day Ben rose a few minutes earlier, so that he might read the pages, without being late at work, and, entranced, entered the world of Fouqué's Undine. The following day, he found the leaf had been turned; the next two pages were exposed, and he devoured them. The third day the same thing happened. While he was glued to the window, the old man who kept the shop came to the door. 

“You're fond of books, my boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

"Come inside whenever you like, and read what you please from the shelves."

A last look at the depressing biography of Jean Rhys

The previous articles in the series inspired by Carole Angier's biography Jean Rhys: Life and Work have covered most of the book's content of particular interest to me and relevance to this blog.

The mining for inspiration has been resulting in diminishing returns. While there is still more material in the book that attracts my attention and inspires commentary, it is mostly more of the same: it enhances topics already covered and supports points already made; it provides further descriptions of Jean Rhys's attributes and deficiencies; it gives yet more depressing and exasperating examples of her infantile personality, lack of life skills, bad behaviour and failure to learn from experience. 

However, there is still a little more to say in the form of a few miscellaneous thoughts and connections before leaving the biography behind at last and moving on to other things.

More elements in common with other writers
The article about Jean Rhys and Antonia White lists many elements that these two novelists had in common; several other articles, including the one about feeling different, mention some more familiar names. 

In addition to all that, Jean Rhys resembles Ouida and several others in her lack of financial sense, common sense and sense of humour. Ouida lost many letters and cherished mementos during her frequent moves from hotel to hotel and villa to villa; it was much the same for Jean Rhys.

Reading about her appalling treatment of her unfortunate and long-suffering husbands and the terrible effect that this had on them reminded me of other writers whose husbands were much the worse for the relationship:  Alison Uttley, Mary Webb, Daphne du Maurier and L. M. Montgomery are some who come immediately to mind. 

An even closer look at Rachel Ferguson and The Brontës Went to Woolworths

The previous article in the series inspired by The Brontës Went to Woolworths contains material that suggests that Rachel Ferguson was well aware of the smaller problems experienced by people who live in fantasy worlds and have imaginary relationships; this article contains material to support the case that she also knew about some of the greater dangers. 

While the family game is mostly just fun and mutually beneficial for the Carne family and the Toddingtons when they eventually get together in the real world, it isn't all good: Rachel Ferguson describes some rather alarming undercurrents and sinister side effects.  

White magic with a dark side
After first reading about the unexpectedly positive and successful outcome of the Carne family's fantasies, it occurred to me that the book was another example of what I think of as white magic in writing, similar in that respect to Stella Gibbons's novel My American.

It is very common for example for people who have fantasies about someone to feel great disappointment and disillusionment for one reason or another when they first meet them, but the opposite happens in The Brontës Went to Woolworths. This gave me the idea that Rachel Ferguson wrote her book partly to counteract some beliefs about the negative effects of living in the imagination. 

While a closer look at the story did reveal some difficulties, Rachel Ferguson describes how Deirdre dealt with them successfully. While on balance the messages in the book still seemed to be positive, a further, deeper, reading uncovered some elements that tell a different story. While no inner worlds may come crashing down, some of the characters suffer in other ways. There is a dark side to the game the Carnes play.

A closer look at Rachel Ferguson and The Brontës Went to Woolworths

This article features some material in The Brontës Went to Woolworths that gives me the idea that Rachel Ferguson had personal experience of the problems that creating imaginary relationships and living in fantasy worlds can cause. 

She mentions the importance of being very careful when talking in the real world to people who have been the targets of fantasies; she also says that these people must be accepted and dealt with as they really are. She describes some inner conflicts that result from having too many fantasies on the go.

Being very careful when speaking to targeted people
Some of the things that the narrator Deirdre Carne says give me the idea that Rachel Ferguson herself had been in a situation where someone had been part of her life in her imagination long before she actually met them in real life. Deirdre mentions for example how difficult it is to have to treat people as strangers when they have been one of the family for years! 

This again reminds me of the double agents in Rafael Sabatini's books who were mentioned in the introductory article: people who live a double life must be careful to keep their stories straight and not give themselves away.

Deirdre has feelings of unreality when about to meet Lady Toddington for the first time in real life. The information that she has either invented or obtained via her researches makes her feel both advantaged and disadvantaged when talking to her.

Deirdre slips up a few times but gets away with it. 

She says this about the necessity of bringing Lady Toddington up to speed:

“Meanwhile, there was the spadework of the situation to get through, and I wondered how long it would actually take to bring her up to the point at which I had arrived long since, so that we could all start level.”

I suspect that Rachel Ferguson must have done some similar spadework, slowly putting her cards on the table one by one. How else could she have come up with something like that!

Yet more about Rachel Ferguson and The Brontës Went to Woolworths

Readers of Rachel Ferguson's 1931 novel The Brontës Went to Woolworths do not always find it easy to determine which incidents are real and which take place only in the imaginations of some of the characters.

Another key case for consideration is how much of the story comes from Rachel Ferguson's own experiences. 

This book also raises some questions about the effect on all concerned of the ongoing game played by the imaginative and fun-loving Carne family:

What effect does playing this game have on the players?

What effect does it have on the people who are mentally targeted?

What happens to everyone involved in the game when fantasy meets reality? 

The previous article describes some of the dangers and damaging consequences of fantasies that involve imaginary relationships; this one attempts to show why the answers to these questions are not what might be expected. 

What effect does the game have on the players?
It is dangerous to spend too much time living in a fantasy world. People who do this compulsively, intensively and continually may become borderline delusional; they may fall apart when their dream world collapses because they haven't got anything else to live for.

The three Carne girls and their mother get off very lightly however. 

Perhaps they escape the usual consequences because the fantasies are out in the open and shared rather than, as is more common, indulged in secretly by just one person. 

Perhaps they escape because the game they play is mostly treated as a joke and a pastime rather than a matter of life and death. Apart possibly from Sheil, the youngest girl, they know that it is just a game. 

More about Rachel Ferguson and The Brontës Went to Woolworths

The first article inspired by Rachel Ferguson's 1931 novel The Brontës Went to Woolworths features some miscellaneous material of interest from the book.

This one has something to say about the ongoing game played by the eccentric and bohemian Carne family. It was the unexpectedly positive results of this game and the possibility that Rachel Ferguson was writing from her own experience of imaginary relationships that inspired these articles.

The frivolous family saga
The Brontës Went to Woolworths is primarily about the game the Carnes play. They live in a fantasy world of their own creation in which their toys, their dog, people they have never met and even ghosts of the Brontës have starring roles. 

The three girls and their mother mentally appropriate real-life people who appeal to their imaginations and incorporate them into their lives. They invent stories about them; they have imaginary conversations with them; they behave and talk about them as if they were part of the family circle. They even sometimes pretend to be them, acting out the parts with each other.

The benefits of playing the game
The Carnes are high-spirited and playful; they are sometimes rather silly. They love to joke, imitate people and make up stories about the toys, the dog and people of interest and their activities. They sing and dance; they also like acting: they pretend to be a variety of characters. 

While they do all this mainly for their own amusement, they may also do it to distract themselves from a painful family situation. 

The exercising of their imaginations and talents and having fun is enough to explain why they all enjoy performing, creating stories and role-playing, but the Carnes may also be trying to distract themselves from the grief caused by the death of the girls' father. Their obsession with the elderly and illustrious Lord Justice Toddington may be an attempt to compensate for their loss.  

Taking things a little too far?
The Carnes sometimes go a little too far. For example, they give each other cards and presents from their toys and people they have never even met!

The girls go to great lengths to learn about people who capture their interest; they also practice something that comes close to stalking.

Jean Rhys: more about witches, magic and energy vampires

In the previous article in the series inspired by Carole Angier's biography Jean Rhys: Life and Work, I said that Carole Angier explains Jean Rhys's life and personality mainly in psychological terms. She does mention witches and magic and the terrible draining effect that Jean Rhys had on people, but she leaves these topics mostly unexplored and unexplained. 

This article has more to say about these sinister elements, and from an alternative perspective.

More about witches 
Jean Rhys's witchlike personality is something that she shared with other writers: Stella Benson for example was described by Vera Brittain as being “delicate, witchlike, remote”, and descriptions of Ouida and Dorothy Parker in old age make them seem very similar to each other; they too grew to be very witchlike.

The writer Francis Wyndham, who encouraged Jean Rhys to work on Wide Sargasso Sea, said that he thought she was something of a – white – witch in that she was very alluring, she could attract any man she wanted and definitely had a charismatic power.

Her manner and appearance when young and her writing talent when older may seem enough to explain why people gave her so much money and help and endured her dreadful behaviour and lack of gratitude, but she may also have used a kind of mind power, something I think of as psychological black magic or unconscious witchcraft, to get what she wanted and to draw in, hold and exploit unprotected people.

Carole Angier tells us that Jean Rhys felt that she had never lived. This may seem odd in someone who on paper at least had quite a full life, but it makes sense if we accept the witch theory. Some people rarely engage with life or speak or act from their real selves: something timeless and unchangeable operates through them instead. This possible possession could  explain the failure to grow up: the real self has no opportunity to develop.

Similarly, such people are like black holes and bottomless pits: they never feel that they have enough no matter what. This makes sense if we understand that little or nothing gets through to nourish their real selves: the witch takes it all. 

Witches are traditionally said to sacrifice children; Jean Rhys's baby son died because of her thoughtlessness.