The mystery of the most popular posts

Blogger has some features that provide useful information to blog owners and blog readers.

One of these is the Popular Posts widget. I have configured it to display thumbnails of the top ten posts in descending order of the number of all-time views that they have had.

I monitor the Popular Posts to check for changes: some entries move up, some move down, some appear, some disappear and some of the latter group re-appear. 

It will obviously take a while before the more recent posts build up enough views to qualify for inclusion; I would expect the list to consist of the oldest posts, but it contains some relative newcomers.

The top two positions have always been held by the article about Princess Margaret and the one about Maria Callas and the Duchess of Windsor. This is not really surprising: royals and celebrities are of interest to a great many people.

It is completely unexpected but very gratifying to see two Curse or Coincidence articles in the list: they are much more representative of this blog than the royal posts are. I do very much wonder though why the posts about the poet and scholar Kathleen Raine and the Shropshire novelist Mary Webb have made it into the top ten rather then the one about the Brontë family.

I have been wondering for years why the article on Aryan Supremacy has always been popular enough to qualify! 

The article about Rudyard Kipling's New Year Resolutions has been moving steadily upwards and is currently in sixth position. This seems strange to me: it is not one of the oldest posts, and I would not have expected it to be anything like so popular. 

The article about Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and the Isle of Wight appeared in the list for the first time recently. It is another mystery why this particular article should have suddenly attracted so many readers.

The two Kipling articles have risen through the ranks at the expense of Nicholas Stuart Gray's named witches; all three have made the top ten in the past, but currently only one remains. 

More about Leslie Charteris's Saint books

The previous article about Leslie Charteris's Saint books goes into detail about what made these books so attractive to me when I first encountered them.  

Such articles are often part of the Defence Against the Dark Arts series, but there are some aspects of the Saint books that disqualify them: there is more to them than just exciting adventures and harmless humour, and it isn't all good.  

This article mentions a few more of the attractions and covers some of the negative elements.

Passive education
Judging by the effect that they had on me, the Saint books probably educated many of their readers.  Although I didn't appreciate this at the time, I now realise that the large amount of background information that I passively absorbed helped to expand my horizons and increase my geographical and general knowledge. I learned something about the luxury lifestyles of the very rich for example, including the names of some elite hotels and expensive cigars! 

The Saint and London
Although they didn't meant much to me when I first read the books, I particularly like the references to London streets, venues and other features that some of them contain. Leslie Charteris must have known the city well, and the details that he gives add interest and authenticity to his stories. 

One London street reference comes literally very close to home. I was delighted to see the name of the rather obscure little side street where I now live mentioned in one story: the Saint walks down it to get something to eat, and meets his old adversary Chief Inspector Teal! I wonder whether Leslie Charteris actually visited my street in person.

There are many references to London taxi cabs in the Saint stories:

Temptation scenes in Jonathan Stroud’s Creeping Shadow

In the article about two temptation scenes in Jonathan Stroud's Lockwood & Co. books, people are advised to beware of anyone who tries to influence them by telling them that they are cut out for better things and enlist them by tempting them with the offer of a powerful position. 

The tempters offer whatever they think will work: instead of or in addition to power they might offer money or secret knowledge for example, or they may tell their victims that they will get a chance to help others or have better opportunities to show what they can do.

In these situations it is essential to think about what might be in it for the tempters and what their underlying motives are. It is also important to prepare for the worst after rejecting the tempters' offers: saying 'no' is asking for trouble. All hell may even break loose! 

The behaviour of Penelope Fittes, glamorous head of the great Fittes Agency and a major character in the books, towards Lucy Carlyle and her fellow members of the Lockwood & Co. Agency provides a good illustration of these points. 

After the first, unsuccessful, temptation of Lucy Carlyle, Penelope Fittes becomes increasingly determined to get what she wants from Lucy and her colleagues. This article gives some details of the attempts she makes in The Creeping Shadow, the fourth book in the Lockwood series, to manipulate the young agents and gain control of Lockwood & Co. 

Penelope Fittes get to work
After her agent fails to tempt Lucy into working for her,  Penelope Fittes gets on the case herself. 

At the start of The Creeping Shadow, Lucy has left Lockwood & Co. to work as a freelance psychical investigation agent. She has not seen her old colleagues for several months, but that soon changes.

Penelope Fittes, who has been monitoring the activities of  Lockwood & Co., offers a big, difficult and dangerous ghost-hunting assignment to Anthony Lockwood, who persuades Lucy to work with him on the case. 

Lucy is rather suspicious of Penelope Fittes' motives: after all, she has a huge number of her own Fittes agents at her disposal so why would she want to involve Lockwood & Co? Lucy is quite right to distrust Penelope, but she realises that this assignment would be good publicity for her and she wants to help her old colleagues out so she puts her doubts aside and decides to take on the job. 

She goes with the others to Fittes House for a briefing. Penelope Fittes tells Anthony Lockwood that they can do great things together in the future. She also flatters Lucy, revealing that she asked for her specifically: she had told Anthony Lockwood that he would get the commission only if he could persuade Lucy to come back and work for him. 

Something about Leslie Charteris's Saint books

The books that I first read when very young fall into two main categories: those that have stayed with me throughout the years and those that I forgot all about until I started doing some archaeological digs in my memory in the hope of finding some more material for articles.

Low Notes on a High Level by J. B. Priestley was one such deeply buried book, and Anthony Armstrong's Prune's Progress was another. Lifting them out into the light exposed memories of some equally entertaining books that I hadn't thought about for decades: Leslie Charteris's Saint stories. 

I remembered how much I enjoyed reading these books as a child; I decided to renew my acquaintance with them and perhaps produce an article if I found anything to comment on.

The attractions of the Saint books
It seemed strange at first that I used to read these books so avidly as they were not in any of the categories that I liked best: they were not fantasy or science fiction, they were not children's classics and they didn't have a historical background. They didn't have much in the way of my idea of fascinating new information, and they didn't have much fuel for my imagination either. 

I started to recall some of the details and realised that the main attractions of the books were the daredevil personality, sophisticated lifestyle and exciting adventures of Leslie Charteris's hero Simon Templar, whose nickname is 'The Saint', and the – often rather juvenile – humour.

It was the people rather than the plots and backgrounds that most appealed to me, and I found the witticisms and Americanisms very funny. 

The Saint and some other characters
The Saint has a swashbuckling, buccaneering personality. He is strong, fearless and audacious; he is bold and brave, light hearted and carefree. He has nerves of steel; he is irrepressible; he is extremely resourceful; he is rarely at a loss and has a witty remark for every occasion. He has a strong sixth sense or intuition that serves him very well.

The Saint's appearance is elegant and immaculate. He has a privileged lifestyle, travels a lot and is always having exciting adventures and fighting villains, whom he calls 'the Ungodly'.

He resembles a Rafael Sabatini hero in some ways, which partly explains his appeal.

Charles Lamb's sad words about the New Year

There are two very promising titles among the works of the poet and essayist Charles Lamb: Satan in Search of a Wife and Witches, and Other Night-Fears. However, he is of interest here because of some topical quotations. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a poem about the bells that ring in the New Year.

Charles Lamb too had something to say about bells and the New Year:

“Of all sound of all bells… most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.“

This quotation comes from a rather depressing essay about the past and the future called New Year's Eve, which was published in the London Magazine on January 1st 1821. 

Charles Lamb also said that New Year's Day is every man's birthday and that -

“No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.”

This is the time of year when we think about people who have gone for ever. This even more depressing quotation is from Charles Lamb's best-known poem The Old Familiar Faces:

“How some they have died, and some they have left me,

And some are taken from me; all are departed -
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces."

Two temptation scenes in Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood books

This article has something to say about what might be called the temptation of Lucy Carlyle, a major character in Jonathan Stroud's Lockwood & Co. books, by a whited sepulchre of a woman who goes by the name of Penelope Fittes.

The two featured temptation scenes are of particular interest because there are similar scenes in other books that I like, many of which have previously been featured or mentioned on here.

Penelope Fittes is head of the Fittes Agency, the oldest and biggest psychical detection agency; she is one of the most powerful and influential people in the country.

She is a very glamorous and elegant businesswoman. At first she appears to be a good person and well disposed towards Anthony Lockwood and his colleagues, but she is not what she seems. She is gradually revealed to be a ruthless exploiter and destroyer of people, living and dead. She has many dark secrets; she has much blood on her hands.

The first temptation of Lucy Carlyle
In The Whispering Skull, the second book in the series, a member of the Fittes Agency flatters Lucy Carlyle and tries to lure her away from Lockwood & Co.: 

“Ms. Carlyle, you’re clearly the most intelligent of your team. And you’ve some Talent, too, if everything I’ve heard is true. Surely you don’t want to hang around with these losers any longer. You’ve got a career to think of. I know you had an interview with Fittes a while ago; I know they failed you, but in my opinion”— he smiled again— “they made a bad mistake. Now, I have a little influence within the organization. I can pull strings, get you a position within the company, just think: instead of eking out a living here, you could be at Fittes House, with all its power at your disposal.”

This makes Lucy very angry. She likes her life as an employee of the Lockwood Agency and she likes her colleagues Anthony Lockwood and George Cubbins, who are in any case very far from being losers. She tells her tempter that she is quite happy where she is.

This offer may seem relatively harmless if rather patronising: the Fittes man recognises talent when he sees it and just wants to recruit a good person for his team. However, it is Penelope Fittes who is behind this and further attempts to recruit Lucy: she wants to make use of her gifts, and whatever she wants she is determined to get.

A few words about Frances Hodgson Burnett on her birthday

The writer Frances Hodgson Burnett was born on this day, November 24th, in 1849. 

She was briefly mentioned in the article that lists some more Sagittarian writers. I read her three most popular children's books when I was very young and quite liked The Secret Garden and The Little Princess, but I knew almost nothing about her. After learning that she was interested in metaphysical matters, I put an investigation of her life on my to-do list.

I have looked again at the children's books and trawled through some biographical material. I found a lot of fairly interesting information about Frances Hodgson Burnett's life, some of it unexpected and some of it depressing. 

Where this blog is concerned, the results of the investigation to date are rather disappointing. Unlike fellow Sagittarian L. M. Montgomery, whose books, journals and letters are packed with article-inspiring material, Frances Hodgson Burnett provides very little that resonates or that I want to quote and comment on.

There is nothing new about her being different from the people around her as a child or being an avid reader and an inventor of exciting adventure stories from an early age. She was not the only writer to find books and the products of her imagination better than real life either.

Wanting to have something to show for my efforts, I selected enough material for a short article. It consists mainly of some elements that Frances Hodgson Burnett had in common with L. M. Montgomery.

Frances Hodgson Burnett and L. M. Montgomery

As might be expected, both Frances Hodgson Burnett and L. M. Montgomery were voracious and compulsive readers from an early age.

Frances Hodgson Burnett has been described as a writing machine; L. M. Montgomery felt compelled to write and was also very prolific. 

Both writers were profoundly influenced by works of the Brontës. There are some parallels to both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights in Frances Hodgson Burnett's Secret Garden for example.

Both writers had their first stories published when they were still teenagers.

Both writers became the main breadwinner in their families; in Frances Hodgson Burnett's case this started at the age of 18, when she began to make money from writing.