Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel: witches and writers

Elizabeth Taylor’s novel Angel has inspired two previous articles:

Angel’s Imagination covers the ways in which a very strong, active imagination can be a liability in everyday life.

Angel’s Life and Personality describes Angel and her life mainly in modern-day, this-world terms.

Much of Angel is familiar not only because I have read the biographies of Ouida and Marie Corelli that were the source of some of the material in Elizabeth Taylor’s novel, but also because it reminds me of what I have read, and sometimes written, about other people of interest.

Angel Deverell has many characteristics and events in her life in common with both fictional witches and real-life creative writers.

Angel and some fictional witches

I had read only a few pages of the book when Diana Wynne Jones’s young witch Gwendolen Chant came to mind. They have selfishness, an abrupt manner and single-mindedness in common. Gwendolen wants to rule the world; Angel wants to dominate the world.

There is a scene in Angel where she visits her publisher at his home; she ignores his wife. This reminds me of something I quoted about C. S. Lewis’s witch Jadis in the article about Gwendolen Chant: 

“In Charn she [Jadis] had taken no notice of Polly (till the very end) because Digory was the one she wanted to make use of. Now that she had Uncle Andrew, she took no notice of Digory. I expect most witches are like that. They are not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical." 
From The Magician’s Nephew

Both Gwendolen and Angel are quick to take offence and become furious when thwarted. Both hate to see others in possession of things they want for themselves. Both are outraged when they don’t get the recognition they think they deserve.

Neither girl is interested in academic achievement; they just concentrate on their one obsession to the exclusion of everything else, with Angel exercising her imagination and Gwendolen her magical powers.

Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel: her life and personality

Angel Deverell is the main character in Elizabeth Taylor’s novel Angel.  She has provided much more article material than I was expecting. After describing how she lives in her imagination rather than in the real world, we will now cover something of her life, personality and behaviour.

We left Angel at the point where her lies have been exposed and she escapes into illness and her imagination.

Angel Deverell becomes a romance writer

When her mother confronts her, Angel faces blankness and despair and longs for death, seeing no other way out.

When certain people feel that all avenues are closed and cry out on the inside for a miraculous deliverance, something may hear them and come to their rescue, offering what seems like a possible way out…for a price. It may even be that the avenues were deliberately closed, so that the victim chooses the path that they were intended to take all along.

Angel remembers something that for once made her feel happy: it was when she wrote an essay. She decides to write a book. It comes easily: the words flow effortlessly because she just gets some of her fantasies down on paper. Angel’s imaginings are all very visual, pictures seen in the mind’s eye. The words and narrative are not important to her.

Angel has never grieved over any human beings and doesn’t care that a neighbour’s daughter might be dying, but she cries over the funeral she writes about. Seeing real life as unreal, treating the inner world as the real world and the outer world as just a dream is yet another occupational hazard for people with very strong imaginations and unsatisfactory lives.

Angel refuses to return to school; she won’t look for work either: she disdains the suggestion that she could get an office job. She will write books and become rich and famous!

Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel: her imagination

I first heard about Elizabeth Taylor’s novel Angel when it turned up in the results of a Google Search for “Marie Corelli”. 

I had never read any of Taylor’s books, but I got a copy from my library after reading in reviews that Angel was based in part on the lives of the Victorian romance writers Marie Corelli and Ouida. I had read biographies of both of these best-selling writers and was curious to see how much of their biographical material had been used in Angel.

Much of the book is very familiar; I recognised many elements from the biographies. Angel Deverell, the main character, is obviously a composite of Marie Corelli and Ouida. Some of the descriptions of her personality, behaviour and events in her life were taken directly from the biographies.

Angel Deverell is a classic textbook case. She is a type of person who appears in the human race from time to time. I see them as a kind of witch. They may get what they wish for, but the price may be very high and it may all turn to dust and ashes.

Reading about Marie Corelli’s, Ouida’s and now Angel’s life has confirmed some of my ideas about sinister unseen influences that might be at work in people’s lives. There is a lot of material of interest in the book; it will take more than one article to cover it.

Angel Deverell and the dangers of too much imagination

We first meet Angel when she is a schoolgirl of 15. Her colouring is striking, but she is not beautiful. She is not very good at her lessons either, although she can fool people who know much less than she does into thinking that she is a good student.

The only attribute Angel has that is above average is her imagination, and she uses it all the time. It plays a much greater part in her life than her senses do. To Angel, her experiences are a makeshift substitute for her imagination.

She concentrates very hard and visualises her ideal life, one of nobility, glamour and splendour, very clearly. She daydreams whenever she can, as she dislikes the people around her and the environment she lives in. She wants, and feels entitled to, something much better.

The Gap in the Curtain: John Buchan nails it once again

The Gap in the Curtain is not one of John Buchan’s best-known works. It is not a story of excitement and adventure either: no thriller, it has a supernatural or paranormal theme and has been described as borderline science fiction. 

The Gap in the Curtain features the lawyer Sir Edward Leithen, another of Buchan’s heroes and narrator of the story, and Professor August Moe, a brilliant physicist and mathematician. 

The story starts with a dinner party. Leithen, who is extremely tired from overworking and close to the end of his tether, had been in two minds about accepting the invitation. He feels a little better when he notices that several other guests around the table are not looking too good either: they seem nervous, under the weather, ill, tired or even exhausted:

“I was free to look about me. Suddenly I got a queer impression. A dividing line seemed to zigzag in and out among us, separating the vital from the devitalised. There was a steady cackle of talk, but I felt that there were silent spaces in it. Most of the people were cheerful, eupeptic souls who were enjoying life... But I realised that there were people here who were as much at odds with life as myself...”

Being positive can occasionally backfire

I have learned from experience that our inner state often determines our experiences, so we can definitely change our lives for the better on the outside by first changing ourselves for the better on the inside.

I have given examples of how we can be our own worst enemies; I have also stated that distress signals can attract predators.

We benefit from being calm and positive; good feelings often boost our immune systems and act as a protection - except when it all backfires, as happened to me recently although in a very small way.

I went to collect something that I had ordered and paid for online. I had visited this store many times in the past, and always found the service fast and good, even at Christmas.

On this occasion, I stood at the collection desk and waited and waited for someone to come. I got the impression that I was being overlooked deliberately.  I could see that the place was busy. Many people were waiting to order and pay at the other desks; I guessed that taking more money takes priority over dealing with people who have already paid.

I reminded myself that it was warm inside and that I was not in a hurry. I knew it was important not to sound angry or self-pitying, so when someone eventually came to help, instead of saying anything about being ignored I just said calmly and pleasantly that I had been wondering whether I had gone invisible as no one had come for a long time.

The assistant, a young man, immediately said, “That’s because you look so contented”!

I was stunned, but it made sense. They probably learn to recognise the sort of people who will get angry and make scenes or go online and post complaints and bad reviews.

I have learned to save it for the big one and not get upset by minor inconveniences; I was pleased to get such positive feedback for my attempts to improve my inner state.

Today is the 80th Anniversary of Rudyard Kipling’s death

Rudyard Kipling died on January 18th 1936, in hospital in London, not long after his 70th birthday. Incidentally, January 18th is also the date on which Kipling got married – in 1892.

He might have lived longer if the source of his suffering and illness had been correctly diagnosed and suitably treated much earlier.

I was amused to read that Rudyard Kipling's death was prematurely reported in a magazine to which he immediately wrote, "I've just read that I am dead. Don't forget to delete me from your list of subscribers."

King George V, who was also born in 1865 and who was a personal friend of Kipling’s, died two days later, on 20th January 1936. He too might have lived longer, but perhaps by a few hours only, if he had not received a certain treatment: his death was deliberately speeded up with a lethal injection from his doctor so that the announcement could appear in the morning papers.

Life on Planet Earth: why is it so awful?

This world seems to some of us a terrible place to have to live in. Life often seems like one long prison sentence with torture thrown in. To thinking and aware people, the majority of the human race may seem pretty horrible; we may not come out too well if we evaluate ourselves and our own lives either.

There is a fine line between being realistic and being negative and defeatist. It is positive to face reality and ask whether the dice are loaded against us so we and our efforts to make our lives and the world a better place are doomed and we are just emptying our resources into a bottomless pit. Why is life on Planet Earth so painful, damaging, dangerous and disillusioning for many of us?

People have speculated about this for millennia, and many philosophies and ideologies, not to mention spin doctors for various religions, offer explanations for why this should be. The proponents of these theories make a good case for them, although some advocates present speculation as established fact and others appear to be trying to defend the indefensible.

Here are a few summaries of some intriguing theories:

·  The earth is one big lunatic asylum. We could certainly be forgiven for thinking so!

·  The earth is a quarantine area, isolated to protect the rest of the Solar System from being infected with our evils – sins such as selfishness, ambition and greed. I first came across this one in C. S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet.

·    The earth is a prison planet, a holding area for the scum of the galaxy. It is like an un-policed, no-go area. We are all doing time here, and we deserve what we get. This is almost comforting in a way: better deserved suffering than undeserved.

·   The earth is one big remedial school, where we all have many lessons to learn before we are fit for purpose. The pupils are in classes where they will learn lessons suitable for their developmental levels, and some people are here as teachers, reporters or inspectors. This would explain why the human race as a whole never seems to learn from experience: it is always a new intake as the graduates have incarnated elsewhere. To me, this theory covers some of it but not everything. It is not paranoid enough for my liking, and it is possible to be too positive and gloss over inconvenient truths.

·   This world is, quite literally, Hell. It was created and is ruled over by Satan. I first learned about this one when reading about the beliefs of the Cathars. Some of them thought that bringing children into this world was wrong. The idea that it is cruel and selfish, evil even, to bring children into this world to suffer resonates with me.

·   The human race is fallen: we came from the angels but have turned to evil.

·    The human race is still very animalistic: we evolved from ape-like creatures and have a long way to go.