Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Reservoir Slide ShowThe Reservoir Slide Show

This novel is based on an actual court case, “T.J. Cluverius v. the Commonwealth.” A paragraph in a book on Richmond history got me digging deeper. I found copious newsprint dedicated to what became a sensational trial; it was wonderfully detailed, but it gave no clear idea of who the participants were, where they had come from, and why they ended up doing what they did.
I continued to dig up as much as I could about the case, while doing general research on the period. Though most of Richmond’s early buildings have fallen to the wrecking ball, a good sample from various periods remains. Finding Lillian’s grave early on—which took more effort than I’d thought it would—gave me a tangible link to the story and made me feel committed to telling it with as much passion and honesty as I could.
I soon realized that I was going to have to imagine most of the story. By this point I felt so connected to these long-dead people that I thought I owed it to them to get it right, which in fictional terms meant that the story would have to rise up out of the facts like a holographic image from a flat screen.
But the question remained; what was the story? I was lucky in that the events of the case suggested a rough plot line, as all interesting court cases do. There was a real Tommie, Lillian, Willie, Jane Tunstall, Richardson, a shadowy character on whom Nola was based, and so on. In my research I came across key pieces of evidence, carefully preserved for more than a century: letters, photographs, and, most interesting of all, a watch-key and a torn note. I integrated much of this into the story, though not always exactly as it appeared in the actual case.
While I have done my best to keep the novel true to its historical period, I have tailored the facts to suit the story’s dramatic purposes. Most of the pre- and post-trial story is of my own creation. For the trial itself I borrowed freely from the transcripts, employing the standard writer’s tricks of cutting, adding, and moving. Time was collapsed in some places—Tommie, for instance, spent much longer in jail than he does in the novel; the lawyers are composites and minor characters have been added as necessary; events such as Hatcher’s visits were filled out; and so forth. The details of the case, then, were the fence posts on which I hung the story. The tragic love triangle at its heart was my invention, but it was suggested by the facts.
As to Tommie’s guilt, the record remains tantalizingly unclear. One can pore through pages of material and be convinced one way, then sift some more another day and completely change one’s mind.



Friday, June 18, 2010

The Murder of Lillian Madison, 1885

Friday the 13th, and a murderous lawyer strolls the streets of what is now VCU with his pregnant victim: the murder of Lillian Madison by her cousin, Thomas Cluverius, in 1885.

At twenty minutes to ten on the cold night of Friday, March 13, 1885, one of Richmond’s horse-drawn streetcars drew up to the intersection of what is now Main and N. Harrison Streets (in 1885 Harrison was named Reservoir Street).  The “tughorse” trolley, as it called, stopped on the corner and two people emerged into a light dusting of snow: Thomas J. Cluverius, a lawyer from King and Queen County, and Lillian Madison, his cousin.  




The blue car in this photograph is where Cluverius and Madison left the streetcar and walked south toward the Marshall Reservoir.

The two turned south and walked down the left side of
Reservoir Street
, passing what is now the School of Education and the Life Science building.  Hurrying because of the cold down the same sidewalk was Dr. Thomas Stratton, who overtook the pair.  The short woman said nothing, but the man turned suddenly toward Stratton and asked if this was the way to Marshall Reservoir.  Stratton said it was, and as he turned on
Cary Street
, Stratton watched the pair continue on toward the reservoir, and as it turned out, into infamy.   Within an hour the woman would be dead by the hands of the man walking with her, provoking one of the most famous Richmond murder cases of its time.



Dr. Stratton testified that he encountered Cluverius and Madison on this stretch of N. Harrison Street as the two walked to the Marshall Reservoir.

Cluverius was in trouble, and his entire life and respectability was on the point of being compromised by the woman beside him.  Lillian Madison was not only his cousin, but was eight months pregnant with his child.  The pair had had slept together the previous summer at her grandfather’s home and rendezvoused in hotels in the city on other occasions.  Madison had taken a job as a tutor in Bath County, hiding her condition, and agreed to meet her “Cousin Tommy” in Richmond, presumably to find an abortionist who could rid both of them of the increasingly urgent problem of her pregnancy. 

Thomas Cluverius and his cousin, Lillian Madison

The two cousins spent the day roaming the city under the direction of Cluverius, who although from rural King and Queen was familiar with the ways of the big city and futilely searching for someone to perform the abortion.  Witnesses later testified that the two were seen in places as varied as bars and later, a nail factory on Belle Isle.  Understandably, no one was willing at that late date in the pregnancy to assist the increasingly frantic pair. 

Cluverius was in an untenable position: a illegitimate child would ruin his reputation and his young law career which he had just established after graduating from Richmond College (then located in what is now the city's Fan District, the school would later move west into Henrico and become known as the University of Richmond).  It would also bring shame to his family and especially his aunt, Jane Tunstall, who took Cluverius into her home and paid for his education.  The fact the mother of his child was his cousin and related to Mrs. Tunstall only made matters worse.  Cluverius must have felt he had to do something to escape this situation, and drastic action was becoming the only course.


Much of the evidence from Cluverius’ murder trial still exists in the archives of the Library of Virginia, including this poignant note from Madison to Cluverius.  Never delivered, and later torn up by Madison and dropped in her hotel trash can, it reads, “I will be there as soon as possible so do wait for me.”

Madison, for her part, apparently loved her cousin or at least trusted him to get her out of her dilemma.  Perhaps she thought her worldlier lover and relative, well versed in the wicked ways of Richmond, could provide a solution and she could soon return to Bath County to recover.  Perhaps Cluverius told his cousin that they would “meet a man” at the Marshall Reservoir.  It seems the only explanation as to why she would accompany him in the cold and snow all the way out to that unlikely destination in what was then considered the far western reaches of the city.  The fact she would walk half a mile on a snowy and cold March night while so very pregnant speaks volumes about her desperation, and the trust she placed in her cousin, Tommy.

 Map showing location of the Marshall Reservoir, Reservoir Street
(now Harrison) and
Beverly Street
 (now
Idlewood Ave.
).

As Cluverius and Madison continued south, the houses became fewer along
Reservoir Street
.  They passed over what is now the Downtown Expressway.  To their left, above the leafless trees of Hollywood Cemetery, the stone pyramid of the Confederate monument was silhouetted against low clouds, reflecting the gas lights of downtown Richmond.  Beyond the pyramid, houselights could be glimpsed, and the smell of wood smoke was in the air from the chimneys of Oregon Hill that spoke of snug homes, warmth, and security.  In contrast, the black hunk of the earthen walls of the reservoir, lightly dusted with snow, loomed up in the distance, cheerless, dark, and foreboding. 

Marshall Reservoir, constructed in the early 1800s, was Richmond’s first municipal water source and still in use in 1885.  The reservoir and the surrounding area would have been familiar to Cluverius as it stood on the path used by Richmond College students on their way to swimming and fishing in the James River.  The facility consisted of a large rectangular brick-lined impoundment of water several hundred feet on each side, a keeper’s house, and a small formal garden beside the street and a gravel path along the top of the earth walls.  Marshall Reservoir stood on the small rise west of Hollywood Cemetery now occupied by Clarke Springs Elementary School, and was demolished in 1934.
 
Cluverius probably had to give Madison his arm to help her up the embankment, and the two then walked for some distance down the gravel path beside the still, black water of the reservoir.  His entire relationship with his young cousin had led inexorably to this night, and to this place.  Perhaps as other avenues had been eliminated and his options closed on him, one by one, the young lawyer had imagined that Madison’s suicide was his only way out of this predicament.  Since she didn’t seem inclined to do away with herself, the situation had to be engineered for her.  The idea that she would travel from Bath County to Richmond just to fling herself in the municipal reservoir in the middle of the night seemed improbable, but for Cluverius there was no time to develop a more sophisticated plan.

Later analysis of the two sets of tracks showed a struggle had taken place between the young man and the diminutive (she was less than five feet tall) and heavily pregnant girl on the gravel path at the top of the reservoir wall.  Cluverius punched Madison in the side of her head with his fist, and she fell backward, down the embankment and into the water, where a combination of her weakened and pregnant condition and the blow to the head killed her.  When her body was later examined, no water was in Madison’s lungs, but the mud from the bottom of the reservoir was found clenched in her fists.  The murderer was probably well on his way away from the scene before the ripples in the otherwise flat, onyx-colored cold water of the reservoir settled around the floating body of Lillian Madison, and were once again quiet.

 This was where Cluverius lived with his aunt and where police officers
from Richmond arrested him six days after the murder of Lillian Madison.


Fleeing Richmond and leaving many clues behind, Cluverius returned to his aunt’s home at the tiny crossroads of Little Plymouth in King and Queen County.  It was here, at his aunt’s house, “
Cedar Lane
,” that police officers from Richmond arrested the young lawyer, put him in a carriage, and delivered Cluverius to the Richmond Jail in Shockoe Bottom.  

 The Richmond Jail, where Cluverius was held for two years during his trials for the murder of Lillian Madison.  The site of the jail is now buried under Interstate 95 where it runs between downtown Richmond and Shockoe Bottom.

Throughout the city’s history, Richmond has consistently consigned certain types of activities to the Bottom, and before the Civil War the area had been home to the slave trading industry, a slave cemetery, as well as the municipal jail.  The jail was an ugly and windowless collection of various building stages, which began in the early 1800s.  It stood on
Marshall Street
, on the floor of the valley and tucked against the steep hill below the Medical College of Virginia (now VCU Medical Center).

The scene of Cluverius’ trial was the
Hustings Court
 in the temporary
 Richmond City Hall.  It was the same low building in this photograph marked
“Home Office – Life Insurance Company of Virginia,”
on the block between
Broad Street
 and
Capitol Square
.

Cluverius’ trial for murder began in the
Hustings Court
, located in a temporary City Hall.  Richmond was without a municipal headquarters ever since the elegant 1818 City Hall was demolished in 1874.  The resulting empty lot was used for public events until construction began there in 1887 on what we today know as “Old City Hall.”  In the meantime, the City used a low, one-story building at
911 East Broad Street
, which housed the
Hustings Court
.



A Richmond Dispatch article includes a view of
the scene of the murder - click here to view the newspaper.
Throughout his trial, Cluverius remained absolutely implacable, always appearing polite and calm and consistently wearing the same gray suit to court.  The trial with its stoic murder and the doomed and pregnant victim drew national attention, and details of the trial received coverage in newspapers across America.  The evidence was overwhelming, and Cluverius was convicted of the murder of Lillian Madison.  Several appeals were filed over the following months, but the conviction was upheld despite a change in Virginia law after his trial which would have allowed Cluverius to testify in his own defense.  

The date of the execution was set, probably much to the disbelief of Cluverius.  Fresh from law school, he may have had such an abiding faith in the law that, if properly presented and skillfully managed, it could free him despite the blood on his hands.  He never confessed, never broke, never faltered throughout.  Indeed, by the time his trial and various appeals were complete, his aunt, brother, and other family members had all perjured themselves in his defense, so a confession from Cluverius would subject those who tried so hard to save him to prosecution (Mrs. Tunstall, the aunt, also paid for her nephew’s legal expenses).  As with his disastrous relationship with Madison, fate seemed to hold the young man firmly in its grip as he drew inexorably nearer the gallows.

The rear of the Richmond jail in Shockoe Bottom, showing the
yard where Cluverius was executed January 14, 1887.


Because of the amphitheater-like topography of Shockoe Bottom, hundreds if not thousands of people witnessed the hanging of Thomas Cluverius on a scaffold constructed behind the Richmond jail on January 14, 1887.  In addition to those who stood on rooftops and looked down on the scene from the hillsides, a large crowd was admitted to the jail yard.  A great roar went out from the throng when Cluverius was brought outside into the winter sunshine of Shockoe Valley.  Mounting the scaffold, he said little other than a few words to his spiritual advisor.  A reporter standing nearby said Cluverius’ face was bright red with shame and fear as a black hood was placed over his head.  





From the Daily Times of Richmond, Jan. 15, 1887 - Read the article HERE.

Unfortunately for the condemned man, the Sheriff decided to use an innovative braided silk rope that did not break Cluverius’ neck on the drop, as was intended.  Instead, the bungee cord-like rope stretched and Cluverius slowly strangled to death.  A deputy had the uncomfortable duty of mounting the scaffold, putting a foot on each side of the trap and pulling the condemned man up a few feet as Cluverius thrashed about, since his feet were by then practically touching the ground.

This large magnolia tree marks the Tunstall family plot behind their former
house in King and Queen County and is the burial place of Thomas Cluverius.


Both the murderer and victim were believed to have been buried in unmarked graves due to the ignominy of their fates.  This isn’t true.  Cluverius’ body was claimed by his brother and returned to his aunt’s home in King and Queen County where he was arrested almost two years before, and buried in a family plot in the field behind the house.  Today, no marker other than a small cast-iron fence remains in the Tunstall burying ground, but an enormous magnolia tree guards the spot.  When that tree finally falls, the graves of one of Richmond’s most famous murderers and the anguished aunt who tried so hard to raise, educate, and defend him will probably vanish under the plow.


The grave of Lillian Madison in Richmond’s Oakwood Cemetery.

Lillian Madison’s relatives buried her in Richmond, in Oakwood Cemetery.  The body of her unborn son, removed during autopsy, was placed in the coffin beside her.  Today, a group of walnut trees shade the Madison plot in a quiet corner of the old cemetery, and as the decades roll by, lush moss threatens to overtake the stone.  The soft white marble of her grave marker has weathered until it has become hard to read the dread date of her death on March 13, 1885. Likewise, the seasons are slowly erasing the name of the murdered girl which was once on the lips of so many people in Richmond, and which was spoken in such tones of sympathy and horror at her fate.

[Read more about the murder at the Chronicling America site which has digital versions of several Virginia  newspapers. Here is an article about the murder from the Shenadoah Herald, March 27, 1885 - the article is entitled "A Horrible Tragedy."]


- Selden Richardson
Posted by Ray Bonis -- T. Tyler Potterfield -- Selden Richardson. at 9:34 AM
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Monday, July 4, 2011

POSSESSION A S BYATT

THIS IS THE SECOND BOOK  I AM READING BY AS BYATT AND HAVING TROUBLE KEEPING INTEREST BUT WILL FINISH..



CHAPTER 1
September 1986: Roland Michell (Roland) is a 29 y/o literary researcher, a Ph.D. in literature from Prince Albert College in 1978.  He is researching Randolph Henry Ash (RHA), a noteworthy though fictitious Victorian poet, at the London Library.  Ash was the subject of his dissertation.  He works part-time for the noted Ash scholar James Blackadder (JB) in JB's "Ash Factory" at the British Museum.  JB, who is a Scot, has been editing the poet's Complete Works since 1951.  Roland is looking for sources to Ash's  poem Garden of Prosperpina [Persephone].


The Garden of Prosperine
by Algernon Charles Swinburne Here, where the world is quiet,
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.
I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.
Here life has death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here.
No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes,
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.
Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated
Comes out of darkness morn.
Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.
Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves, she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.
She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.
There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.
We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
Today will die tomorrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.
Reading RHA's copy of Giambattista Vico's Principj di Scienza Nuova ["New Science", author lived 1668-1744], he comes across drafts of two previously unknown letters in RHA's handwriting addressed to an unnamed woman.  RHA refers to how she impressed him at the breakfast held at Crabb Robinson's [1777-1867], and how they seemed to understand each other and various current literary topics such as Hugo's play Iñez de Castro  and the essayist Richard Steele's tale of the Robinson Crusoe-like figure, Alexander Selkirk.  Roland infers the letters date after 1856, when RHA published Gods, Men and Heroes.  He decides to steal the letters and not mention them to JB for the time being.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Opens with a quotation from RHA's 1840 Icelandic-Nordic epic poem, Ragnarök.  In Norse mythology, Ragnarök (Old Norse "final destiny of the gods") is a series of future events, including a great battle foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdall, and Loki), the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water. Afterward, the world will resurface anew and fertile, the surviving and reborn gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors. Ragnarök is an important event in the Norse canon, and has been the subject of scholarly discourse and theory
Mortimer P. Cropper (MPC) is Trustee of the Stant Collection at Robert Dale Owen University in Harmony City, New Mexico, the curator of a large collection of RHA correspondence and memorabilia.  He is trying to possess all of RHA that he can.
Roland ponders the disappointments he has met in life, his meager existence and sense of failure.  He lives with Val, who calls him Mole.  They live frugally in a dumpy basement room, decorated with photos of paintings of RHA and reeking of cat urine from the landlady Mrs. Irving's flat above.  Val once wrote an essay on RHA, which led to an unjust charge that Roland had helped her.  Val earns most of the income and Roland is essentially living off her.  Val and Roland have a rather unhappy relationship--she is bitter about the menial work she performs.  He thinks of his more successful departmental rival, Fergus Wolff, and wonders who RHA was writing to.

Chapter 3

Roland goes to Bloomsbury, photocopies the letters.  He consults Crabb Robinson's diary--Crabb was a man who had known all the major literary figures of the day--at Dr. William's library.  He learns that in June 1858, RHA had met "Miss LaMotte" and "Miss Glover" for the first time at his breakfast party.  Miss LaMotte is the daughter of the writer of Mythologies, Isidore LaMotte. Back at the British Museum, JB, 54 y/o, works with his assistant Paola.  JB was asked to edit the Complete Poems and Plays of RHA in c. 1959, with support from Lord Ash, RHA's heir.  Roland tells him about the Vico, though not specifically about the letters he has stolen.  JB tells him about Isidore LaMotte, the author of Mythologies, an 1832 book about the legends of Bretagne (French, in English=Brittainy).  Miss LaMotte was the author of Last Things, various children's stories, and Tales Told in November.  He mentions Ellen Best Ash (EBA or Ellen), RHA's wife, who wrote a personal journal, and a single book called Helpmeets (about wives of great men such as Tennyson).
He encounters Fergus, who when asked tells him Isidore's daughter was named Christabel [Madeleine] LaMotte (CLM).  She also wrote the strange epic poem The Fairy Melusina in the 1860's, published it in the 1870's.  He describes its plot (p. 40), an old and oft-told tale about a woman who is half-human and half-snake.  Melusina married Raimondin, bears his children, but despite her warning he spies on her one day in her bath and discovers that she has the form of a serpent below the waist..  Fergus mentions that Dr. Maud Bailey, with whom he has had an affair, is an expert on CLM.  She runs a Women's Resource Centre in Lincoln [Lincolnshire is on the west coast, north of London].  The other expert is Prof. Leonora Stern from Tallahassee. 

CHAPTER 4

Opens with a quote from The Fairy Melusina.
Roland has already read some books about CLM.  CLM's grandparents Jean-Baptiste and Emilie LaMotte had fled the Terror of 1793 in France and escaped to England. Emilie's brother Raoul de Kercoz stayed behind to maintain the family manor Kernemet, in Brittainy, France.  Isidore was born in 1801, married Arabel Gumpert 1823. Their daughters were Sophie (born 1830, married Sir George Bailey of Seal Close in Lincolnshire) and Christabel (CLM, born 1825).  CLM had a small inheritance and lived with Blanche Glover (BG), who was also artistically inclined and who committed suicide by drowning in 1861.  After BG died, CLM went to live with her sister Sophie and wrote no more poetry, dying in 1890 at the age of 65.  
[There is much discussion throughout the novel exploring attitudes of feminists to the various women depicted including CLM and Ellen.  Blanche and CLM were assumed to be lesbians.]
Roland goes to visit Maud Bailey in Lincoln, at Lincoln University.  She is tall, cold, at times seeming hostile.  CLM had bequeathed her papers to her niece May Bailey (Maia Thomasine Bailey).  May married her first cousin and was Maud's GG GM, thus Maud is CLM's GGG niece (but see Chap 28).  She knows of no journal of CLM and of only a few letters, kept by Sir George Bailey at Seal Court, but he is hostile to literary research.
Roland mentions the letters he has stolen to Maud. She has found only one reference to RHA in CLM's letters, an 1869 note to William Rossetti referring somewhat hostilely to RHA's poem The Incarcerated Sorceress [is she CLM?].  They visit the Resource Centre.  
Roland reads from BG's journal about her homelife with CLM ("The Princess") starting in 1858, the breakfast at Crabb Robinson's with RHA, etc. BG painted "Christabel before Sir Leoline", a title referring to the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem Christabel, after which CLM is presumably named.  CLM had become exercised over a letter she received from RHA (one of those for which Roland has the draft).  CLM is finishing the poem The Glass Coffin (a fairy tale also told by the Grimm brothers).  BG describes a prowler (RHA?), and later CLM seems to be hiding something from her.
Roland shows Maud the 2 stolen letters, and she is intrigued to learn the possible connection with RHA--it would change Ash scholarship.  She puts up Roland for the night, gives him Tales for Innocents to read.  He reads tales about a Queen, and a shoemaker, and notes illustrations by BG.  The tales are derived from the Grimm brothers and from Ludwig Tieck.  A woman gives birth to a boy who is half-hedgehog.  Maud feels CLM dislikes children.  
Maud is a Norfolk Bailey, whereas Sophie LaMotte had married a Lincolnshire Bailey, two family groups which do not get along.  Maud recalls a poem she knew by CLM about the Cumaean Sibyl.  Maud had written a paper on "Marginal Beings and Liminal Poetry" [Liminal means at the limits of perception], and Roland notes a connection between RHA's incarcerated sorceress and CLM's In-Pace.  They discuss how they came to their current literary interests, their educations.  Maud offers to take him to the environs of Seal Court, where CLM lived out her last years.
Maud muses about her affair with Fergus.  Only in the privacy of the bathroom does she unwrap and let fall her lovely yellow hair--Fergus had challenged her to let it be seen uncovered.
Roland reads The Glass Coffin from Tales for Innocents. A tailor rescues a girl with long golden hair, trapped in a glass coffin...



Chapter 5

Maud and Roland visit the wolds (upland open country) of Lincolnshire.  They see Seal Court in the distance, the village Croysant le Wold, and the St . Etheldreda's church in whose yard CLM is buried.  He reads the tombstone for CLM, born 1825, died 1890.  The neglected gravesite was tended by Leonora the previous summer.
Walking up the hill, Roland rescues an elderly lady, Joan Bailey, whose wheelchair has become stuck in the mud.  She is wife of Sir George Bailey, who arrives soon after.  He is gruff and inhospitable, but Joan invites Maud and Roland into Seal Court and George acquiesces.  It is a decaying manor house, much of which is closed off, poorly heated and in poor repair, no longer provided with servants to help the elderly couple.  He is interested in horses and mentions Tommy Bailey, Maud's great-uncle, who rode the horse Copenhagen.  George's GG GF (also Sir George) planted the woodlands.  They try to make conversation, and Maud and Roland mention their interest in CLM.  Sir George disparages her and praises RHA.  Maud mentions CLM's description of the Seal Court winter garden.  George also disparages Leonora, who he ran off at gunpoint. Joan offers to show the two CLM's former room.
In CLM's room, Maud notices the dolls and recalls a CLM poem about "Dolly keeps a secret".  She deduces this may have been a clue and finds in dolly's cot packets of letters from RHA and CLM.  George takes the letters, and they return downstairs.  The foursome debates what to do next.  George wants to let dead bones lie still.  Joan reads the first letter, the final version of RHA's 1858 first introductory letter to CLM.  In addition to his letter to her, there is a packet of her responses to his letters.  CLM is not inclined to receive his visit...  They read the final letters.  CLM asks for her letters back, which RHA agrees to, though asking her not to destroy them.  George fears a scandal.  Maud and Roland work to convince George to let the letters be studied, but he is reluctant and wants advice.
Later, Maud and Roland worry that MPC will try to acquire these letters.  They agree to keep their existence secret for now.

Chapter 6

Humorous description of MPC's visit to an elderly lady, Mrs. Daisy Wapshott, who has a letter.  It is from RHA to Daisy's husband Rodney's mother Sophia, a "godchild" to RHA [apparently not CLM's sister], and it mentions ducks and drakes. MPC surreptitiously photographs it.   This is one of the few instances when RHA displayed any patience toward a child.  MPC offers to buy the letter for a handsome price.  He is flamboyant and drives a large black Mercedes.  
MPC contemplates the autobiography he may write.  His G GM Priscilla Penn Cropper received a rebuffing letter from RHA regarding her interest in the occult and spirit communications, etc.  He muses on the writings of RHA, including Ragnarök and the love poem sequence Ask to Embla.  MPC has written The Great Ventriloquist, RHA's biography.  He recalls RHA's visit to France with his new bride Ellen in 1848, to the Fontaine de Vaucluse and the source of the Sorgue (a site Petrarch is said to have lived at after the death of Laura [de Sade, in 1348], the lovely married woman with golden hair described in his sonnets).  
Like Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice, MPC believes Embla represents a real woman in RHA's life. He ponders Ellen's reluctance to marry RHA and her father's doubts about him--she was 36 when she married him.  He recalls how Victorian men turned to the underworld of prostitutes to satisfy their urges--did the prim Ellen satisfy the sensual RHA reflected in this poem, or did she hide a more passionate nature, or did RHA simply sublimate his desires?
MPC calls to set up a meeting with Miss Beatrice Nest Ph.D.


Chapter 7

Miss Beatrice Nest is like a large-breasted Fafnir, guarding her hoard of Ellen Best Ash's papers, which she has been charged with editing on the advice of her mentor, Professor Bengtsson.  Ellen wrote a journal, and Roland arrives ahead of MPC to view it.  Beatrice reluctantly allows him to.  Ellen had read The Fairy Melusina in 1872 and made an entry to this effect.  Beatrice mentions to MPC what Roland is researching, and MPC recalls a pale photo of CLM in the Stant collection.
Roland reads on, finds Ellen admiringly describing The Fairy Melusina as truly original, etc., an unexpected attitude regarding a woman who may have been RHA's mistress.  Ellen believes she has at least not prevented her husband's genius, even if she has not facilitated it.
Back home, Roland finds a letter from Joan Bailey permitting Maud and him to review the letters they hold.  Val arrives in a Porsche driven by Euan MacIntyre, a solicitor who has provided her work and is taking a fancy to her.

Chapter 8

Roland and Maud go over the letters in Sir George Bailey's cold library.  He is annoyed at Maud's terms--she will read CLM's letters and he will read RHA's.  RHA seems to have read Christabel's insect poems.  He seems to have been under stress.  
The individual letters are quoted.  CLM is concerned about their letters being seen by others.  RHA speaks of  her intelligence, the nature of poetry versus novels, her work The Drowned City (on the drowned City of Is/Ys, which Queen Dahud, the sorceress, ruled).  Maud explains this was a Breton legend like The Standing Stones.  
Back at her flat, Maud learns by letter that Leonora Stern is coming.  CLM's riddle about an Egg and her need for solitude is quoted.  Fergus has also written Maud, saying Roland is not in her class, wants to consult her archives about a "siege-paper" he wishes to write, asks if she has read Lacan [Jacques Lacan, a French Freudian psychoanalyst 1901-1981].  Leonora's letter refers to her interest in female imagery and CLM's lesbian sexuality in Melusina and Drowned City, of water, milk and amniotic fluid, etc. She wants Maud to present a paper to the Sapphic society.
Next day at Seal Court, she visits the winter garden which CLM had loved, sees no fish in the pond described by CLM.  It is snowing.  Maud and Roland are unable to return to town, and are invited to stay the night.  Joan speaks of Maud's beauty, but Roland mentions Val as his girlfriend.  They go upstairs, Maud is wary of Roland, undresses in the bathroom, he tries to look through the keyhole to see if it is occupied, she is startled by him--she has let down her hair (thus now undisguised, as in Melusina).

Chapter 9

CLM's story The Threshold is quoted. The Childe [youth of gentle birth] encounters three bonecracking whiteladies.  He chooses the 3rd, who has only a lead casket, and he will go with her.  The standing stones in the moor lead to a descending track...

Chapter 10

More of the letters between RHA and CLM are read by Roland and Maud.
RHA sends her a poem.  Comments about her metaphor of entrapment.  He wants to write a poem on insect life and the life of Jan Swammerdam [1637-1680, Dutch naturalist and microscopist, author of Historia Generalis Insectorum on the natural history and metamorphosis of insects, said in this novel to be the inventor of the microscope].  He speaks of her Fairy project.
CLM demurs, says she lives quietly, neither calls nor receives calls, has read all his poems.  His poem Ragnarök was the cause of a crisis in her simple religious faith, in making Holy Scripture like any other Wonder Tale.  She wants to write an epic poem.  She encloses 2 poems, "Metamorphosis" (about a butterfly) and "Psyche" (ants).
RHA speaks of his religious views as reflected in Ragnarök, of Odin as the Wanderer, etc.  He is not an atheist.  He encourages her to write her epic.
CLM is full of doubt, again asks him about Christianity, cites his Lazarus poem Déjà-vu or the Second Sight, speaks of séances at Mrs. Lees, ...
RHA is only sure of the life of the Imagination (like Keats).
CLM speaks again of Jesus, the poetry of the King James Bible, a lecture she attended on Spiritual Manifestations...  She wants him to leave her alone with her simple faith, or she will be a Lost Soul, her autonomy is threatened.  She ponders whether to ask him not to write again.
RHA is relieved she has not actually asked him not to write.  He asks about her Melusine epic.
CLM says she has been sick, as has Blanche, mentions her Dog Tray...  She tells how the Melusina project began, how her father told her the tale of Mélusine.  He had hoped to be a French Grimm.  The Druids, Menhirs, Dolmens, Dames Blanches (whiteladies).  Sophie had no interest in these things.  CLM had learned French, Latin, Greek, Breton, and German.  The nature of the fairy Melusine, her progeny...
RHA has nearly finished Swammerdam.  He wants to know why her father named her Christabel, was it after Coleridge's unfinished poem Christabel?  He wanted to hear from Coleridge how it ended (though he is now dead).  He praises her Melusina concept.
CLM met Coleridge only as an infant.  Coleridge had said her name was beautiful, rested his hand on her golden curls, hoped her name would not be an ill omen, implying the heroine was destined for tribulation.  More about Melusina and Tales Told in November...
RHA has been to Richmond Park and imagines CLM's home and hopes to see it...
CLM is worried about what the world and his wife will say and wants to end their conversation.
RHA argues they can correspond as poets rather than as man and woman.
CLM wants her freedom even from him.  Bethany is her cottage.  She and her companion BG have a pact to live the life of the Mind, renounce the outside world.  He is a threat to her quiet world.
RHA is distressed that he has not heard from her, though he sent Swammerdam to her.
CLM says his letter and poem did not reach her, it was taken by Blanche.  She wants to walk with him in Richmond Park to make it up to him.
RHA recalls meeting her in the park.  They are now corresponding via an alternate address, a type of subterfuge.
CLM again speaks about Mrs. Lees' séances.
RHA describes to her how magnets are naturally attracted.  He professes his love for her.
CLM cannot let him burn her up.  She wants her solitude, not a limited combustion with him.
RHA follows up on the metaphor of combustion.
CLM has met with him again, will meet with him, is in love.
RHA has been to her house, loves his wife and also her, recognizes he is betraying his wife.
...  [More professions of love by both.]
RHA speaks of a journey originally planned with his naturalist friend Francis Tugwell, but Tugwell has backed out and now RHA invites her to come.  
CLM has decided to join him.


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Miss peregines home for peculiar children

Finished book last night and it kept me on the edge of my bed.......


PREMISE    Image-for-top

.A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children who once lived here—one of whom was his own grandfather—were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a desolate island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.


Double_reflection
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Thursday, June 16, 2011

HAUNTED BOOKSTORE MYSTERIES.

the ghost and the dead deb by cleo coyle
Haunted
Bookshop #3
 The Ghost and the
Dead Man's Library

 Sleuth,
Nevermore?
Jack Shepard didn’t have much use for books when he was alive. Now that he's dead, he has even less interest in the crate of dusty old tomes that arrive at the bookshop he’s been haunting. Penelope, on the other hand, is thrilled with the delivery. The rare old Poe library was willed to her shop by an elderly admirer of her aunt Sadie’s. The dead man’s library is so valuable that Pen is inundated with astronomical offers for every volume in the set. Everything appears rosy, until Pen begins to sell the books, one by one…and one by one each buyer dies. The police don’t believe Pen’s theory—that these deaths are linked to the rare book purchases. In fact, the police don’t believe these deaths are murders at all. Pen, of course, knows differently, which means it’s time to persuade her hard-boiled haunter to stop resting in peace, start cracking some clues, and make sure this twisted Poe freak kills...nevermore.

Excerpt:
“Need a bedtime story, baby?”
     “Jack?” I whispered into the dark.
     “Well, it ain’t Clark Gable.”
     I closed my eyes and sighed, happy to hear his voice. “Strange,” I whispered.
     “What?” the ghost asked.
     “I never would have thought there’d be so many things in life more disturbing than talking to a dead man.”
     “Such as?”
     My eyes opened again. I turned onto my side, hugged a pillow to me. “I can’t get the image out of my head.”
     “You mean, Peter Chesley’s broken old body, lying like a pretzel at the base of the staircase he couldn’t climb?”
     “I was right there, Jack...I was right there with Mr. Chesley, and I heard that crash upstairs. I knew something was wrong, but I left! I drove away!...He didn’t deserve to die like that. Nobody does.”
     “Baby…who do you think you’re talking to?”


 The spirit is willing...
to catch a killer.
Young widow Penelope and her Aunt Sadie are making ends met by running their newly remodeled mystery bookshop, a quaint New England landmark, rumored to be haunted. Pen may not believe in ghosts, but she does believe in good publicity—like nabbing Timothy Brennan for a book signing. But soon after the bestselling thriller writer reveals a secret about the store's link to a 1940's murder, he keels over dead, right in the middle of the store's new Community Events space. Who gives Mrs. McClure the first clue that it was murder? The bookstore's full-time ghost, a PI who was murdered on the very spot more than fifty years before. Is he a figment of Pen's overactive imagination? Or is the oddly likeable fedora-wearing specter the only hope Pen has to solve the crime? You can bet your everlasting life on it.

Excerpt:
“Listen to me, baby, all that counts now is you and your son. You’re in it together. Isn’t that what you told the kid this morning?”
     “I don’t believe it," I told the ghost. "You were there this morning? With us? Upstairs, in Spencer’s bedroom? You heard me say that?”
     “Uh, so anyway, doll, let’s get back to the case—”
     “Oh, no you don’t. I want you to answer my question. Were you spying on us? On me? Upstairs in our private rooms?”
     “I like to think of it as surveillance.”
     “Well I forbid you to go up there again.”
     “Lady, you can’t lay down house rules to a man with no body.”



This was the only rule bookshop owner had given her resident ghost, hard-boiled private eye Jack Shepard. But when the hot young author Angel Stark arrives at the store to promote her latest—a book of true crime—Jack can hardly contain himself. After all, crime is his specialty. Angel's books is an unsolved mystery about a debutante found strangled to death. And it's filled with juicy details that point a finger at a number of people in the deb's high society circle. But when the author winds up dead too—in precisely the same way—Pen is fast on the case...which means Jack is too. After all, a ghost detective never rests in peace.

Excerpt:
“In my day, dames with money from well-heeled families hired me to help them duck scandal on the QT. The last thing they’d ever do was write a book about it and tart it up in front of a ham-handed audience for applause.”
     The booming, masculine voice in my head was either the ghost of PI Jack Shepard or a delusion of my half-demented mind. Which was true? Take your pick.
     “It’s a different world than the ’40’s, Jack,” I silently replied.
     “I liked my world better," Jack said. "The uptown crowd kept their trashy messes in the back alley, not on their bookshelf.”
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thursday june 17

time is fleeting Holly is taking the kids away to china. How can I survive this. I will of course I have too but I can't imagine taking my  kids away from so much love and so much comfort...... by choice......
today was fun I stayed up till 2":00  am and then slept really well till heather called at 1030 am we met at cardinal and then lydia, bree, kate, elie heather and me went swimming cold at first but got used to it and then fishing .  unfortunately lydia sprained her ankle. bree kate and heather left at 430 and lydia and I stayed and drew pictures until holly arrived and we decided to ge dimaggios pizza she picked up preston frombobs hour where he and coal and jo grandson had spent the night and played all day.
I didn;t get to bree's game hope she will forgive me they want to stay all night tomorrow night. I thinks that would be fine.  I am better that the first of the week. I wish i knew what brought that on... but I have been taking a whole 20 mg lexapro and the wellbutrin during the day.  i had such dark thoughts.  How nobody needed me or liked me. stupid stupid thoughts... as bob shermack would say stink in think in....but I could not stop....why?   what makes that happen...I need to like for this moment...... like the book the new earth I need to read that book again....it makes good since.
Now bed time
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