A friend told me she was trying to read Wuthering Heights but was finding it hard going. I was curious about why she was persevering if it wasn’t her thing. Regular readers know my stance on reading books you aren’t enjoying, but I also understand that people often feel embarrassed if they haven’t read books they think everyone else has, especially if they are classics.
I’m reminded of a scene in a movie where the main character reads Democracy in America (by Alexis de Tocqueville) because she thinks everyone has read it and she feels inferior. It’s only when she’s finished grinding her way through the enormous book and tries to discuss it with her new friends that she finds out no-one else has actually read it. They’re all just pretending and no-one has ever found them out.
And that’s the truth of it. Many people haven’t read Dickens, the Brontës or Jane Austen, and this doesn’t make them any less of a reader, or a person for that matter. My friend definitely doesn’t need to think she doesn’t measure up because she hasn’t read certain books.
To be perfectly honest, I’ve never read Wuthering Heights, but I have seen the movie and the characters always drive me crazy. There are just so dramatic and make totally stupid decisions.
Where to begin?
There’s something to be said for having a crack at something more challenging, but you need to choose carefully. Victorian literature is dense and wordy, so you may need to find a quiet place to really get into the story.
If you’re keen to read one of the classics, but don’t know where to start, I would try Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. It’s a cracking story about an orphan who endures a miserable childhood, then as a young woman gets sent to work in the home of the wealthy and impetuous Edward Rochester. First published in 1847 under the name of Currer Bell, Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman (a coming of age story) that deals with class, sexuality and religion, but it’s also a wonderful love story with a satisfying ending. Along with Pride and Prejudice, and Gone with the Wind, it’s one of the most famous love stories of all time.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Another book I enjoyed is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë. Published in 1848 under the name of Acton Bell, it remains remarkably relevant today with its strong feminist themes and portrayal of a woman escaping domestic abuse.
Helen Graham is a beautiful and secretive young woman. She moves into Wildfell Hall with her young son and the locals are desperate to know more about her. A man named Gilbert Markham offers Helen his friendship, but as local gossip and speculation surround her reclusive behavior continue, he wonders if he has misplaced his trust in her.
The shocking details of the disastrous marriage she has left behind emerge when she allows Gilbert to read her diary…
‘A powerful novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal’.
Daily Mail
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Middlemarch
A third suggestion is Middlemarch by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). It’s a very long book and was originally published in eight instalments. Set in a fictitious town in England in the early 19th century, it tells the story of Dorothea, an intelligent, earnest woman who makes the mistake of marrying Edward Causabon, a man many years her senior. He’s a pompous scholar and bore and his main reason for marrying is to use Dorothea as his personal secretary. Dorothea promptly falls in love with Will Ladislaw, Edward’s idealistic cousin, but tries to remain faithful to her husband, even after his death (silly woman).
I read it many years ago and loved it, but if you really don’t think you can make it through such a long book, look out for TV series (made in 1994) which stars a young and very handsome Rufus Sewell as Will Ladislaw, and Juliet Aubrey as Dorothea.
Why did they use pen-names?
All three novels were published under male pseudonyms, a common practice in Victorian times. Some women wanted to be able to write more freely, others wanted to be taken more seriously. In the case of Eliot, its been suggested that she avoided using her own name because of her elopement with journalist and critic George Henry Lewes, a married man with whom she lived happily for many years.
According to this article, Eliot “relished being thought of as a male and was disappointed when people thought otherwise.” Until Eliot’s first mass publication, The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton in 1957, George Eliot was thought to be male. Eliot was outed in 1958 by a widely circulated letter written by Charles Dickens, who pointed out that the piece was too feminine to be written by a male.
Following Lewe’s death in 1878, Eliot subsequently married her accountant, John Cross and was criticised for this as well. She just couldn’t win!
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In the latest issue of Book Chat, I wrote about my habit of reading cookbooks when I’m stressed or anxious. I find it calming to flick through the recipes, admiring the photos and reading the stories.
For me, reading a cookbook is not just about looking for new recipes, although that’s part of it. It’s more about getting off the computer, getting away from the news, and simply curling up in bed with a cup of tea and no real purpose. It’s the ultimate in self-care.
As a lover of cake, I’m particularly drawn to books about baking. They have the best, drool-worthy pictures. But I also like vegetarian cookbooks and international cookbooks.
I might end up trying a recipe if it’s easy and I have the ingredients at hand, but mostly I read cookbooks because they let me imagine that I’m a different, more adventurous kind of person. More sociable, more organised. More like my best self.
Cookbooks offer a vision of who you might be if only you had the energy to apply yourself, but they do it in a way that is gently encouraging. They don’t challenge or confront you. They just offer a peek into another world.
Reading A Table for Friendsby Skye McAlpine allows me to daydream about being the kind of person who could host the perfect dinner party without getting stressed.
Let’s be honest, I’ve never hosted a proper dinner party, but I think that if I did, I would find it quite stressful. The most I’ve ever attempted is inviting a couple of friends over for dinner, which doesn’t quite qualify in my book. In my mind, a dinner party involves candles, fancy clothes and fancy foods. Think soufflés and chocolate mousse! I’ve cooked for family events, birthdays and Christmases, but that’s more like an exercise in logistics rather than organising something elegant. Mostly it’s just a case of buying enough food and having a variety of dishes, so everyone is happy.
Love is a Pink Cakeby Clare Ptak encourages me to believe that one day I will learn to decorate a cake to perfection, or assemble the perfect Swiss Roll. My usual method of decorating a cake is to plonk a bunch of fresh flowers on top, and mostly it works well, but I admire people who can decorate a cake with skill and artistry and I love to think that one day that could be me.
Around the Tableby Julia Busuttil Nishimura, reminds me I should really get around to buying some lovely linen tablecloths with contrasting napkins and then I could be a smiley person with a lovely tidy home. I know the photos in these books are staged, but still, they are gorgeously attractive and appealing. Unfortunately, I also have a thrifty streak and I cannot bear to throw away all my perfectly good tablecloths and cutlery, even if they have seen better days.
I imagine I will just stay the way I am, and that’s okay. A person can dream.
In modern society we put a lot of emphasis on persevering and seeing things through to the bitter end, but this shouldn’t apply to books.
There are some things in life we should do, even if we aren’t enjoying the experience. Eating vegetables, cleaning your teeth, and doing some exercise now and then are all things that are good for us. But finishing a book is neither good nor bad. It’s not a reflection of your character if you choose not to finish a book.
People often tell me they always finish books—they’re known as completists—but I’ve never been able to get them to articulate why they think it’s so important. My guess is that they think there is something honourable about finishing something once they’ve started. They probably don’t have any half-finished knitting projects in the back of the cupboard either!
Good for them, but I prefer to make my reading time count. I agree there’s value in doing activities that require effort and self-discipline, but that doesn’t apply to reading unless you are studying or reading for work. If you’re reading for pleasure, it shouldn’t be a chore. There’s no gold star for finishing a book you aren’t actually enjoying.
I was talking to a friend about this, and she said she often keeps reading because she’s a hopeful person and she likes to think the book will get better. I admire her attitude and agree that you need to give a book a fair chance, but I can usually tell after the first few pages whether a book is for me. I’m getting better at choosing as I get older, but I’m also more ruthless and less likely to spend time on books that aren’t for me.
Sometimes I speed read to the end so I can find out what happens, but often I just stop reading and take it back to the library. I never feel guilty and I’m prepared to accept the possibility that I might miss out on a gem. It will be there in the library if I feel like reading it some other time.
People often talk about abandoning books, which makes them sound oddly like children they no longer care for. But books don’t have feelings and the author will never know you didn’t make it to the end if you keep your mouth shut and don’t start posting negative reviews on Goodreads. Writing a book is hard and just because you didn’t love it doesn’t mean it won’t be perfect for someone else. If we all loved the same books, the world would be a very boring place.
I’m happy to discuss the merits of certain books with my sisters and a few close friends (we can be harsh critics), but I only ever recommend books I like in BOOK CHAT, my newsletter for readers and eaters. I once heard Anne Bogle (book recommender) say she stopped mentioning books she didn’t like because people would often recall the title but forget what she had said about it. They’d see it in a bookshop, buy it, and then message her to say they were disappointed. So when I started my newsletter, I adopted the same approach. I figured my subscribers didn’t need to know what books I hadn’t enjoyed. I read about 50 books a year, but only half of them make it into BOOK CHAT.
I also know that we don’t always ‘enjoy’ books. Some books are hard going and confronting but they open our eyes to other worlds and other people’s experiences. If a book makes you feel uncomfortable, but is well-written, honest and true, then maybe you should keep reading so you don’t exist in a bubble. But if a book is poorly written, with thin one-dimensional characters and a silly plot, or if it bores you, put it down and pick up another. There are literally millions of excellent books in the world, and you only have a limited amount of time.
It’s okay to choose wisely. Read for pleasure, information or inspiration, but don’t make it a chore.
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery was an immediate success following its publication in 1908. Set on Prince Edward Island, it tells the story of Anne Shirley, a young orphan with striking red hair, a wild imagination, and a strong sense of justice.
When Anne first arrives at Green Gables, she asks her new parents if they can spell her name with an ‘E’ because she doesn’t want to be just plain Ann.
I understand how she feels. We all want to imagine we are special.
By coincidence, my middle name is also Anne, but opinions on exactly how to spell it have differed over the years.
Born in 1956, I was the third daughter of Leslie and Nola. My two older sisters were given three syllable first names followed by three letter second names – Beverley Joy and Jennifer Lee – so my name needed to comply with the same, somewhat arbitrary, rules. My mother wanted to name me Meredith, but I ended up being christened Margaret Ann.
Just plain Ann. No airs or graces. And this is the spelling I used throughout primary and high school. It’s on all my official documents, including my baptismal certificate, school reports, and swimming certificates.
It wasn’t until I turned 17 and applied for a passport that I found that my middle name was spelt with an ‘E’, just like Anne of Green Gables. It was right there in black and white on the full copy of my birth certificate. No-one had ever noticed the incorrect spelling and I suppose it didn’t really matter to anyone else, but I took it personally. It signalled I was less important than my siblings.
When I raised it with my mother, she explained that because she was busy with three young children, an uncle had been despatched to the registry office to submit the paperwork. I don’t suppose she ever actually looked at the birth certificate.
I started adding an E to my name, but she always spelt it her own way. When we went overseas, we had to fill out a passenger information form and she insisted I had used the wrong spelling. I could not convince her I had to use the version on my birth certificate and passport.
The misspelling of my name was accidental, but it compounded the other ‘evidence’ I had collected to prove that I mattered less than my siblings.
Chief exhibits were my christening mug, which is inscribed with the wrong date of birth, and a baby photo with a note in my mother’s scrawled handwriting: 1956 – not sure who the baby is? She’s holding the baby, and it’s very obviously me. How many babies did she have in 1956?
I badgered her about this for years, trying to make her feel bad by suggesting that I was less valued than my siblings, which was blatantly untrue. She was just a busy mum with three kids and a sick husband.
But I still feel for Anne when she says she wants to be special. She’s desperate to make an impact on the world and it all starts with being seen as someone who’s different and less ordinary.
A friend asked me recently why I wasn’t doing any writing and it surprised me because I’ve been writing regularly, just not here.
I assumed (wrongly) that regular readers would subscribe to my newsletter (Book Chat) even though I only ever mentioned it once, possibly in passing. It was foolish of me to think that people would rush to sign up for something new when I hadn’t taken the time to explain what it was all about, so I thought I would do that today.
Let’s start with the first question I usually get asked:
Why do you have a blog and a newsletter and are they the same?
The answer is no, not really.
Book Chat (my newsletter) is very short and contains reading recommendations and simple recipes. I started writing it about two years ago (during lockdown) and since then I’ve sent it out every two weeks without fail. The newsletter focuses on helping people find something good to read because, despite the plethora of books being published every year, it can be challenging to find a really great read. I’m mindful that we all have different tastes, but people often ask me what I’m reading and I love sharing recommendations, so this feels like a useful thing to do.
There’s an archive of past newsletters if you’d like to check out some of my recent recommendations.
I also launched an online book club this year, and it’s turning out to be a fun activity, despite me being quite nervous about hosting an online session. I don’t know why I was nervous because I love talking about books and everyone was lovely. The Book Chat book club meets four times a year and the next book is Matt Haig’s, The Midnight Library. You are very welcome to join in and it’s free for subscribers.
The newsletter has recipes because I also like food! I think that good books and good food go together naturally and people seem to love recipes, if only to remind them to make an old favourite they’ve forgotten about.
It’s been satisfying to see a steady growth in subscribers over the past two years, but in the meantime, I’ve neglected this blog. I haven’t posted anything new here since last October and that seems like eons ago.
This blog remains a space where I can explore topics in more depth. The posts are short essays that are often (but not always) book-related. I like to use my reading as a springboard for articles about issues that interest me. Some of my favourite posts in this vein include The Man Who Didn’t Wash His Dishes and Sunshine on My Shoulders.
I also write personal essays. Plenty is about growing up in the Salvation Army and absorbing ideas about self-denial and Family Secrets is about trying to find out whether my grandfather was a bigamist. There’s a lot more variety here because I have the freedom to write about whatever I like, so I’d encourage you to explore the website. I’ve been blogging here for ten years, so hopefully you’ll find something that resonates with you.
This year I planned to send some articles out for publication, but the thought of that often seems overwhelming, so I plan to post here more regularly, whilst I figure when and where to send my work.
Whether you subscribe to this blog, or my newsletter or both, I appreciate you all. Thanks for being here and reading my words.
A friend was bemoaning the fact that some books are disappointing despite having glowing reviews on Amazon and Goodreads (owned by the same company, in case you weren’t aware).
It’s hard to judge a book solely on the comments of other readers, especially if you don’t know their reading tastes, and they don’t know yours. Nevertheless, we are often influenced by five-star reviews.
If you’re anything like me, you can’t help wanting to get your hands on books that are getting lots of press and are thrilled when you see a much-hyped new release sitting on the ‘new books’ shelf at the library. You take it home full of expectation, only to find it’s not as good as the hype suggested. It’s so disappointing. What were they thinking giving it five stars? You’d only give it three, and that’s being generous.
There are many reasons books get lots of hype. A book can be genuinely brilliant and deserve all the press (Lessons in Chemistry), or win a prestigious prize (Shuggie Bain), or have a huge publicity budget (Jane Harper). The lead time for a new book is very long, at least a couple of years. During that time, many industry pundits have read advanced review copies (ARCs). Copies of new (unpublished) books are also available from NetGalley, so anyone who wants to make a living as a reviewer or book influencer can log in to read digital copies well before they hit the shelves. And a free copy of a book often equals a positive review, unless you are writing for Kirkus.
A book may not be right for you for many reasons. I snaffled a copy of Carrie Soto is Back (by Taylor Jenkins Reid) at the library last week and only read the first few pages before putting it in my return pile. I’m sure it’s probably an excellent book, but I’m not that interested in tennis or any sports really, so it didn’t gel with me.
It rarely takes long to figure out if a book is for you. With most books, you only need to read the first couple of pages to know that you are going to enjoy it. Others take a while to get going, so you need to read a few chapters before you can really commit. I’ve heard people say you should read seventy pages, but I can usually tell much more quickly.
People are often tell me they always finish books, even if they aren’t enjoying them. This is madness! You should never keep reading a book you aren’t enjoying (once you’ve given it a decent chance, of course). There are so many books out there, just read what makes you happy. If you feel bad about not finishing books you’ve purchased, give them to a little street library so they can find a new home. If they are library books, take them back to the library as quickly as you can so another reader can enjoy them. Don’t keep them by your bedside for weeks and weeks, feeling guilty about not reading them.
I’m getting better at choosing books, but my secret is that I nearly always pre-read the first chapter on my iPad. I have literally hundreds of sample chapters which I browse through regularly. I’m constantly adding new titles when I see interesting books advertised or reviewed, and I subscribe to many newsletters from writerly people and publishing houses. I’m lucky enough to have a circle of bookish friends, so I get to talk about books a lot, and I belong to a family of readers which is very handy. I trust their judgement, but most of all I’m confident they know my reading tastes (and quirks) and will recommend books I’ll probably enjoy.
It might not be the same for you. You might not have the time or inclination to spend hours and hours hunting down new titles, or you might be in that weird situation where there are lots of options, but nothing seems quite right. To be honest, that’s why I started Book Chat (a newsletter for readers). I like to think that by reading widely, I can help people narrow down their options and make choosing easier. I know not everyone has the same reading tastes (thank goodness or the world would be a boring place) but I hope that by providing reliable recommendations you can find a book that’s just right for you.
If you would like some reading recommendations, why not subscribe? If you’re already onboard, thank you.
Last weekend I had the privilege of working at a sausage sizzle at our local hardware store. I use the word privilege deliberately, because it was actually quite fun working with a bunch of lovely people from my brass band, all of whom were giving up their Sunday for the sake of our organisation. It was hot and greasy work for the two cooks, who worked all day uncomplainingly.
They gave me the task of taking the money and giving people the correct change. It was a cash only situation which perplexed many of our customers who clearly hadn’t used actual money for some considerable time, if ever. I made a couple of mistakes with the more complicated orders (five sausages, three with onion, an extra sausage for the dog and three drinks), but mostly I could do the unsophisticated mental arithmetic fairly easily.
It was interesting to note how many young people seemed hesitant to hand me actual cash (a Covid thing?) or proffered too much money. In one case, a young boy around 12 handed me both a ten-dollar and five-dollar note when his order totalled $8.50. He looked vaguely terrified, as if he was using foreign money and didn’t know its actual value, which was possibly the case. Many customers forgot to take their change (perhaps they were eager to eat their sausages) and I had to chase after them. I could have made quite a tidy profit for the band, had I been a less scrupulous person.
It reminded me of being on canteen duty when my children were little. The tiny kids whose heads barely reached the counter would reach up with a small handful of change and say, ‘what can I buy with this’?
Of course it’s not just young people who find cash confusing or hard to manage. When my daughter was in high school, she worked at the local supermarket and a lot of the older people who shopped there would just hand over their purses and ask her to take the right money because they couldn’t see very well, or their arthritic fingers couldn’t select the right coins. Just as well she was honest too.
Many people struggle with mental arithmetic. It’s a life skill that some people miss out on, either through missing too much school or living in situations of neglect.
Years ago, when I first started teaching adults, my first classroom experience was teaching a group of long-term unemployed people ‘personal development’. It was part of a scheme to get people off the dole and back to work, popular in the 1980s when unemployment rates were high. It soon became clear that the entire group of mainly middle-aged men were not only illiterate, but innumerate. After a few days of encouraging them to talk about their feelings (a total disaster) it occurred to me that the lessons I’d prepared were preposterous and ill-conceived, so I switched to more practical tasks such as how to use a phone book or read a street directory. These tasks are hard, if not impossible, if you don’t know the alphabet works. Simple arithmetic also perplexed them, so I took in a few games of junior monopoly* and they took turns being the banker. Soon they were all wheeling and dealing like big city investors. In the days before credit-cards and smart phones, it was fun and hopefully useful, especially for people who had little money to begin with.
And although people rarely use cash these days, it doesn’t mean they aren’t being taken advantage of. If people can’t do simple arithmetic, how are they to know if they are being overcharged? They could be charged twice them for items and they probably wouldn’t notice. I’m sure many people don’t bother checking their bank statements.
A friend told me that cash is now considered so old school and retro that it’s coming back into fashion, like record players and tape decks. That made me laugh. Soon they’ll be teaching people to cook and sew.
* Monopoly was invented by a Quaker named Elizabeth Magie in 1933 to highlight the wrongs of making money at the expense of others. Charles Darrow stole her idea and sold it to the Parker Brothers, who made a fortune.
Sarah Winman’s book, Still Life, is set largely in Florence and in one scene the main character decorates his Christmas tree with sprays of holly and eucalyptus. This surprised me because when I visited Florence briefly in the 1970s, I don’t remember seeing any gum trees. Perhaps I was too busy looking at boys (and art, of course).
Eucalyptus trees are native to Australia and there are at least 600 species here. Most Australians have a great affection for gum trees, even if they can’t name more than a few varieties.
I googled ‘why are there gum trees in Italy?’ and discovered that there are gum trees all over Europe. They gained popularity in Europe in the late 19th century because of their medicinal properties: the oil from the leaves is antiseptic and effective in reducing pain, swelling, and inflammation. People also thought the trees would help drain the swamplands and reduce the incidence of malaria, which was rife at the time.
A report from a news correspondent living in Naples in 1880 says:
“This lovely, healthful tree is destined to play a great part in the improvement of Italian soil.
Senator Torelli, in his project for draining and improving the malaria districts through which so many Italian railway lines run, indicates that the planting of the eucalyptus as a principle means to an end. If such plantations had been begun by the Government many years ago, many lives would have been saved.”
The Eucalyptus in Italy – The Argus, Melbourne 1880
Malaria cases in Italy at the time amounted to over 2 million, with between 15,000 and 20,000 deaths per year (1% of the population). To put this in context, this is roughly equivalent to the death rate in Italy from Covid, so malaria was a serious problem, and they were desperate to do something about the mosquito-infested swamps.
They also planted thousands of gum trees in Portugal to combat to combat soil erosion and malaria, and then a century later, Scandinavian timber companies bought up large tracts of land to grow blue gums (eucalyptus globule) to pulp for paper.
According to this article, the vast plantations crippled village economies by commandeering valuable farming land and lowering the water table. Now the exotic blue gum is the most abundant tree in Portugal, covering about 7% of the country. Native to Tasmania and south-eastern Australia, it’s easily recognizable by its minty scent and pale peeling bark.
Tasmanian blue gum – Photo credit: Dana L Brown
Portuguese people are strongly opposed to the eucalyptus forests: the trees are regarded as highly invasive and aggressive. To local environmentalists, the gum tree is to Portugal what the rabbit is to Australia – an environmental disaster. The local insects can’t feed off the trees, so there are no birds. The forests are silent.
Gum trees don’t belong in Portugal any more than the camphor laurel trees belong in Australia.
Widely planted as shade trees in the late 19th Century, the camphor laurel (Cinnamomum Camphora) is considered a weed in New South Wales and Queensland and is just about the only tree you can cut down without gaining permission from the local authorities. It’s ranked among the top ten most invasive plants in Australia because it sneaks into waterways and competes with the native species, most notably the blue gum, one of the favourite food trees of the koala.
An avenue of camphor laurel trees (native to southeast Asia) and now the target of an eradication campaign in eastern Australia
Here in Australia, we are familiar with the scourge of invasive species. We introduced rabbits and foxes with no thought to how they would integrate with the native flora and fauna and the Queensland government famously introduced cane toads in 1935 to combat the devastating sugar cane beetles, without bothering to check if cane toads actually ate the beetles.
They didn’t, and now we have an out-of-control infestation of the horrible ugly toads. As well as being ugly, they are also poisonous, putting our native fauna at risks and other small mammals, such as cats and dogs. Cane toads are native to Florida and as far as I’m concerned, they should all go back there.
I suppose it’s ironic that whilst we revile cane toads, many Americans are not so keen on our gum trees. They grow all over the United States, but are especially prolific in California.
The trees were first introduced in California in 1865 by a fur trapper called William Wolfskill who, seeking to settle down as a farmer, planted blue gums outside his house in Southern California. An innovative man, he made a fortune growing oranges, wine grapes and walnuts, and he recognised the potential that eucalyptus trees had to upset the commercial timber market. Timber was scarce, and he believed that the fast-growing eucalyptus could provide a local supply of timber in a few short years.
Gum trees planted by William Wolfskill around his house in Southern California
Before long, news of the versatility of the tree spread and in 1872, Ellwood Cooper planted a 200-acre eucalyptus grove near Santa Barbara. Several other farmers also planted groves of gum trees, but it was tobacco heir Abbot Kinney who turned the fad into something that would alter the landscape forever.
Kinney was a state forester and used his position to promote the eucalypt. He wrote a book explaining that every part of the plant could be used commercially, including the volatile oil in the leaves, which he said had powerful anti-malarial properties. Over the next few years, optimistic farmers planted millions of trees and by 1909, blue gums were ubiquitous.
The bubble burst in 1913 when the US Department of Agriculture confirmed that eucalyptus wood warped, cracked, and twisted as it dried. According to the Janka scale, created to measure the hardness of wood, blue gum is difficult to dry, making it unsuitable for fencing, but they continued to be popular as shade trees.
Many Americans revile our beloved gum trees because of their supposed contribution to the wildfires in 2018 and 2020. However, forestry experts say that the native pine trees also contain volatile oils that are highly combustible and eucalypts are no better or worse than the indigenous species.
Here in Australia, where bushfires are a regular occurrence, we blame poor land management and climate change for our calamitous summer fires. We would never to think to blame our indigenous species, perhaps because they are so much part of our landscape and our psyche.
When you talk to most Australians about our connection to the land, we are likely to talk about our deep love of ‘the bush’.
We love our gum trees, but we’re happy to keep them here where they belong.
I went to the theatre with some friends recently and the conversation revolved around exercises you can do to keep yourself from falling over when you are going about your daily business. They recommended standing on one leg like a flamingo and spinning around in a circle with your eyes closed to make sure you can keep your balance when the lighting is poor.
“How did we get here?” I thought to myself.
I still cannot believe that I’m old. Not ancient, but definitely grey-haired, a bit creaky and wrinkly enough to be deemed an old lady by the rest of the world.
After the show I complemented my friend on her new hairstyle. After several years of dying her hair, she’s allowed it to turn back to its natural grey colour. She went grey years ago (way before it was fashionable) and I thought it looked fabulous. She kept it like that for three years and then suddenly dyed it brown again. I was so disappointed. It looked much more striking when she was grey. Last week she confessed that she started dying it again after an incident where she was standing at the bar and the barman started taking orders from the (younger) women behind her, ignoring her completely.
It was the last straw in a series of events that made her feel old and invisible, so she went home and changed her hair colour back to one which society thought was more acceptable for a woman in her early fifties. She said that as soon as she re-dyed her hair, she found a new romantic partner, so it was worth it. Now she’s in her late sixties and she no longer cares about what other people think.
We are used to these stories of older women feeling invisible, but to be honest, it’s not something I have experienced as part of being older because I’ve always felt a bit invisible. As an introvert, I’ve been okay with that because I certainly don’t enjoy being the centre of attention, but I also don’t appreciate being ignored because someone thinks I’m irrelevant.
Like most women, I’ve always attempted to do the best I could with what was available, but I’m not very vain, so I didn’t expect to be bothered this much by the signs of ageing. To be honest, it’s caught me unawares. I can cope with reduced flexibility and the propensity to huff when I bend over, but the wrinkles and looking worn out all the time are starting to annoy me.
I tell myself that I just need a good night’s sleep or that the lighting is bad, but I know I’m just getting old. I wonder if I should have invested in some decent night cream about forty years ago. Is it too late to moisturise now?
I’m relatively healthy and able to do nearly everything I could do when I was younger (albeit a bit more slowly), but I still feel bad when I look in the mirror. And then I feel guilty about feeling bad.
Writer Nora Ephron said that it’s your neck that ages you the most.
You can put makeup on your face and concealer under your eyes and dye on your hair, you can shoot collagen and Botox and Restylane into your wrinkles and creases, but short of surgery, there’s not a damn thing you can do about a neck. The neck is a dead giveaway. Our faces are lies, and our necks are the truth.
Nora Ephron
Nora, who wrote the screenplays for When Harry Met Sally, Silkwood and Sleepless in Seattle, wrote a collection of essays called I Feel Bad About My Neck when she was in her mid-sixties. She suggests the following strategy.
If I pass a mirror, I avert my eyes. If I must look into it, I begin by squinting, so that if anything terrible is looking back at me, I am already halfway to closing my eyes to ward off the sight. And if the light is good (which I hope it’s not), I often do what so many women my age do when stuck in front of a mirror: I gently pull the skin of my neck back and stare wistfully at a younger version of myself.
Nora Ephron
I’m not sad about being older, but I feel wistful for my younger self, who doubted herself so much and tried so hard to please other people. Mostly, I’m sad that I didn’t appreciate myself more. I could have worn prettier dresses, higher heels, brighter lipstick. I guess that wasn’t me, but I suspect I could have had a lot more fun and been kinder to myself.
Shortly after Ephron’s essay collection was published, she was diagnosed with leukemia and died at seventy-one, ending a brilliant career. Reading this reminded me that life is short and if you’re lucky enough to be growing older, go out dancing while you still can. Or learn an instrument. Or walk amongst the trees. Love your wrinkly old body and buy yourself some good moisturiser because it’s never too late until it’s too late.
I often used to stay over at my grandmother’s house when I was a little girl. I had two brothers and two sisters, so staying with my nanna gave my mother a break, (one less child to look after), and gave me the precious gift of being the most important person in the world, at least for a couple of days.
I slept in the second bedroom in a big saggy bed that was hard to get out of. The spring base had given up the ghost, but no-one had ever thought to replace it.
My nanna worked as a cleaner and would leave early in the morning to sweep and mop the post office floor, returning before I was awake to make me a boiled egg with toast soldiers. She would bring it on a tray, another special treat that never happened at home unless you were sick. I would luxuriate in the big bed reading books and pretending I was a princess. When I finally managed to get myself out of bed, achieved by holding onto the side and heaving myself out, my favourite thing to do was open all the drawers in the wooden dressing table and investigate the contents.
In one drawer, there was a box of musty yellow newspaper clippings. My family were always snipping things out of the paper, so I wasn’t surprised to find them, but I was quite puzzled by their contents.
One was an advertisement from a lonely-hearts column.
Clean living man (non-drinker) seeks single woman or widow for outings and companionship.
I was intrigued by this cutting and deduced that it was an advertisement posted by my stepfather when he was still a single man. He found his woman (my widowed mother), but I was still curious about why my grandmother had kept the cutting, and why it was a taboo topic to ask my mother how she and my stepfather had met. No-one ever mentioned it and it seemed that it was not a question that we were allowed to ask.
Every family has its secrets.
In my family, our most scandalous secret was that my great-grandfather, Lindsay Hague, was a bigamist. This is what we were told, and I never thought to question it, but recently I decided to find out if it was true.
I’ve never been very interested in family history, deeming it to be something that interests ‘old people’, or those with nothing better to do than trawl through shipping records, but old age is creeping up on me and causing me to reflect on my life and how I came to be the person I am and lately I find myself musing on the past.
In Telling it Slant: creating, refining, and publishing creative nonfiction, Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola say that when we write about our families, we can see how people were shaped by the historical context in which they lived. Writing family history is also writing cultural history: the two are intertwined.
Investigating the lives of long dead family members has value as a way of seeking to understand the past, but also helps me figure out my place in the world. Habits and attitudes suddenly make sense. Aha moments abound.
***
Harry Lindsay Hague
Harry Lindsay Hague was born in 1865 in Strathalbyn, South Australia. He was my great-grandfather and a fine looking man. He had a flair for woodwork and was popular with the girls. This proved to be his undoing.
Harry Lindsay Hague
He moved to Darwin and married Mary Jane “Daisy” Cleghorn in May 1889 when he was 24, but things obviously didn’t work out and Daisy was granted a divorced in 1902, on the grounds of desertion.
Lindsay popped up in Perth and married my great-grandmother, Minnie Laura in 1903. He was 38, and she was 22. My grandmother, Mabel (Madge) was born in 1904 and her brother Percy in 1906.
Minnie Laura
Their marriage quickly went downhill, and Lindsay left the family home. Desertion was a criminal offence in those days, punishable by a prison sentence with hard labour.
Minnie tracked him down and in September 1907, he was ordered to pay 25 shillings per week to help provide for his wife and children. He was soon in arrears and by January 1908 he was back in court for owing eight pounds in maintenance. This was a significant amount, equal to about six weeks’ wages. During the court hearing, Minnie admitted she had been around to the place where he was living, smashed his crockery and let a parrot out of his cage. The judge cautioned Minnie to keep away from Lindsay.
By August 1908, things had deteriorated, and Lindsay made yet another court appearance.
The TRUTH Newspaper had this to say:
Lindsay Hague’s little lapse
Leaves wife and weans in want: must pay up or shut up
Some twelve months ago, a well-built man named Lindsay Hague was ordered to contribute the weekly sum of 25/- towards the support of his wife, Minnie Hague, and his two children, and for a time he came up to the scratch with the brass at the end of each period. Then the order was increased to 30/- per week and whether the burden was too great or there was some other reason, Lindsay got into arrears. An application by him for a variation of the order was refused and since then he does not appear to have been a particularly happy man.
Eventually, he decided to take a trip to the Nor’West and as he did not inform his wife of his departure, she naturally took steps to ascertain his whereabouts, and after some difficulty succeeded in locating her lawful spouse.
The wife, a cleanly built little woman with a particularly determined looking face, gave her evidence very clearly. She said she had only taken out a warrant for her husband’s arrest because she could not get at him any other way. She had no desire to press the change providing he were willing to obey the order of the court. She had to live, and she had to do something.
August 29, 1908
Turkey Creek
When Lindsay disappeared up north to work, he travelled to a place called Turkey Creek in a remote area called the Kimberley, about three thousand miles north of Perth, Western Australia. The Kimberley is three times the size of England and even today, has a population of less than 40,000 people. It’s regarded as one of the world’s last wilderness frontiers.
In 1908 there would have been a very small number of white people in the area and it’s not clear what Lindsay did while he was there, but it’s likely that he would have found employment at a cattle station.
The area around Turkey Creek was first settled by white people in 1882, notably by the Durack family who established huge cattle stations in the area.
This had a devastating effect on the local Aboriginal people and in the early years of white settlement, massacres of the local Kija (or Gidja) people were commonplace, and Aboriginal people were also routinely poisoned by pastoralists. They were seen as a threat because they speared the cattle for food.
It’s estimated that about half of the Aboriginal people of the East Kimberley were murdered in the first fifty years of colonisation. In 1901, a ration depot was established at Turkey Creek (now called Warmun) to try and stop the poisoning of the indigenous community.
The daily food ration was one pound of flour, two ounces of sugar, and half an ounce of tea, with other foods, clothing and material items (such as nets and fishing lines) issued on an occasional basis. Rations were provided to old people, women, and children, but not to able-bodied men.
The practice of distributing rations to Aboriginal people didn’t cease until the early 1960s, when Aboriginal people became eligible to receive the same government benefits as other members of the community. It’s a shameful part of our history and I can only hope that my great-grandfather was not involved in the persecution of the local Aboriginal people.
Lindsay eventually made his way back to Fremantle (the port for the city of Perth) on a cattle ship and was arrested at Robb’s Jetty, the destination point for transporting cattle from the Durack brothers Kimberley station. This confirms my view that he must have been working at one of the cattle stations during his time in the Nor’West.
Unloading cattle from the Australind steamship (circa 1911). Photo credit – Museum of Western Australia.
During his court appearance, Minnie accused Lindsay of living with another woman, a claim that he vehemently denied. But shortly afterwards he scarpered off to NSW with his new lady friend, a woman called Mary Pratt and another warrant was issued for his arrest.
NEW SOUTH WALES POLIC GAZETTE AND WEEKLY RECORD OF CRIME
9 December 1908
West Australia – a warrant has been issued by the Perth (WA) Bench for the arrest of Lindsay Hague (better known as Harry Lindsay), charged with disobeying a magisterial order for the support of his wife. He is 34 years of age, 6 feet 2 inches high, well built, dark complexion, hair and moustache, oval visage; dressed in grey suit and grey straight rimmed felt hat; a labourer. Supposed to have come to this State. Arrest desired.
By my calculations, Lindsay would have been 43 in 1908, not 34, so perhaps that’s why he was never apprehended. They would have been looking for a much younger man and I imagine there were a lot of men in Sydney dressed in grey suits in those days.
Minnie was finally granted a divorce from Lindsay some twenty years later. I’m not sure why there was such a long delay.
This also made the news:
DAILY NEWS
9 November 1927
Wives deserted have to fend for themselves.
Two of the divorce petitions dealt with by the Chief Justice (Sir Robert McMillan) today arose through the failure of husbands to support their wives.
In 1927, Minnie Laura Hague sought a dissolution of her marriage to Lindsay Hague. When he married in October 1903, he was following the trade of carpenter. They had two children, but Hague rarely supported his wife adequately. At one time his payments to her over a 12-month period represent 3 shillings a week. He also occupied his time with other women.
Minnie eventually turned to the Police Court for assistance and received an order against her husband for 25 shillings a week. Hague did not comply with the Court’s direction and cleared off to the Eastern States with a woman with whom he had been keeping company. That was many years ago. She had not seen him since. “He left me without a penny”, lamented Mrs Hague.
Despite being left without a penny, Minnie was an astute businesswoman and somehow managed to purchase a bush block and build herself a house made from iron and wood. The house was lined with pressed metal, and it had beautiful glass panelled doors, but little by way of comforts.
The house that Minnie built
It was very dark inside because my great-grandmother only used low wattage bulbs to save money. Frugality (a family trait) involved re-using every docket for shopping lists, and empty bottles were used to border haphazard garden beds. The house had an unusual filigree gate made from the cut-outs from the heel plates of soldiers’ boots.
Times were hard, and one Christmas there was no money for presents or treats. My grandmother (Mabel) said she was thrilled to see a policeman come riding out of the surrounding bush on his big grey horse. He had a sugar bag on his saddle and from it took a cricket bat for her brother Percy, a rag doll for her, and a pudding for the family.
Minnie worked as a cook and washerwoman, often leaving the children with friends while she went away to work on sheep or cattle stations in the country. She eventually purchased two more blocks of land, which she set up as tennis courts for hire. Despite her diminutive stature, she watered and rolled them herself.
A photograph of my grandmother Mabel and her brother Percy taken around 1914 depicts them as well-dressed and moderately well to do, so she clearly managed pretty well on her own.
Percy and Mabel taken around 1914
Minnie died in 1949 in West Australia at 68, and Lindsay passed away in 1950, in New south Wales. He is buried in Liverpool cemetery. He was 84.
***
I often wonder what became of him after he arrived in NSW. Did he remarry? Was he ever charged with bigamy? I can’t find any record of this, so I guess I’ll never know.
What I do know is that I come from a long line of resilient women, and that makes me proud.
Here is a lovely photo I found of my mother Nola (another resilient woman), with her grandmother, Minnie Laura taken around 1948.
Margaret Moon 