A Bluestocking Knits

Love Letters

In honor of the day, here is what must be one of the most romantic letters in fiction, Captain Wentworth's to Anne Elliott near the end of Jane Austen's Persuasion --

"I can listen no longer in silence.  I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach.  You pierce my soul.  I am half agony, half hope.  Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.  I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago.  Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.  I have loved none but you.  Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.  You alone have brought me to Bath.  For you alone I think and plan.  -- Have you not seen this?  Can you fail to have understood my wishes? -- I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine.  I can hardly write.  I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me.  You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost on others. -- Too good, too excellent creature!  You do us justice indeed.  You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men.  Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating in

F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible.  A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening, or never."

Sigh!

"You pierce my soul.  I am half agony, half hope.  Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.  I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago --"

They All Fell So Much in Love With Her That They Never Minded Going to the Swamp the Next Morning to Fight With the Dragon

One of my favorite illustrators is Edward Ardizzone.  He has a wonderful way with line and form, of catching character with a telling detail, and a sparkling sense of humor -- which, by the way, I have to resist spelling with a "u" here, as one of the things I find so enchanting about Ardizzone is his utter Englishness.  I am especially fond of Sarah and Simon and No Red Paint, the story of two children whose father is a painter, but is rather poor because although he paints beautiful pictures, very few people would buy them -- and of his "Tim" series of books, about a particularly enterprising boy's adventures at sea.  Ardizzone seems to have had a knack for illustrating books whose authors' humor matched his own, such as John Symonds' Elfrida and the Pig, which starts, "In a house near a lake there once lived a clever child.  She could

Play the piano,
Do sums as long as your arm,
Read Latin,
And write letters to important people,"

which you may think is a promising start, and you would be right.

I was reading The Dragon to the girls last night, a story written by Archibald Marshall, who was obviously another kindred spirit to Ardizzone, who drew the book's illustrations -- "Once a long time ago there was a very horrible dragon that settled itself in a swamp near a city and began to eat up the people who lived near it.  So of course they didn't go on living there but came into the city where there was less chance of the dragon getting at them" -- and decided that I couldn't resist sharing one of the illustrations, for fairly obvious reasons, I suspect.  On reflection, I realized that this particular drawing is very characteristic of Ardizzone -- one can be swept along with the story of this particular Princess who was too beautiful for words, or linger and appreciate the intricacy of the illustrations, the way that the tips of the painter's shoes turn up, the balance of the Princess' poses in her chair and her portrait and the lovely way that her point of her hennin just breaks the edges of the frame, of the nurse's absorption in her knitting, the curl of the spaniel's tail and the exquisite squiggle behind it.

Mish-Mash

Every so often we have mish-mash for dinner, when the refrigerator is full of single servings left over from the week's meals.  Tonight, Laura had the last slice of pizza, Julia had Swedish meatballs, and David and I had the remnants of my first promenade through My French Kitchen by Joanne Harris and Fran Warde -- lentil and sausage casserole and garlic soup, respectively.  This is a lovely, evocative book that set my mouth watering as soon as I saw it.  The lentil dish is pleasant and earthy (much depends on the sausages, I suspect), and the garlic soup very tasty.  I didn't much care for the Poule au Pot, but then I've made various versions of this and never found it to speak to me much, so I can't fault Harris'.  Her Boeuf en Daube, redolent of bay and thyme and olives and an entire bottle of white wine, was heavenly!

So, then, this post will be a mish-mash too, since life has been increasingly hectic chez Bluestocking these days, and little that I have to say would stretch to a full post on its own.

I made an Odessa the other day for my aunt, whose cancer is returning.  Cashsoft DK again, so wonderfully soft and comforting -- this color is 525 Kingfisher, and worth seeking out, a lovely tealy greeny-blue.

I could not resist the lure of the laceweight -- the ball is one skein of Skacel Merino Lace, in 339 Pale Grey, luminous and pearl-like -- I'm thinking something Shetlandish.

A cup from Annie Modesitt's clever Fiesta Tea Set, in some ancient Tahki Cotton Classic that I dug up from one of the deeper drawers in my closet.  Am not sure yet if I'm going to make the rest of the set in the same color (wh. is all I have), or find some peppier shades, or just enjoy this piece on its own.

I put up a photo album in the sidebar of some of my dad's model trains, the ones I have.  Trains were such an intrinsic part of his life that I feel absurdly grateful to have these.

My Daisy troop is up to fifteen.  Fifteen kindergarten girls in one room!  Need I say more?

I've been watching a lot of movies lately, curiously enough all Norwegian ones, hard to knit to since I need to read the subtitles, my Norwegian stretching mostly to exclamations -- "Gud!"  "Nå da?"  "Fy!"-- and words that I probably shouldn't know.  Anyway, first was "Insomnia", a bleak and gritty crime thriller from a few years back, in which a detective in the far north accidentally shoots his partner during a murder investigation, and finds himself increasingly mired in guilt and the insomnia of the title as he tries to cover up what really happened.  "Hamsun" is the story of  Norwegian Nobel Laureate novelist Knut Hamsun's involvement with Hitler's occupying forces during World War II, and of Hamsun's turbulent relationship with his wife, a fervent Nazi supporter.  It's a ghastly, riveting film -- like watching a car crash that one is powerless to stop -- with Hamsun played with arresting dignity by Max von Sydow. 

"Kitchen Stories (Salmer fra Kjøkkenet)" is the lightest of the bunch so far -- and by far -- and one that I can recommend without hesitation for those who like quirky, subtle, character-driven comedy.  The premise is that Swedish researchers in the postwar craze for scientific research and efficiency are sending a team of observers to study Norwegian bachelor farmers' kitchen habits -- resulting in the quietly absurd set-up in the photo.  One of these objects of study has had a change of heart and resents the intrusion stubbornly, but through a series of small events he and his ostensibly objective observer become unlikely friends.  The ending is bittersweet but entirely believable and satisfying.

Little-known Fact #133: All Norwegian movies feature Sverre Anker Ousdal in some role, large or small.

(Not that I'm complaining, mind.  Fellow polar geeks will recognize him from "The Flight of the Eagle", the lyrical and harrowing film based on the Swedish attempt in 1897 to reach the North Pole by balloon, and

as Roald Amundsen in 1985's "The Last Place on Earth".  The sight of Amundsen and his men skiing towards the South Pole is as stirring a thing I've seen in many a year.)

I read the last of the Aubrey/Maturin series while David was in Hong Kong.  I'd been reading them slowly, trying to spin out the last few as long as I could, but then one night after finishing The Hundred Days, I picked up Blue at the Mizzen as if there were no covers between the two, just another chapter break.  It was like running down a hill -- I ran through it in delight, unable to stop myself and not caring a whit, and was surprised when I turned over the last page with something like utter joy and came to the end, not without a bit of a thud at my sudden return to reality.  So, that's that, and I guess -- unless somebody stands me 21 for my birthday -- I'll start over again from the beginning.

I've just finished reading the fourth in the Brother Cadfael series, St. Peter's Fair, retrieved deep from the basement storage area of our local public library.  It's interesting, reading the books hard on the heels of one another, instead of a year or two apart as I did when they were published -- I begin to get a sense of Peters' developing style and feeling for the characters. I had quite forgotten after so long that Hugh Beringar in his first appearance -- in the second book -- was in fact an opponent, not an ally of Cadfael's.  Almost makes me want to see the television series again, but not quite.  Only for Sean Pertwee,

for whom I almost seriously considered starting a write-in-campaign-of-one to Peter Jackson, as I had long pictured Sean Pertwee in my admittedly fertile imagination as Faramir, one of my favorite characters in "The Lord of the Rings" cycle.  Not too much of a stretch, though, I think!  (I would rather, too -- not that I've anything against Viggo Mortensen -- have seen Sean Bean as Aragorn, as he was much more my idea of the character -- but that's another story, for another time.)

Thoughts on the Conwy Socks

I am quite in love with these socks and the fabulous Conwy pattern from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road.  I must confess that I never have quite absorbed which maneuver makes the left twist and which the right, but even so it was not long before I memorized at least which one came first in the sequence!

The calf shaping allows for a beautifully long and flattering leg -- almost stockings.  I had a feeling that one skein of Jitterbug wouldn't stretch to a pair of Conwys, and so I bought two, and made the leg a half-inch or so longer than in the directions.  The larger gauge of the Jitterbug was enough to make the sock a bit bigger than the 7 in./18 cm circumference of the original, too, without that bothersome tweaking -- these are about 7 1/2 in./19 cm.

I made some minor modifications in the calf shaping, as it seemed to leave the twining cables a bit vague --

As written, the single K columns on either side of the shaping would merge into the reverse st st areas, butting up against the cables and leaving them without their background.  Instead, I worked the first three decreases as in the chart, but shifted the rest so that the 2-stitch reverse st st section stayed intact.  The last 2 decreases I worked with a sl next 2 sts tog, K1, psso -- which called for moving the last st of the rnd from needle 4 to needle 1, and omitting the last p st on the chart, but made the cables stand out nicely.

(Not easy to take a picture of the back of one's leg!)

I also used the Welsh Heel from Knitting Vintage Socks, instead of the round heel in the pattern -- it's fussier, although that might be simply because I've not done it before, and I didn't get it quite right either time, but it seemed appropriate in the circumstances.  It has four lines of decreases instead of the round heel's two, a rather sharp short-row curve at the outside edges, and a lengthier line of paired decreases in the center, on either side of the seam st.  I'm all for historical accuracy in its place, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out why it is written so that the paired decreases are not symmetrical, with K2togs on both sides of the seam st -- surely the Welsh would have figured out that ssk will lean to the left and K2tog to the right?  Ssk is used in the gusset immediately following, after all (or at least its cousin sl 1, K1, psso) -- so I used both, instead of all K2tog.

It makes a generous turn, quite suitable for those with wide heels.

And the Jitterbug softens up a treat with washing -- this one is a lovely deep green, rather more on the bluish side than the yellowish green I might have expected from the name "Velvet Olive," but I bought it for looks, after all!

I listened to an audio version of Monk's Hood while working these, read by Stephen Thorne (who I can't quite place but at times sounds remarkably like John Wood).  It was a pleasant surprise to hear Cadfael say, about two-thirds through the book, "I'm from Gwynedd myself, from the far side of Conwy"!  Thorne does a nice job of characterizing the different voices, giving Cadfael a soft Welsh accent, too, which I quite missed in the television series. 

And if there was any doubt that I am addicted to sock knitting --

Charade socks, in Supersock's "Blues and Purples," cast on while the Conwys were still blocking -- these are for Laura, and I was hoping to get them done for the first day of school, but that is Thursday and I already have ripped out this in the photo, since it was too small ....

How Green Was My Conwy

I've been thinking a lot about family history lately, for various reasons -- not the least being reading the Brother Cadfael books, with Cadfael's quiet pride in his Welshness, remembering again the amazement of finding my own great-great-great-grandparents on the 1841 census in Breconshire, in a little town called Llangattock.  (I had known that they were Welsh, but not where they had lived, or what my great-great-grandmother's parents names were.)

For some time, I've been tempted to knit a project now and then that has a connection to my own family history -- Bavarian stockings, a Scottish shawl, something Irish -- I'd long admired the Conwy socks from Knitting on the Road, and when I saw Jitterbug's "Velvet Olive" colorway, I thought the two would be a perfect match -- that the stuff says "Made in Wales" seemed to bring everything together.  (More details and photos of Conwy when I've finished the second one!)

The lamp is my great-grandfather's -- he was a fireboss in Pennsylvania around the turn of the last century, and this was his safety lamp.  His parents were German, and he married the daughter of a Welsh miner, who had immigrated with his young family in 1869, working his way up from the pits of South Wales to become a mining supervisor and owner in America.

I haven't read How Green Was My Valley in years -- I remember being deeply moved by it when I was thirteen or fourteen, I guess, not only by the story itself but by a sense of kinship with young Huw Morgan.  This quotation brings back to me some of its lyricism and poignancy, and explains a little of what I find so fascinating and timeless about family history:

"I saw behind me those who had gone, and before me those who are to come. I looked back and saw my father, and his father, and all our fathers, and in front to see my son, and his son, and the sons upon sons beyond. And their eyes were my eyes. As I felt, so they had felt and were to feel, as then, so now, as tomorrow and forever. Then I was not afraid, for I was in a long line that had no beginning and no end, and the hand of his father grasped my father's hand, and his hand was in mine, and my unborn son took my right hand, and all, up and down the line that stretched from Time That Was to Time That Is, and Is Not Yet, raised their hands to show the link, and we found that we were one, born of Woman, Son of Man, made in the Image, fashioned in the Womb by the Will of God, the Eternal Father."

Hot Enough For You?

Remember this?

Ah, well, it's been a long time.  I'd forgotten about it, too, until I tripped over the bag the other day, on my way to open up yet another window to try and get some cool air into the house, and saw that the thing was actually not too far from a good stopping place.  It's really too hot to knit much just now, but I was so close that I sat this afternoon with a fan blowing on my hands to finish the last few inches.  Proper photos and a wrap-up to come.

In Nature News, we've got a pair of sharp-shinned hawks living in our big pine tree in the backyard.  They are both juveniles, my cousin-the-zoo-vet tells me, so their colors will change as they mature.  Nest-mates, I'm guessing, since they are both juveniles and about the same size.  Very chatty, too, like teenagers, "kew-kew" all morning and afternoon.

There are still a few open areas in our town, but we are, to be honest, deep in suburbia, which makes the hawks all the more fascinating.

So I think I'm going to read for a while, instead of knitting.  It was 80° F (26 C) when we lugged our dinner outside at 6:30 -- just not knitting weather.  I don't know what made me think of it -- perhaps putting Ellis Peters on my mental list of authors I'd like one more book from -- but I've gotten it into my head to read all of her wonderful Brother Cadfael mysteries again.  And the "Blackadder" font I found a while back was too good to pass up, so here's a button, just for fun --

Booking Through Thursday: Just Wild About Harry

be sorted @ nimbo.net

Okay, love him or loathe him, you’d have to live under a rock not to know that J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, comes out on Saturday… Are you going to read it?  I read the first two books when I was working at a high school library, and thought I should see what all of the fuss was about.  (Can you imagine a time when there was only one copy of The Sorcerer's Stone on the library shelf?  Not that long ago, either.)  To be honest, I thought they were okay -- not brilliant, but a fairly entertaining diversion.  Actually, I wasn't impressed by the first one, but read it again along The Chamber of Secrets when I realized that my husband was besotted with them, somewhere around the eleventh reading of the then-four-volume series!  I thought a bit better of them on second reading.

David is flying off to Florida on Sunday morning, and plans to snatch up a copy of the new one on his way to the airport, as it were -- he tells me he will also be taking the next few Aubrey/Maturins in the series.  (His favorite HP characters are the Weasley twins.)

If so, right away? Or just, you know, eventually, when you get around to it? Are you attending any of the midnight parties? If you’re not going to read it, why not?  I'm more interested in the series since I've gotten this far, but I can certainly wait until David gets home to read the new one! and I can't even think, realistically, of who it would have to be for me to stay up past midnight to see!  (The Queen, perhaps, but then I don't think she'd be up past midnight, either.)

I would, however, be tempted to dress up as a character for a Halloween bash.  Professor Trelawney, I think ....!

And, for the record… what do you think? Will Harry survive the series? What are you most looking forward to?  Putting myself in an author's position, I think that Rowling would have a hard time killing off a character that means so much to her, although I understand how the requirements of a storyline might compel one to do so.  If she does, I suspect that it would be something in the line of Gandalf's transformation into something more powerful, greater than he had been before. 

And yes, as you can see, I've "been sorted", into Ravenclaw House.  I suspect that the Sorting Hat would have had rather a time making its decision, wondering whether to put me with the other duffers into Hufflepuff!  David, as you may remember, would be in Gryffindor.

For more answers to this week's Booking Through Thursday question, visit here.

Booking Through Thursday: Encore

Booking Through Thursday asks this week,

Almost everyone can name at least one author that you would love just ONE more book from. Either because they’re dead, not being published any more, not writing more, not producing new work for whatever reason . . . or they’ve aged and aren’t writing to their old standards any more . . . For whatever reason, there just hasn’t been anything new (or worth reading) of theirs and isn’t likely to be.

If you could have just ONE more book from an author you love . . . a book that would be as good any of their best (while we’re dreaming) . . . something that would round out a series, or finish their last work, or just be something NEW . . . Who would the author be, and why? Jane Austen? Shakespeare? Laurie Colwin? Kurt Vonnegut?

David asked me last night, "Where are your mystery books?" and I pointed to a shelf in the living room.  He was gone for some moments, then came back with not a mystery but Master and Commander, the first in the novels by Patrick O'Brian chronicling the adventures of Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin in the early 19th-century English navy, and basis for the brilliantly atmospheric if somewhat hodge-podge movie of the same name.  We sat together for a while, David reading and I knitting, but I kept glancing over at his book, and before long put my knitting away and picked up The Nutmeg of Consolation, fourteenth in the series.  Why I've left it so long, I can't say -- it's been two years at least since I read the previous book.  What was I thinking?

I was rewarded nearly at once by this, as the marooned sailors take a respite, from their hard work of building a schooner from the wreckage of their frigate, in a game of cricket:

"What Stephen did not fully appreciate was the degree of pleasure that Jack took in this particular ceremony.  As a captain Aubrey was exceedingly worried by the shortage of food and marine stores, particularly cordage, by the near absence of powder, and by the coming total absence of arrack and tobacco; but as a cricketer he knew that close concentration was necessary on any pitch, above all on one like this, which more closely resembled a stretch of white concrete than any Christian meadow, and when he came in second wicket down, the yeoman of the sheets having been bowled by the sergeant of the Marines for a creditable sixteen, he took centre and looked about him with an eager, piercing, predatory eye, tapping the block-hole with his bat, wholly taken up with the matter at hand." (p.11)

A masterful paragraph.  It conveys something of Jack's charisma as a leader, his dedication to his men, his attention to detail (when it concerns his ship, at least) and his sportsmanship and raw energy, with a nice touch of humor, and also something of Stephen's obtuseness when it comes to cricket (shadowed by his even greater denseness when confronted with naval terminology, which despite knowing umpteen languages and impossibly arcane minutiae of medical and zoological terminology, not to mention having spent by this time some dozen years at sea with Jack, remains a blank to him).  And it is of course, bar the opening line, all one sentence.

("Nutmeg of Consolation" is an honorific carried by the Sultan of Pulo Prabang (in the South China Sea), who features in the previous book, whose title is borrowed by Jack to christen his newest vessel, "a tight, sweet, newly-coppered, broad-buttocked little ship, a solace to any man's heart" (p.80).)

Patrick O'Brian died, alas, in 2000, and I am reading the fourteenth book in a series of twenty (twenty-one, if you count the one unfinished at his death), but even though I can console myself with the thought that I can certainly read the whole canon over again from the beginning once I've finished, there is a certain wistfulness that there are no more to be had.  One of the things I appreciate most about these novels is that despite the nearly-interminable amount of naval jargon, it isn't really necessary to know much of it.  One can infer from context that a topgallants are a kind of sail, and so on -- and more information can be found at The Gunroom and the aptly-named Guide for the Perplexed, or in any number of O'Brian lexicons -- and quite a lot is explained to Stephen as things go along! -- but even lubbers such as myself can simply enjoy such passages as this, "Royal masts were sent up and their sails were set upon them, very fine and delicate canvas too; and since the wind, a good steady topgallant breeze, was now abaft the beam, studdingsails too made their charming appearance, four on the weather side of the foremast and two on the main, with a crowd of staysails; spritsail and spritsail topsail, of course, with all the jibs that would stand, a noble array.  Presently skysails flashed out above the royals, and all hands watched the water rise high at the bows, sink to the copper abaft the forechains and then race hissing along her side, leaving a broad wake behind, stretching straight and true to the west by south" (p.110), which creates a fine picture in the mind's eye but does not hinder the storyline if rigging is a mystery.

Well, I could go on, but this post is quite long enough already, I suspect!  Suffice it to say that I recommend these books highly as brilliant and entertaining historical novels, with great depth of characterization and elegant prose.  Cracking good reads, too.  Give you joy, as Stephen Maturin might say, if you've yet to discover them!

Booking Through Thursday: Bookless

Booking Through Thursday has a new home and a new button --

This week, BTT asks about inspiration.

It happens even to the best readers from time to time… you close the cover on the book you’re reading and discover, to your horror, that there’s nothing else to read. Either there’s nothing in the house, or nothing you’re in the mood for. Just, nothing that “clicks.” What do you do?? How do you get the reading wheels turning again?

After I finished reading Linda Lear's excellent biography Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature a few weeks ago, I already had Judith Levine's Not Buying It in hand, thanks to Elizabeth of "A Mingled Yarn", who wrote a few weeks ago about the book, intriguing me enough to search out a copy -- that was easy enough!  Sometimes, all it takes to inspire me is a trip to the library, especially when I see a favorite author on the New Book shelf -- I came home with Claire Tomalin's book on Thomas Hardy the other day, and am looking forward to starting it this weekend.

Like with knitting, or with most things, really, I don't like to read when I'm not in the mood -- makes it seem like work, that way.  There are usually enough other things to either distract me for a while or keep me busy until the inspiration does come!

Booking Through Thursday: Location, Location, Location (Part 2)

Booking Through Thursday for today wants to know where we read --

Where do you do most of your reading? Your favorite spot?

I usually read on the sofa in our living room, a comfy two-seater in sagey-green velveteen bought at a huge discount when our local Laura Ashley shop closed some years back.  (Our loss was our gain, as it were, as we could not have afforded it otherwise.)  My second choice is the IKEA sofa in what we call the front bedroom, although it is in fact our TV room.  I try not to read in bed much, as I have occasional bouts of insomnia.   I don't think I have a favorite spot for reading, as such -- every spot for reading is a favorite spot! -- just a usual one.

I finished reading David Crane's Scott of the Antarctic a while back, and had to rush it back to the library some days late.  It is an interesting book, one that impressed me in a number of ways, and made me think, and want to linger over it.  I was delighted first of all by Crane's writing, with complex yet fluid sentences that made me realize how comma-starved I've become in these days of text messages and emails.  Here is one of my favorites, regarding Scott's meeting with his future wife, Kathleen: "Bernacchi [as an early biographer of Scott] reckoned that Scott had 'only a slender knowledge of women,' but it is fair to say that all the knowledge in the world would probably not have prepared him for the wonderfully tanned, determinedly virginal, twenty-eight-year-old sculptress with a passion for 'male babies' and a critical eye for a prospective father, just back from five months' vagabonding around Greece" (p.312).  How often does one actually laugh out loud at a book on Polar exploration? I ask you!  Subtle, humorous, and telling.

I was very impressed at Crane's ability to not only write interestingly and thoughtfully, but to balance the admirable and not-so-admirable aspects of Scott's character.  It did seem to be rather difficult at times, though, for him to tell enough of the story to keep the Antarctic-novice reader going.  I can imagine that it's hard when the writer knows the cast of characters so well to say, for example, "Crean" or "Lashly," and not realize that the reader has no idea who Crean or Lashly is.  (Even I wished for a little list at the back of the book.)  Crane at one point remarks on Scott's stomach troubles in a way that implies this was chronic, but it had not been mentioned to us before then.  On the other hand, Crane's ability to make the rather gorgonlike Kathleen Scott into a relatively sympathetic character can only increase my admiration for his abilities as a writer.  (In Kathleen's defense, I can only admit that most of my impressions of her come from the men's diaries, as biased and anti-feminist as most Edwardian men.) 

My first experience of the Capt. Scott story, as I've said before, was from the Roland Huntford book and television series -- definitely unflattering towards Scott -- and so my opinion of Scott was quite low for a long time, but after reading Crane's book, I think that Huntford is too hard on Scott, or at least unwilling to show the good side.  I wonder if our taste for gossipy, warts-and-all biographies (did the gallant Captain Oates really father a child at the age of twenty, with an eleven-year-old girl?) these days make us underappreciate the loyalty Scott inspired -- sadly lacking in so many of our public figures now, to our great cost.  Talking of the great Memorial Service at St. Paul's, Crane writes, "There are few things that more poignantly signal the remoteness of Dean Inge's age from our own, because while nothing is more inevitable or healthier than historical revisionism, what has happened to Scott's reputation requires some other label.  It might seem odd from this distance that neo-Georgian England should find in a Darwin-carrying agnostic of Scott's cast the type of Christian sacrifice, but the historical process that has shrunk the rich, complex and deeply human set of associations that once clustered round his story into an allegory of arrogance, selfishness and moral stupidity is every bit as extraordinary" (p.11).

While we can't forget that, as Huntford reminds us repeatedly, ponies and manhauling in the Antarctic lacks a great deal of common sense (to put it mildly), and that by association this lack is transferred to Scott himself with tragic results, we also must remember, as Crane points out not only elegantly but tellingly, that "In such a climate of doubt and self-questioning [as that of post-Industrial Revolution and pre-WWI England], the outpouring of national pride over Scott was no demonstration of imperialist triumphalism but its reverse, its militancy the militancy of weakness, its stridency the stridency of a country desperate for assurance that the moral qualities that once made it great were still intact" (p.9).  Huntford sees the mistakes -- huge mistakes, certainly -- while Crane sees the mistakes in context, which, while it doesn't excuse them, does go some way towards explaining them.  "The most tempting answer is suggested by the cultural and political overtones implicit in Trevor Griffiths' use [in "The Last Place on Earth" series] of the word 'Englishness,' because if Scott was once celebrated as the incarnation of everything an Englishman should be, he is now damned as the sad embodiment of everything he actually was" (p.12), in other words, an Englishman.  We do tend to lash out at the characteristics in other people that we most despise in ourselves, don't we.  The qualities that "made England great" -- duty, self-sacrifice, discipline, patriotism, hierarchy, as Crane lists them -- are now seen as less than admirable.  It's an interesting thought.