Eye - 19 October 2012
From Friendly influences to 'roar and run'
The influence of Friends
Together we’ve been discovering Quaker quotes and references scattered throughout literature.
However, Eye was fascinated to learn of the influence of Friends in the life of Dorothy Richardson, not just on what was written but the writer herself.
Su Johnston piqued Eye’s interest: ‘Dorothy Richardson, writing from 1895 onwards, earned her very poor living latterly as a journalist, her friends in London being avant garde intellectuals, socialists and anarchists. She was “collected” by H G Wells as one of his lovers. In the last of her four volumes of semi-autobiographical novels, she goes to Cornwall, in poor health, to stay on a farm owned by Quakers. She describes the Quaker attitudes of that time – and a remembrance of sitting in a sunlit Meeting, when a little girl munched her way through a biscuit from a paper bag, with general acceptance from the otherwise-silent Friends. Alas, falling in love, and being asked to marry by a Quaker, she felt she had to tell him she had been Wells’ lover – and that was the end of that… but not of her story. The whole of it is called Pilgrimage, and is the earliest stream of consciousness style novels, besides being a fascinating picture of London life at the turn of last century.’
In delving even further into Dorothy’s story, Eye discovered that she also wrote two books on Quakers, both published in 1914 but written during her time with Friends in 1913. Bryony Randall, of the University of Keele, has written that Dorothy became ‘the writer we now know her as, during the time she spent thinking and writing about Quakers’.
Eva Tucker, another academic, suggests ‘it was her time with the Quaker family that strengthened her inner resources, making her free to “Travel, while I write, down to that centre where everything is seen in perspective, serenely”.’
For Fox… the great adventure, the abstraction from all externality, the purging of the self, the Godward energizing of the lonely soul, was in the end, as it has been in all the great ‘actives’ among the mystics, the most practical thing in the world, and ultimately fruitful in life-ends.
- Dorothy Richardson
Roar and run
Who hasn’t encountered a little tot screaming blue murder in the street or a shop?
Leslie Fuhrmann, of Worthing Meeting, has come up with an unusual approach to such tantrums.
‘I have started to bend low close to the child, giving a sudden growl, accompanied by a smile to the parent. It usually works, either by the distraction of surprise, or the child realises suddenly “Woops, it’s not just Dad and me, the world is watching!” On one lovely occasion a little boy responded by laughing and I left him and his father alternately roaring and laughing at each other… Of course there have been a couple of occasions when a Mum took umbrage. Following the principle “Least said, soonest mended”, I tend to walk swiftly away.’
Hartshill
A further discovery in our hunt for Quakers in literature!
This week Diana Beddoes, of Southern Marches Area Meeting, offers: ‘The early part of Dinah Craik’s novel John Halifax, Gentleman is set in the home of a Quaker tanner and the narrator is Quaker. Perhaps it is significant that the author was born in Hartshill.’
Joyce and Fox
Tim Jerram has been in touch to give us a glimpse into the story behind the ‘Quaker librarian’ in Ulysses (7 September):
‘The librarian you mention was based on Thomas William Lyster (1855-1922) who was indeed a Friend (and well known for being so) and was librarian of the National Library of Ireland 1895-1920… The librarian is also described as “friendly and earnest” so Joyce is making a pun on the name of the Society of Friends and echoing a common view of Quakers. In the chapter in which he appears there are several references to George Fox… “Christfox and leather trews” and “ladies of justices” and to Quaker usages such as “he thous and thees her”… it seems that Joyce had at least some knowledge of Fox’s Journal.’
Alternatives
This week Paul Honigmann offers:
‘The feeling of the Meeting’
Shaking hands after a period of Quaker worship.
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