Time and the Marlows

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I have now read all the modern-day Marlow books I can lay my hands on, which is all but The Marlows and the Traitor (which I remember quite well from when I was 11 or so) and The Thuggery Affair (which I gather is no great loss).

I love these books and mourn the lack of any more. In fact: sorrow! I will probably read the Player ones on the strength of them. The characters are so well drawn and well understood and not always likeable either, which makes them feel very real (except for Giles whom I dislike for being so arrogant and full of himself--and unkind in Autumn Term; I hope he never marries) and I also like how we see a part of their lives with so much more having happened and about to. We'll never know what happened between Nicola and Esther when she went back to school, or how Judith recovered from Edward running away, or how Kay coped with her family, and after all, RL is untidy like that too.

Does anyone know whether AF had any plans for future books and what would have happened in them?

The one thing I find jarring in the books is the very obvious placement of each in a different time and often decade. Why did AF feel it was necessary? The mention of the war in the earlier ones is part of them and places them, as does Ginty having to go through an operator to phone London, but apart from that a reader could, if allowed to, imagine the books to be set in their own era; country life and boarding school haven't changed much. Kingscote in the 50s wasn't much different to my school decades later. So I find gratuitous references to the Beatles, Up Pompeii, punks, Morecombe and Wise etc not just jarring but unnecessary to the story and Pastede On. If the Marlows were watching TV without the programme being mentioned, I would just keep reading, but mention a specific programme for no reason and I stop in my tracks, disconcerted.

The deliberate insertion of current slang feels odd too, or is it just because it's no longer current? Did people really call clothes 'gear' back in the 70s? OTOH I do love what I assume is specifically Marlow family slang like natch, trimmensely (both of which I used as a kid), and sorrow. Come to think of it though, 'sorrow' can't be a Marlowism because Patrick says it too.

I'm curious about Peter's dreadful nickname of Binks. How do you get that from Peter? Is it a baby name they keep on calling him? I'm totally with him on his objections to it, but the others persist in using it. Is it some sort of common baby name in England that might stick? My mother had a friend called Bunty and I could never understand how she put up with it. [shudders]

Comments

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

The slang is a great, great weakness. I was a teenager at the time and associated with Rockers though I never was one, and much of the slang used is stuff that was around at the time; but it's "painting by numbers", mixed in with slang from their parents' generation and used in situations when it never would be - it was used to confuse and shut out other people. If it was necessary to communicate, everybody used whatever was standard for their families. It was an argot, not a dialect, and they would have been perfectly capable of communicating with others in a close approximation to Standard English if they needed to.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Were 'natch' and 'trimmensely' 50s slang or Marlows-only? I thought they might be the latter because they do appear in all the books.

If it was necessary to communicate, everybody used whatever was standard for their families.

That's what I'd have thought, and besides I can't imagine Patrick and the rather upper-class Marlows using it. Their own special words now, that would be different, like the odd nicknames used only at home. Gilly for Giles? Ha, he deserves that.

[lizarfau.livejournal.com]

Yes, people did use the word 'gear' for clothes in the 1970s.

The word "Sorrow" for "Sorry" is used in a play called The Ghost Train by Arnold Ridley, so I'm guessing it was common parlance in some circles, but I've never encountered it anywhere else.

I agree about the slang and the references to pop culture. For the most part, they are unnecessary. I can see why she set the Marlow books at the time they were written though - it's a choice series writers have to make: stick with the one time or move with the times. Sara Paretsky (VI Warshawski) and Sue Grafton (Kinsey Milhone/alphabet series) both began their detective series at around the same time, and the former has moved with the times, while the latter has stayed in the 1980s - and the latter one is somehow more irritating (to me, anyway). But yes, AF could have done it without the references to pop culture, which really do date the books more than was ever necessary.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yes, people did use the word 'gear' for clothes in the 1970s.

Really? All the time, or just about fashionable stuff? Sometimes less is more: had for example the clothes not been described, we would be free to imagine them as something current and appropriate. Black velvet with rosebud sprigs? Just no.

There are problems with Sara Paretsky's V I Warshawski too. Although I'm delighted she now has internet access and a mobile phone, I have great difficulty with Lottie being a doctor at what must now be almost 90.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

Yes to "gear" - in a London office in 1971 men talked about bringing in gear, meaning a change of shirt/shoes/tie for the evening.
I don't think that girls did.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Perhaps they meant it as 'equipment' as in being equipped for a night out? It doesn't seem right when the Marlows use it because they're (to me anyway) so very uncool and English county, much as I love them.

Was it any clothes, or just the really in stuff? :-)

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

I really like the movement in time! For me, it's part of what makes the books so interesting (from a literary point of view) and unusual.

I don't mind the slang, either - I simply read it as AF's idiolect. Perhaps not having been around in any of the periods she writes about makes that easier, since I'm likely to be less acutely aware of "trendy" words v. "Marlow" words.

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

I agree that it makes them interesting - I'm a sucker for timeslips, people placed in a world they cannot understand (which is the element I would advance if I ever wrote Marlows fanfic - though I don't think that is the right word for what I would come up with). But I also think it did for them in the end. Someone else suggested on here a couple of years ago that AF probably realised that Britain had changed too radically - ironically, partially because of a government hailed by its original supporters as a force to restore the old order - for the Marlows to be tenable anymore (mass culture having asserted itself over elite culture even among the elite, thus making young people such as the Marlows more or less a thing of the past even in *really* posh circles) and I think that's true. She trapped herself, in a way, not realising just what was going to happen - when she wrote 'Run Away Home' she probably thought, in common with most people who shared her worldview, that the new government was going to Make Everything Normal Again, rather than finally break whatever ties remained.

Had she continued to set the books in the immediate post-war years, I suspect that quite a few more would have been written.

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

It's the time-specific aspects of the novels I enjoy - though, in fairness, when I first read them aged nine or so, I was slightly flummoxed by the fact that books taking place over about eighteen months could include Ginty being claustrophobic from the Blitz, and swirly pea-green seventies tunics bought from pot-smoking youths. But I always found her huge frame of reference very appealing, even none of it bore any resemblance to my life in 1970s and 80s Ireland - I certainly had no idea who Morecambe and Wise were, or what Up Pompeii was (though I still find it hilarious that Patrick watches it), not more than I knew the 'Lyke-Wake Dirge' or anything about Ariel and Prospero, or what 'Mirabile dictu' meant. I think it's one of the things, as well as her gift for characterisation and dialogue, that makes her such a rich novelist, and I think the Marlow books would lose enormously if (as I gather was suggested by some editor at some point - others here would know better than I do) they were to be reissued in a version which omits the specific slang and cultural references of their various periods.

(Having said that, The Thuggery Affair is the one I never re-read.) The Elizabethan books are wonderful, though, if you haven't read them.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

books taking place over about eighteen months could include Ginty being claustrophobic from the Blitz, and swirly pea-green seventies tunics bought from pot-smoking youths.

I think of it as a kind of magic realism. Makes no sense but is rather enchanting. (Parallels with Virginia Woolf's Orlando also possible, which is the book that confused me at fourteen.)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

A lot of the Marlows' world is strange to me (though not the boarding school part), like their enormous knowledge of and fascination for Christmas legends (e.g. animals kneeling at midnight) and literature even though only two or three have any belief. The hunting and dance parties are the most alien though.

The Elizabethan books are wonderful, though, if you haven't read them.

They are next on my list if the library system has them.

FWIW I love her writing style, and did as a child too.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

"Gear" was used as a noun for clothes, definitely. As an adjective (as Ginty uses it), not to my knowledge; but I don't think AF would have used it if it hadn't been used in some circles . Apart from the Thuggery with its made-up slang, I don't think anything was said or done which couldn't have been said or done in real life.

I think leaving out the "pop culture" references would definitely have detracted from the characterisations. I was thinking the other day about Nicola Marlow compared with Harry Potter - there's probably more written about HP than NM, but we know vastly more about her than him. And knowing she watches Morecambe & Wise (at least, when she's in the same universe as they are!) is part of it. I think it's because of these otherwise irrelevant details that we get to know the characters so well.

Binks? I don't think we ever get a back story on that one. Sometimes these names come from the child being unable to say its own name, or having a particular fondness for a certain sound, at age 2 or so. It's just another "irrelevant detail".

As for plans for other books, there are various threads on here with snippets, but it seems that the next book was at least half written and set partly at Trennels, partly at Kingscote, in the following term. But I've no idea of the details, especially re. the Esther/Nicola situation. I gather Buster was due to drop dead fairly soon, though.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yes, I saw he was originally to die at the end of RAH, and I agree with the editor that it would have detracted from the near tragedy. I like the sudden way it ends too, which feels more modern than the slang.

Hmm. I hadn't thought of it adding to character rather than plot; thanks. I thought the TV programs were just added to fix the story in time, but I can see that Nicola would enjoy comedy. I admit though to being somewhat puzzled that the too-serious and very Catholic Patrick would like the broad innuendo of 'Up Pompeii' and that Lawrie would enjoy horror. Perhaps it's all right if it's not happening to her. :-)

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Binky is a common name for a pet (eg Death's horse in Terry Pratchett), or for a blanket/toy that a small child carries around. So calling the new baby Binky isn't too much of a stretch - I did wonder if it was a traditional name particularly for a pet rabbit (Peter Rabbit, geddit?) but that's probably too much of a stretch.

So yes, it's like Bunty - a not-unheard-of old-fashioned kids' nickname. Although some girls seem to have actually been named Bunty, like the classic girls' comic, or Bunty Penfold [?] in the Second at Kingscote. I wonder if it's a shortening of Elizabeth?

With all the repeats on telly and parents/family yakking on about Blitz spirit and rationing, I never noticed the odd timeline when I read the school stories in the late 80s - except for the currency, they could easily have been contemporary with my going to boarding school. The phone operator confused me, but I thought it was like the school switchboard. And the descriptions of some of the outfits sounded odd, but that was it.

I rather like the Thuggery Affair, but if you find the slang and pop culture in the others jarring, you're more likely to hate it!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I like it being a sideways slip from Peter Rabbit. Thanks! I'd have nipped that one in the bud at about 7 though. :-)

Perhaps the more modern slang jars with me because they're the sort of people who would be at home in the Ransome books. I do like their special family words like natch and trimmensely though; at least they feel like family slang. It's hard to express why the other time-specific stuff feels tacked-on, but I think it's because every other aspect (school, Christmas, hawking, hunting) is so very traditional and much more timeless.

But hey, these are now among my favourite books. It's really just a quibble. :-)

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

The updating is slightly odd, as the Marlow's traditional values do work better before the cultural revolutions of the sixties. AF does appear to want to explore social change, though, as she first updates in The Thuggery Affair which has a contemporary setting eg mid-sixties, and I think she wrote a short preface saying how much everything has changed since the forties - men on the moon etc. Once she did it I suppose she thought she had to keep to the updated idea but some things do seem pretty strange - eg Patrick's opinions for a teenage boy in the seventies. Possibly she stopped writing after Run Away Home because she believed she was too much of a reactionary old fogey or just too old to keep up with changes in teenage culture in the 80s (she obviously tried before) - I don't know, but I always wished that there were more books.

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

Agreed - especially re. Patrick's extreme form of young fogeyism (which is basically a mouthpiece for AF's own views - a 60-year-old woman's voice coming out of a teenage boy will always seem strange). I've said several times that AF felt trapped by the changes in the 1980s (which were really far more profound than anything before - radical Conservatism, which supplanted and marginalised the many real MPs of the ilk Patrick's father came from, changed more things in the end than any form of social democracy had) and that this was the main reason why there were no successors to RAH. Had the books stayed in the post-war era, I remain strongly convinced that there would have been more.

It's only a superficial reference, but she first mentions television in Peter's Room, I think - but she has a representative of the servant classes having a TV and the Marlows not. This is quite accurate for the UK in 1961, when there was a vast wariness of technological innovation among the landed elite (which Thatcherites believed was every bit as responsible for Britain's industrial decline as militant trade unionists had been) and much less of a correlation between who had the most money and who were the earliest adopters of new technology than is the case now. Sydney Newman, the Canadian expat who exposed many of Britain's internal contradictions at this point as producer of the TV strand 'Armchair Theatre' (and was later, among much else, the man behind the beginning of Doctor Who), commented that when he saw the dominance of plays about the upper class on early British TV, he thought "damn the upper classes - they don't even own televisions!" And that was quite an accurate comment at the time - TV was embraced by the supposed "lower orders" but seen as vulgar and "American" (in those circles, still ringing with the humiliation of Suez, the worst possible insult back then) by the old landed elite, so the situation in Peter's Room is quite realistic for its post-Suez, pre-Beatles times.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, so do I. I'm sad that I've only got the Players books to read now (if the library has them).

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

Agreed, although I found Patrick's young fogeyism a lot less peculiar (or liable to look as though he were just AF's mouthpiece) after I met Young Tory undergraduates at Oxford in the 90s. Their short-back-and-sides haircuts, dateless clothes, conservatism, and passion for the Latin mass were pure Patrick, without the golden eyes and the charm (that appeals to Nicola and Ginty, anyway - I remain uncharmed by Patrick).

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

However odd the updating can get, I wouldn't want the references removed, though -they are how AF wrote the books and I agree that they add to the characterization to some extent - even if Patrick does sometimes seem prematurely middle aged. Maybe this is a bit off the point but I do think that the atmosphere of Peter's Room is a little more fifties than late forties when it is supposed to be set - eg Ginty's dress, which sounds fifties, although I suppose it could be very advanced New Look from London. I'm pretty sure that The Cruel Sea was published early fifties as well. That was only a small slip up, but I wonder if someone pointed it out to AF and she decided she might as well update for the next one - she could reference books TV etc with no problem which can be one of the more enjoyable aspects of the books - they couldn't have been reading Tolkien, Mary Renault etc in the forties (although I consider that interest in social change was likely to be the main reason). The updating would make a TV series of the books difficult though - I'm not sure how it would be done (and probably won't) but I suggest early to mid-sixties, a world that was changing rapidly, but still traditional for many families.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't want anything removed either; that was her choice. I just happened to find it jarring and wondered why she felt the need to use slang and TV programs when not having anything particularly current would enable the reader to assume present-day (as I was able to when I reread "A Wrinkle in Time" last month).

I found "Peter's Room" the least dated of the non-school ones as there was little placement in time IIRC, and the children were cut off by weather and involved in their own role-playing. The school ones stand up well as the environment is very much that of my own boarding school (which I however hated, being an uninvolved Jan Scott type).

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

Sorry - I wrote the above before reading your comment - but we seem to be thinking pretty alike about Peter's Room and AF's interest in social change. Despite it's possibly slightly ambiguous setting (before AF had officially updated) i still think it's possibly the most interesting book over all. If it was to be adapted on it's own, I'd probably set it in it's implied setting - late fifties. I couldn't remember the Mrs Bertie's TV. I do remember the Marlows and Patrick later seeming to be quite enthusiastic TV watchers - but you are probably right - as an innovation it hadn't been quite accepted yet.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

I've always like the different times, and the references to TV programmes and so on. I only read three of the school setting books (Autumn Term, End of Term, and The Cricket Term) as a child as that was all my library had, so I think I just accepted it then. Reading the rest of the books of an adult, the changing settings intrigued. Mary Gentle does something similar in some of her books (Rats and Gargoyles, The Architecture of Desire, Scholars and Soldiers, Left to His Own Devices), with the same characters in different settings. The Architecture of Desire has a parallel Restoration; in Left to His Own Devices, there are computers. I think it was part of the charm of the books to see what the characters took on for each setting. The slang just struck me as a group idiolect, peculiar to this group of friends and family and their setting, adopting some from the wider world, and some, like 'trimmensely', as a blend word, like 'ginormous', that was just part of their vocabulary. Their world, boarding school, hunting, riding, estate owning, was alien to me, and the language use was part of that.

The slang in The Thuggery Affair makes it one of the hardest books to read, but I think that's because a lot of it was made up by AF for that book, rather than trying to use current slang. But there's scenes in that book that definitely make me glad I've read it. I think it's worth the slog!

I'm curious about Peter's dreadful nickname of Binks.

I wondered if it was one of those nicknames that people use to refer to a baby before the baby born, and then the name sticks. Friends of friends used to call the pregnancy bump/baby 'Binkle', and I doubt very much if they'd read AF, so I assumed it's just the kind of name that gets used in that situation. Said friends had a lot of difficulty calling the baby by his proper name when he arrived, so I wondered if it were a similar situation with Peter. I'm not sure how much that fits with the characters of Commander and Mrs Marlow though!

The Oxford Dictionary of First Names (eds Hanks and Hodges, 1990) tells me that Bunty is a nickname, occasionally a given name, popular in the early 20th century, of uncertain derivation, but most likely from a dialectal pet name for a lamb (they don't say which dialect) from the word 'bunt', meaning to butt gently. It doesn't strike me as being any worse than Buffy as a name. :-) The Guinness Book of Names (Dunkling, 1995) doesn't include Bunty in the first name statistics lists, which means it was used as given name for less than 1 in 10,000 births from 1900 to 1990.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

The boarding school part was familiar to me, and I sometimes used to spend holidays on different friends' farms, but the hunting and the society the Marlows move in is alien to me too. I like what I assume to be Marlowisms, the ones that are constant throughout the books, especially trimmensely and natch (which I tried to adopt as a kid). It's just that the Beatles and Top of the Pops etc seem to be tacked on. I did sympathise with Nicola and Lawrie wanting modern clothes instead of hand-me-downs though, even if they sounded ghastly. :-)

Binks does seem to be a baby name, but it seems awfully late for Peter to reject it. My sister was Jimpy because I couldn't say Jennifer, but that was gone well before we went to school.

My mother's friend had a real name but chose to be called Bunty which I could never understand. Eh, to each their own!

[owl]

I was not at all surprised by 'Binks'. My sister and I are still called by our baby names into our twenties. She did make an effort to get rid of hers as a teenager, but we never quite managed it.

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

My father called his sisters by their baby-names until the day of their deaths.... and I think he still calls me by mine!

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I read somewhere (in the introduction to one of the GGP editions?) that AF was working on a new Marlows story up to her death? Or at least that she had an outline of the next, or something? I'm sure in my own mind that she would eventually have resolved the Patrick/Nicola/Ginty situation.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I wish I knew what she had planned. I rather hope that if any childhood crushes carry on into adulthood that Ginty and Patrick pair up because Nicola can do better--and I'm not talking about marriage either. She wants to travel and have adventures, not be tied down. Besides, Patrick's so stuffy.

I want to know what happened with Esther and Nicola and how they all did in later years at school and afterwards. Ah well.

And the library doesn't have the Players books. :-(