Arthurian names II

Some male Arthurian names have become popular but many of them are too long, and hard to pronounce and "medieval sounding" to have any attraction for people nowadays. However there are a few that are still liked. The name Arthur is still popular and was very much more so in Victorian times. The Arthurian legends were a big part of Victorian artistic culture. Most Pre Raphaelite painters used the stories as subjects for their work and Tennyson’s Idylls of the King cycle of poems was massively popular. The name’s meaning is obscure however.  It may be from the Celtic word Artos meaning Bear or possibly, since Arthur may have been from Roman stock, it may come from the clan name Artorios. It can be abbreviated to Art or Artie… and is still used. In the Victorian era, the Duke of Wellington was called Arthur, which made the name popular. The Duke became godfather to Arthur Duke of Connaught, one of Queen Victoria’s sons… Lancelot is the faulty knight who in spite of great talents and is unable to resist his love for Guenevere, Arthur’s queen. His name is obscure, it may come from L’ancelle, meaning “servant” or it may be a Celtic name which has been altered beyond recognition through the French language. It is less popular than Arthur but in modern times the variant Lance has been used. One of Arthur’s nephews is Gawain who is a hero in his own right. Although Gawain is supposed to be from Scotland, the name is Welsh in origin. It is probably dervied from Gwalchmai meaning Hawk of May… However in modern times the Scottish version Gavin has been very popular. Geraint and Gareth are also names of Arthur’s knights, and may come from the same origin possibly meaning “old”… One of the less attractive knights in the story is “Sir Kay”, who is in most versions Arthur’s foster brother. Kay is something of a bully… But his name may come from the Roman name Caius which has been occasionally used.

Arthurian names

There are many names in the Arthurian story cycle that are rarely if ever used, such as Galahad, the name of Lancelot's son.. but there are others which have become popular. Its hard to decipher where the names come from as they may be Celtic names which were altered when the stories were written down in French..  There is a Welsh name, Elain which means fawn or hind, which may be the original name of the character Elaine. Elaine itself is a version of the French name Helene, which in English is Helen or Helena. Elaine is the name of the Maid of Astolat who falls in love with Lancelot but he does not care for her because of his illicit love for Guenevere. In some versions of the story she tricks him into a sexual encounter and conceives Galahad, or he marries her which makes Guenevere jealous). Guenevere's name means White (Gwyn) and "smooth or yielding". and has never been all that popular as a name. It is sometimes abbreviated to Gwen. Other variants which were more popular are Jennifer (a Cornish version) or Gaynor or Ginevra. Another woman character is Nimue, the enchantress who lures Merlin into imprisonment and sleep In some versions of the story she is portrayed as a girl who falls in love with Merlin and learns his secrets of wisdom and magic.. and looks after him till he dies. In modern stories, her name is often given as Ninian which was the name of a Pictish saint. Nimue is one of the names which is rarely if ever used. Ironically the most unsympathetic woman character in the Arthurian saga has a name which has become quite popular in modern days, particularly in the US. Morgan is a name used by girls and boys, though I think its now more common as a girl's name. Another variant of it is Morgana. Morgan le Fey was portrayed particularly in the 19th century as the evil enchantress who hated Arthur and tried to destroy him who learned Magic from Merlin but used it for bad purposes. The name comes from Mor, meaning sea and "Cant" meaning circle or edge.. so it is related to the sea... Morgan is Arthur's older half sister in some versions who lures him unwittingly into a liaison which produces Mordred his illegitimate son. Mordred hates his father and tries to take over power from him... I hope to write some more about Arthurian names in another blog post....

Emily Bronte Part V

Emily seems to have been a lot happier once she came home and devoted herself to keeping house and to her writing.  Charlotte's second spell in Brussels was not successful.  She fell in love with M Heger, the husband of the mistress of the school and although the relationship was quite innocent, she ended up coming home, and being miserable for some time afterwards.  She was so inexperienced in matters of the heart that she may not have realised that she was falling in love with a married man.  Emily however never seems to have cared for any real life man or anyone apart from her sisters and her father and brother. She observed the few people that she knew well and mulled over their emotional attachments. She dwelt on the intense passionate loves that she saw or heard about, and what she read in books and heard in stories about the Yorkshire people.. so that while inexperienced in love, she pondered on it and wrote about it. 

She heard stories of the past in Yorkshire, from her father and Tabby Ackroyd, the housekeeper who had nursed most of the children... about family feuds and love affairs and these all went into the cauldron out of which she created Wuthering Heights. Emily's family were going through a difficult time in the years after her return from Brussels.. but she herself was contented with her work as housekeeper and writing. Charlotte was unhappy about her friendship with Heger having ended in disaster and while the girls still tried to set up their school, they didn't get any interest. It was clear that the school scheme would never come to fruition. The girls went on with their writing and at the end of each day, they talked and walked round the parlour, but Emily was secretive and did not share all her poetry even with her sisters. One day Charlotte accidentally came across some of her poems and was struck by how good they were, as she said, they were unlike the poetry women generally write”. Emily’s work was rough hewn and emotional. Charlotte was desperate for something active to do, and she tried to persuade her sister that the poems were good and should be published. Emily was angry at her privacy being intruded on, but Anne produced some of her poems and indicated that she would be interested in trying to get them published. Emily took some persuasion but she gave in and the girls began to work on their poetry, editing their work and choosing the best ones of all three of them. They found a publisher and paid for them to be published in book format, but the work failed. It attracted some critical attention but only sold 2 copies. Emily was by now working on Wuthering Heights, her one serious work, and was less hostile now to the idea of publishing. Charlotte was always the ambitious sister, willing in spite of her shyness, to put forward her work.

Emily Bronte Part IV

Charlotte had taken jobs as a governess and knew how difficult it was, for a woman of her intelligence to live in someone else's home, to put up with spoiled children, and to be snubbed by the parents who were often rude to governesses and saw them as social inferiors to be exploited and overworked. Emily stayed home most of the time, not taking any jobs, outside, but she did earn her keep by helping with the housekeeping. The girls decided that if they set up a school, they would need more education and accomplishments. So they wished to go and work and learn at a school abroad. Charlotte had made friends at Miss Woolers with Mary Taylor, the daughter of a rich businessman, who was now attending a school in Brussels. She loged to have some similar experience. So she asked her Aunt Branwell to lend them some money to go to a Brussels school. It was decided that Emily should go with Charlotte and that Anne might attend later. Emily knew that she would not really enjoy living abroad and going away from her home.. but she agreed to it, to try and help Charlotte to avoid the misery of being a governess. It's not clear how practical was the school scheme. Charlotte said that Emily might not want to teach but she would run things and keep house. The parsonage was not very big and Patrick was reclusive in his habits, and Branwell was not likely to be any help. So it's possible that the school would never have worked out. Aunt Branwell was however willing to lend money and the girls went off to Brussels. Emily does not seem to have been happy in Brussels. She took advantage of the opportunity to learn more, she worked hard and won some admiration from the husband of Madame Heger. In spite of her intelligence, she had been a terrible speller, and she probably benefitted from a more rigid teaching scheme.She taught music to younger pupils, and wrote several essays in French which have survived. She did not seem to care for the city or the other pupils and was reluctant to go and meet other British people who lived in Brussels. Charlotte went though she was shy but Emily clearly hated socialising and after a time refused to go. She was abrupt and gruff with people and just wanted to use the time to study and improve her writing, so she made no friends at the school or in the English community. When Aunt Branwell became ill and died, the girls returned home. Emily never left again. She devoted herself to her writing and took over the housekeeping.. assisted by the aging Tabby and a couplee of young girls.. including one called Martha Brown.

Emily Bronte Part III

Emily’s short time at Miss Wooler’s school set a pattern for her life. She rarely left home, and seemed to become ill and unhappy when she did so. For a short time in 1838 when she was 20, she worked at a school as a teacher, but her health broke down and she returned to Haworth. The Brontes’ servant, their nanny and housekeeper Tabitha Ackroyd, was getting older, and Emily began to take over the work of housekeeping. Aunt Branwell was getting older also, and Emily seemed to enjoy the practical side of keeping house, helping with the cooking and cleaning. However it had always been expected that the girls would go out as governesses or teachers and earn their living… as Patrick had little money to leave them. Miss Branwell had made a will dividing her own small fortune among the 3 girls. Their brother Branwell was at first considered to be the cleverest of the children. Patrick had taught him himself, and knew he was an intelligent boy, and he also had a talent for painting. However when Branwell tried to set up as a painter in a nearby city, things didn’t work out well. He got few commissions and began more and more to seek amusement in drinking and talking with his male friends. The girls had always made sacrifices for him, as he was meant to be the one who would be a success in life and who would provide for his sisters when Patrick was gone. However it was becoming apparent that in spite of his genuine intelligence, Branwell had personality problems -he could not be depended on…and that he was not likely to make his fortune as an artist or writer. The girls began to try to plan for some way of of earning a living. They thought of opening a school, which would mean that they were in charge and could control their lives and reap all the profits…

Emily Bronte Part II

Emily continued her education at home after the disastrous time at Cowan Bridge. She was intelligent and Patrick Bronte was a well educated man who allowed his daughters to read freely...They loved books and reading and were eager to educate themselves. Then they began to make up stories about a set of toys that Patrick brought them home from a trip to town. They read the newspapers and were eager supporters of the Duke of Wellington, and they based the stories at first on what they read in the news. Creating a private world of fiction wasn't uncommon for some literary children in the 19th century.. but the Brontes took it to great lengths. They not only wrote down and acted out their stories but they also created little magazines got up to look like printed ones. It was obvious that all four of them were going to write. After a time, where they all joined in writing stories of Angria, the world they had created, Emily and Anne withdrew from the partnership and created their own fictional island of Gondal... All the Brontes were interested in love and heroism and they lauded the wild and free world they had created over the narrow civilised world. Most of Emily's poems from Gondal have not survived but her land was ruled by queens, and women were powerful and passionate in her fiction. However in real life, Emily was shy and awkward and had little interest in other people outside her family. All the Brontes were shy. Branwell was the most sociable and he made male friends with whom he socialised in pubs.  The girls were more restricted and met few people. Charlotte had gone to school in her teens, this time to Miss Wooler's school. However Emily went there for a short time and was so unhappy that she became ill and had to go home.

Emily Bronte part I

 I’ve often toyed with the idea of writing a novel about Emily Bronte, but so little is known about her life that it is difficult.  There have been a few works but I haven’t enjoyed any of them.  Bronte left almost nothing after her early death but her one novel Wuthering Heights and some poetry.

She wrote very few letters, had no personal friends outside the family and seemed content with a very narrow and isolated life in Haworth Yorkshire.

She was born in 1818, to an Irish father Patrick Bronte and a Cornish mother, Maria Branwell.  The family moved to Haworth when she was a small child, and soon afterwards her mother died.

The loss of her mother may have been a trauma for her, as she was very young but just old enough to have memories of Maria…

Elizabeth Branwell, Maria’s sister, came to live in the parsonage to look after the 6 children and was a good but unimaginative woman. They were grateful for her help and care but she never seems to have become very close to any of them and probably found Yorkshire cold and isolated.  

She had come from a middle class family in Cornwall who had had  a reasonable social life..and in Yorkshire, the Brontes were not that well off and did not socialise much.  Patrick was an intelligent and unusual man, who also liked to try his hand at writing fiction and poems - but he had his oddities and became increasingly reclusive after the death of his wife. He worked hard and was devoted to his clerical duties but apart from some church related socialising he lived quietly.  He ate apart from the children who were all shy and who were somewhat nervous outside the family circle. Emily seems to have resembled her father to some extent in being intelligent but unusual and reclusive.

Then when she was only 6, another disaster overtook the family.  She was sent to school with her older sisters, to a small private school for girls which was cheap but promised education for the daughter of impoverished clergymen. Patrick was conscious that although his job as curate of Haworth brought in a modest income, he had no money to leave for his girls and so they would probably have to become governesses. He wanted them to get a good education, and sent them to Cowan Bridge school.  The school was badly run however and the children were ill treated, badly fed and cared for.  Within a few months the 2 older girls Maria and Elizabeth, became ill and both were removed from the school and died at home.  Charlotte and Emily were also brought home and Patrick was reluctant to send them away again.

Charlotte never forgot the school, and blamed the people who ran it for her sisters’ death and her own poor health.  Emily said nothing about it, but it may well have a been a second trauma in her life, to have seen her sisters grow ill and die, and seen the cruelty and neglect at the school.  Her one novel touches on cruelty to children In the harshness with which Heathcliff is treated as an orphan and a “gypsy” child..

M/F

 

Gatsby

Fitzgerald originally intended the book to be called Trimalcho, after a freed slave in ancient Rome, who makes money.  It ended up as a modern morality tale about a poor boy who walks out on his impoverished family and re invents himself as a gentleman by becoming an officer in the Army and serving in the War.  He goes to Oxford for a short time and on his return to America, he makes a fortune.  However its clear that he has made his money by very dubious means, working with gangsters and the men who fixed the World Series in baseball, a shocking scandal at the time in America. He lives an extravagant life with vulgar loud parties and conspicuous consumption and hopes by befriending Nick Carraway that he can meet with and renew his affair with Daisy.  He does so, because Daisy is unhappy with Tom, who is unfaithful to her, and has never entirely forgotten Gatsby.. though her husband makes it clear that he thinks that Gatsby is vulgar and dubious...She is drawn back to Gatsby, and her attraction towards him is mingled with her materialistic desires.. He is now rich and glamourous as well as the man who has loved her.  

Nick is embarrassed to be embroiled in the affair but has grown fond of Gatsby, and wants him to be happy.  He is also drawn into a romantic flirtation with Jordan Baker even though he knows she is casually dishonest. 

Tom pursues his affair with Myrtle Wilson who lives with her husband, in a working class district near to the Gatsby house.  Myrtle is in love with him and desperate to get away from her dull husband but to Tom she is just an amusement.  Wilson becomes suspicious of his wife's behavior and to get away from him she rushes into the road.  She is knocked down by a car which doesn't stop.  Wilson is distraught at her death, he is a lonely man with no friends or family.. and loved his wife in his way.  Nick realises that the car that killed Myrtle was Gatsby's car and he finds out that Daisy was driving.. However Tom who is by now aware of his wife's relationship with Gatsby tells Wilson who owned the car. He doesn't realize that Daisy was actually driving.  Wilson in a rage shoots Gatsby, and it is only then after his death that Nick finds out the details of Gatsby's past life, of how he came from a poor family, and got into crime and dubious behaviour to escape poverty. Gatsby's elderly father turns up to see his dead son, but noone comes to the funeral although in the days of parties, there were hundreds of guests at the house.  Daisy seems to shrug off her affair with her lover and returns to her marriage to Tom.. 

Nick is shocked by  Tom and Daisy's indifference and carelessness, an illustration of Fitzgerald's maxim that the "very rich are different to you and me" because they can shelter from the consequences of their bad behaviour by using their money to protect them... and that as a result, they develop a callousness and lack of conscience. He organises Gatsby's funeral, and is pained at the way that nobody turned up apart from old Mr Gatz, Gatsby's father...He feels that in spite of Gatsby's involvement in crime, he was at least capable of love for Daisy and was more generous than most of the people who hung off him.  He remembers Jordan's dishonesty and he decides to leave the East and go back West...where the old American values are still honoured.   

M/F

Harlan Howard Three Chords and the Truth

 Harlan Howard was one of the most prolific country song writers.  He was born in 1927 in Detroit, Michigan.  He was brought up on a farm and like most country children one of the few entertainments available was listening to the Grand Old Opry on the radio.  He loved the music and started to write his own songs at an early age.  He left school early, already and eventual joined the US army.

After his time in the army, he began to write songs and worked at various jobs, to earn a living while he tried to get them sold.  He's famous for defining country music as "three chords and the truth."  It was a simple form of music, but what made it special was that it was about the truth of human life and emotion......It was about ordinary people and  their problems and stories....

In the late 1950s after a few years of struggle, Harlan began to sell songs that were successful.  His first hit was Pick Me Up on Your Way Down, a jaunty love song about a girl who mixes with the rich but will return to her old lover when they fail her.... .  He then had another success when Ray Price had a big hit with Heartaches by the Number.  He moved to Nashville in 1960 and signed a writing contract and had a great deal of success in the 1960s.  He was married more than once and one of his wives was the country singer Jan Howard...

He understood music and loved country, because it was a truthful take on ordinary people's lives, about the problems that they had, not big ones but little ones like loving someone who didn't return your love, poverty and worrying about your children, infidelity, divorce, heartache and pain... Another of his big hits was Busted which was recorded by Johnny Cash, about a man who is falling into poverty...and one of his greatest songs was the Patsy Cline number I Fall to Pieces.  

He lived in Nashville and died there in 2002.  

F Scott Fitzgerald Part III

Fitzgerald began to work on the Great Gatsby, a novel about a man who (Like himself) loves a girl who is from a richer family, and who sacrifices his whole life in order to try and win her love. Gatsby is from the Mid west, from a poor family, but he tries to improve himself and make money. Then like Fitzgerald, he goes into the army, and he does serve in Europe during the War. He meets Daisy Fay - a Southern Belle, whose family think he’s not rich enough or grand enough for her. Daisy seems to return his love but she is volatile and swayed by her family.  While Gatsby is posted off to service in France, she marries Tom Buchanan, a rich member of the WASP elite. They live abroad for a couple of years and have a daughter and are distantly related to Nick Carraway, the narrator of the book. When Nick moves to New York, he rents a cottage on Long Island, and starts to work in the bonds business. He reconnects with Daisy and her husband, but he is bewildered by their marriage which seems to be in trouble. Tom is a former college athlete, not very clever, who has racist and right wing views. Tom also has a mistress, a working class married woman called Myrtle Wilson whom he takes to New York and invites Nick to join them on their pleasure excursions. Nick being a Mid Westerner from “provincial conservative America” is a little shocked by Tom’s behaviour. He can see that Daisy is unhappy. She has a friend, Jordan Baker, a well to do society girl who plays in golf tournaments. He notes that there were rumours of Jordan cheating at her games, but he feels that “dishonesty in a woman” is not of much importance. In the early part of the novel, he is fascinated by the morals or lack of them of postwar America and New York, later he will become more moralistic. He has travelled some distance mentally from his family in the West, who had made a comfortable fortune from a business, which was based on solid goods and services. However the bonds business is a new area of work. He is learning about it as he goes along and is aware of its strangeness and fragility, and that it is not related to real life work and business. It is about the manipulation of money and selling bits of paper…and it will lead to the Wall St Crash at the end of the 20s. The book is a short one but the plot is complicated.  Nick finds that his neighbour is Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire who holds parties in his fancy mansion every weekend. He has all sorts of people at them, actresses, society people. Nick wonders about him, as noone seems to know the source of his wealth. It's rumoured that he’s a bootlegger or that his money has come from some other dubious source. He and Nick are similar in that their money comes from something that noone understands...Nick finds that Jay is using him to get to meet with Daisy, and that Daisy was the girl to whom he was engaged, when he was posted down south during the War. Jay went on to serve in France, but on returning to America, he found that Daisy had married Tom Buchanan. He still loves her and wants her back. Daisy left him because he was not wealthy or blue blooded, he acquires great wealth and creates a party social lifestyle in hopes that he will be able to attract her back and make her love him again.

F Scott Fitzgerald and the Great Gatsby

 Fitzgerald’s work in advertising helped to give him an income.   Still  Zelda was afraid that he wasn’t well off enough to support her.  Her family were dubious about him, because of his heavy drinking and his Catholicism, and were not sure that he was a suitable husband. She broke off the engagement, and he continued to write, in spite of his worries and problems.

However within a short time he managed to complete his first full novel This Side of Paradise and it was a bigger success than he might have hoped for.

They were able to marry and Zelda became pregnant.  

Fitzgerald based many of his brittle unstable socialite female characters on his wife, and in 1921, he was working on his second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned.”

Zelda gave birth to their only child, a daughter named “Scottie” in late 1921, but by now she and Fitzgerald were drinking heavily and her behaviour was a little erratic.  Their drunken antics were well known but at first people were indulgent and the couple were popular in writer’s circles.  The drinking  did not damage his writing.  It was beginning to tear at his marriage however.  The couple rowed frequently and were extravagant.. and Fitzgerald had to write short stories which he did not like much, to keep them solvent…

In 1924, after a disastrous attempt at writing plays, he and Zelda moved to France where he started to write The Great Gatsby.

Many American writers were living in Europe, particularly France after World War One.  Living was cheaper there and they felt that the old culture of Europe was more inspiring than that of America.  They were referred to as a “Lost Generation” - living away from their roots, drinking, and taking drugs, and losing themselves in wild behaviour. Some had served in France during the War, or had been involved in it somehow, like Hemingway and had seen the destruction of life and of conventional morality.. and felt that there was nothing to live for but pleasure, yet they desperately wanted to find meaning in life. American idealism and indeed puritanism were still alive within them, despite their frantic seeking after superfical enjoyments...

F Scott Fitzgerald Part I

F Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896, and is regarded as one of the most influential novelists in the 20th century. In some ways, he was ill educated and erratic. His novels are short and not weighted by great learning. However his work reflected the age of post War America and Europe where old certainties had been destroyed by the painful experience of a World War. He was born in Minnesota and his family were well to do, having made a fortune in the grocery business.  By American standards, he was upper middle class. The family were of Irish ancestry and Catholics and he was educated at Catholic schools. They had moved to Buffalo New York when he was a boy and like the narrator of "The Great Gatsby" Nick Carraway, he was in essence a mid Westerner who found New York city fascinating if amoral and frightening at times.His father worked for Proctor and Gamble and the family also had private money. In 1908 they returned to St Paul where he had been born and he continued his education, later going to the prestigious Princeton University. He was an intelligent boy, somewhat spoiled by his parents and he wanted to be a writer. He enjoyed the social life of Princeton but wasn't academic. Fitzgerald met a young society girl called Ginevra King when he was at Princeton and fell madly in love with her. For 2 years from 1915 to 1917, he courted her and wrote her love letters, and she would become the model for some of the “society women" in his books. He left Princeton in 1917 to join the army, but he never served in combat. However his army time became part of the background of Jay Gatsby, who also joined the army, and served in Europe. Fitzgerald was posted to Alabama, where he met another young socialite,. Zelda Sayre. Again he fell madly in love and became obsessed with this beautiful Southern girl. Fitzgerald had been advised that it was unwise for a poor young man like him to pursue Ginevra King, who was from a rich family… but when he fell in love with Zelda she returned his feelings. Fitzgerald had never had a job other than his brief army service and he had not yet started on his writing career. He and Zelda became closer and sexually intimate. When he was discharged from the Army, he started to look for work as a reporter but ended up in advertising, which was a job which used his writing skills.