Sprig Muslin part I

This is one of my favourite Georgette Heyer Novels, one of her shorter ones. It is a "road" book, giving her upper-class characters a chance to travel around. At the beginning, we meet Sir Gareth Ludlow, a wealthy and charming man in his 30s - He is visiting his sister Beatrix, to tell her that he hopes to marry. Beatrix, who is married with 5 children, is startled, for Gary lost his fiancee in a carriage accident 7 years earlier. He has never shown any sign of interest in another woman since then. He tells Beatrix that he feels he will never get over Clarissa, but since their only sibling, their brother Arthur was killed in the war, a while ago, he has a duty to produce an heir. Beatrix is shocked when he tells her that he intends to propose to Lady Hester Theale, a shy not very beautiful woman of almost 30. Hester keeps house for her selfish and extravagant father. She thinks that he could do much better than Hester, who is dull and not a beauty or a charmer, and is depressed at his news. When he has gone, her husband Warren tells her that he thinks that Hester may well make Gary a good wife, and make him comfortable... and that he himself never thought that Clarissa was so perfect for Gary as others did. She was lovely and charming but overly high spirited, and her accident resulted from her disobeying Gary when he told her not to drive his horses. Gary sets off for Brancaster Park where Hester lives. He is fond of her, but does not think her to be as charming as Clarissa was. He can see she is not very happy living with her father who is very selfish, and her brother and sister-in-law who are selfish and vulgar. On the way, he stops at an inn and is surprised to find a young girl there, arguing with the innkeeper. She is only about 17 and very pretty, and clearly a lady.. and the landlord tells her that this is a young lady wants to become a maid at his inn - which is clearly impossible.

Vera Brittain novels

I am reading a novel by Vera Brittain, having not read any of her work for years. It reminded me what a tragic life she had. I've never been a big fan but reading Honourable Estate made me remember her early life which had so much pain because of World War One. Vera was born in 1893 in Staffordshire, in the Midlands, and was the daughter of Arthur and Edith Brittain. Her family owned paper mills and were comfortably off middle class people. They moved to Cheshire, and then later to the Spa Town of Buxton in Derbyshire. She was intelligent and very keen on learning and was sent to a boarding school, in Surrey. When she left school, her father and mother expected her to do the social round and marry but she hated the idea. She persuaded her father to let her go to Oxford. She had one brother Edward who was very close to her. She began her studies at Oxford in 1914. However, war had broken out and she felt that it was not right to be at college when the world was in such turmoil. Her brother and other young men that she knew were all volunteering for the army, including Roland Leighton, a young writer who had become her fiance. She wanted to be close to him so she joined the VADs, volunteer nurses who were working for the war effort. She nursed in London and then went to France, during which time she nursed German Prisoners of war. Her fiance, Roland, and her brother were killed along with other male friends. Vera had begun the war feeling patriotic but as she lost loved ones and saw the horrors of the war, she began to veer towards socialism and pacifism. She went back to Oxford in 1919. She found it hard to fit in there, feeling that she had been marked forever by the suffering she had witnessed. She did not get on with some of the other young women who seemed indifferent to it. She became friends with Winifred Holtby, another would be writer, who also favoured liberal causes but was less emotional and extreme than Brittain. They did not like each other at first but after college, they decided to move to London and share a flat. They planned to earn a living by writing and working for the various good causes they supported. Both women found that their middle class families were not that keen on them abandoning their homes to work, and expected them to come home whenever there was a domestic problem or crisis. Vera began writing, but her novels were always rather too heavily based on her own real life. She lacked the ability to stand outside herself... but she had some talent. "Honourable Estate" is a novel based on her war experiences... However instead of a lover like Roland Leighton, she gives her heroine a love affair with American soldier, Eugene Meury, which is based on her own later love for her American publisher. The heroine Ruth Alleynedene, is like Vera, the daughter of a well to do businessman in the Potteries, who is not happy with his daughter's going to college, nor taking up war work or socialism. He accepts her independence, reluctantly. I hope to write a bit more about Vera later on.

Beds and Blue Jeans by Nadine Sutton

 This novella is available on Amazon.  It is another story about bands and music, set in Nashville in the 2010s, about a young man who has a small time band which plays in the bars. Sam has a girlfriend and a baby, but has a complicated love life.  He has other women, his girlfriend seems bored with him, and he is just about managing to make a living.  But things change.  He meets a girl he cares more about, but he feels responsible for his girl and baby. Are things going to work out? 

Beds and Blue Jeans: An everyday story of music and mayhem eBook : Sutton, Nadine, Waldock, Sarah: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Rough Music, Available on Amazon.

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rough-Music-Nadine-Sutton-ebook/dp/B01AEQS0G0/ref=sr_1_1?crid=29YA75QCZNVT1&keywords=nadine+sutton&qid=1665059309&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjkxIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=nadine+sutton%2Caps%2C78&sr=8-1

This is one of my stories, about music and bands, in the USA.  It is set in the 1970s, when there were a lot of country and southern rock bands doing well in the US.  Their lives were spent travelling, as they had to tour and be seen by their fans.  It put a lot of strain on the marriages of the musicans and singers, who were away from home, living in hotels, and usually having to leave their wives behind.  It led to infidelity and a lot of drug use to keep on with the travelling and to come down after the excitement of performing and seeing fans.  The 2 lead characters are young men - both are married, and have children but neither is exactly faithful and their marriages are under strain.  They also have constant fights with managers and record companies over whether to do good music or to make money. This isn't a love story, but I hope some people will enjoy a realistic novella.

Loretta Lynn country singer

Loretta's death at 90 takes away another of the great female country singers. She was one of the first women to write a lot of her own material, and she was not just a girl singer who had a pretty face and pretty voice. Women singers in the earlier days of country music were often there just to add eye candy to an act, or to sing sentimental songs about motherhood. Loretta was different. She was born in Kentucky, in Butchers Holler, in coal mine country. Her father worked in the mine and was a subsistence farmer, and her mother raised 8 children. At 15, she married Oliver Lynn who whom she called Doolittle or Doo. He had just come out of the army after World War Two and was several years her senior. She claimed she was only 13 when she got married but she was in fact 15. Within a few years she had had 4 children. Her life was very typical of young working class women at the time. She looked after the children. Her husband worked hard, but was often rough and abusive. He had alcohol problems. However he loved her and in spite of their fights, he supported her when he believed that she had talent as a singer. She wrote a song and went around radio stations trying to get it played. It was the 1960s and life was better for Americans. New ideas were in the air such as feminism. But Loretta knew that there were plenty of working class women out there who were tied to the home because they had several children, who were not feeling sentimental about motherhood, and who put up with their husbands rather than felt romantic about them. The husbands worked hard but were able to get away to bars or find an escape with other women. The wives found ways of living with this sort of pressure. Many of Loretta's songs were about dealing with abusive or drunken or unfaithful husbands and her work spoke to women..She built up an impressive career with on and off support from her husband. Her hits included You aint woman enough to take my man, and Fist City.. and most shockingly of all, she sang about the Pill, which gave young women liberation from too many pregnancies. It was a controversial song, but Loretta pushed it. Another song was "One's on the way", about a young married woman with a bunch of children and another one on the way. She lost her husband some years ago, since his alcohol problems caused ill health. Her own health declined in recent years but she went on working as much as she could.

Loretta Lynn

 just seen that Loretta has died, at the age of 90.  She was a talented song writer and performer.. her most famous song being Coal Miners Daughter.  

RIP

Civil Contract note

A Civil Contract is my favourite Heyer novel, being the nearest to a serious work that she wrote. Her heroine is something of a novelty, being plain, rather shy and not charming and of a fairy like beauty. She is also of humble origin, being the daughter of a man born in poverty, and a mother who was a farmer's daughter. For many in the upper-class world, she will always be seen as a Cit's daughter and since she is not a beauty she will be looked down on. Heyer creates a heroine who is realistic in her lack of charm and beauty. Jenny learns to fit in with Society but she is shy and gruff at times and dresses badly, until she realises that simpler clothes suit her better. She understands her husband and loves him, and manages to conceal her feelings from him for a time.. If she admitted her love, it would embarrass them both. Adam grows to love her but he does not fall romantically in love. While he realises that Julia is not the right woman for him, he probably will always admire her. The book is realistic in its depiction of a marriage which is probably more like many marriages at the time than romantic ones. The couple are awkward with each other, and don't understand things about the other's class, at first. Adam is angered and embarrassed by Mr Chawleigh lavishing him with expensive gifts and suggesting modernising Fontley and making it more luxurious. Jenny does not want to make the place luxurious, but does want to make it more comfortable. She can't understand why Adam is slow to accept this, or to realise that she is an excellent and active housewife who can assist him in his plans for the estate. She is bewildered when Charlotte says that the family all love the house even for its very shabbiness - she thinks if you love something you want to improve it and make it as good as possible. Adam, a charming figure, undertakes a difficult marriage to save his estate and to provide dowries for his 2 sisters whose fortunes were lost. He tries to shake off his love for Julia, but she finds it hard to keep a distance from him, and their social meetings are painful for both. He tells Julia that although it is true that upper class couples often practice infidelity or romantic friendships outside their marriages, he does not believe that he can do so, however innocently. He does not love Jenny but he will not expose her to the gossip of the Ton, by being seen with another woman. He says that Jenny has few friends and no family apart from her father and she is too shy to make her own way in Society. So, he will not allow himself to neglect her, even if he does not love her. It's also realistic in the way the relationship between Adam and his father-in-law is portrayed. He admires the man's shrewdness while often deprecating his vulgarity and domineering ways. He grows to like him and Mr Chawleigh likes him while wishing that Adam would lead a more grandiose life and give up his interest in farming. The 2 men are often at odds and have ambivalent feelings about each other, but they have a mutual respect. Adam has hopes at the end that he and Mr Chawleigh can work together, him using his father in law's business skill and interest in engineering and him contributing to the partnership his knowledge of country life. I've loved this book for so many years. I didn't come to it until I was in my 20's but once I did, I loved it. My partner read it but found it too unromantic, but it's the very realism that pleases me.