A Walk in the Rain.

On the days when I am inside, looking out on a rainy, grey day, the very idea of a walk is uninviting. Last weekend was no exception, but as soon as I had walked past the first couple of houses, I welcomed the feel of the rain on my face.

Encouraged by a suggestion from my eldest daughter, I decided to try a walking meditation, not that this worked. My plan was subverted by beauty. The freshly unfurled blackberry leaves at the side of the road were a softer green than the leaves on last year’s wood. They invited my touch. Later, I had to stop and photograph a camellia in the garden at Roberts Creek Cohousing, where my youngest daughter lives in a village of some thirty one homes.

On the way back home, I tried the walking meditation thing again, but it was another glorious failure. This time, after less than half a dozen steps, the old brain started chattering about neighbours, and neighbourhoods, and how we both create and sustain them. This train of thought was derailed by the screech of a polished grey Mercedes peeling out of the parking lot in front of the Roberts Creek General Store.

My mother used to call people - such as this grey haired man at the wheel of his Mercedes - the summer nuisances, but it is much more complicated than that. Some of those who visit here simply take a little while longer to slow down to the Roberts Creek pace of life. I am still working on this myself. It amused me that this particular man was not even steering his car with his hands as he sped past me, but was engaged in fastening his seat belt. In no time at all, he had to brake for the stop sign, which is not much more than a hundred steps past the store. You’d never see a Roberts Creek neighbour try that particular trick.

As I walked home, I put thoughts of him aside and inhaled the smells of my neighbours’ Sunday cooking, a glimpse as it were. From one house, there was the scent of a hot caramelized crust of a cake, probably just about ready to come out of the oven. It is a smell that I can recognize from a hundred paces, having made a cake or three in my time. The scent from another house a little further along indicated that there was a meat dish on the go. I breathed deeply and absorbed the ping of rosemary oil as it melded with the darker, richer scent of the meat.

It isn’t that I know much about these neighbours who live a block or more away from me. From time to time, an ambulance pulls up in front of one of these houses, and later on, someone at the mailbox will say, oh that was old widow ____. Still, I know them through their gardens, the wag of their dog’s tail, and through the scent of what they cook. Sometimes when I walk at night, I see more than I ought to, when they don’t close their drapes and are unintentionally backlit. In return, they probably catch me in various states of dress or undress when I too pass by an undraped window. Yeah, well ...

View from Urker, near Crossmaglen, Southern Armagh

I often think of what neighbourhood meant to my great-great-grandmother. Her home was on a hill, at the end of a long lane in southern Armagh, Ireland. The house looked onto a courtyard bracketed by stables and such. Her children walked everywhere, but she wouldn’t have, at least, not at my age. People came to her. Her home was known to be always full to bursting with friends, family, farm staff and indoor servants, not that there were many of the latter.  All of these people would have known each other for generations. Their children played together. The hired help were the sons and daughters of men and women who had in their time been servants to her husband’s mother. Everyone knew the names of first cousins, second cousins, aunts, uncles, the whole catastrophe, as Zorba the Greek would term it. Only the fancy meals were served in the dining room, with staff eating separately in the kitchen.

It is much quieter in my home today, except for the background hums, which are not of people but of machines. My stove, my washer, my dryer, and my computer assist my work just as my great-great-grandmother’s servants made her work more productive, but there is a disconnect. The people who make my much needed machines are scattered all over the globe. I haven’t a clue how they fare as a result of having made my stove, my computer, my washer, my dryer.

It is hard in our time to be rooted in both time and place, but this is not new. In the mid-1800s, there was a mass exodus from Ireland. As in most times of economic collapse, it wasn’t the poorest of the poor who fled, for the most part, but it was those who had the means to leave. My great-great-grandmother had one son who moved to Hong Kong to work, and another one to Yokohama. I too have a child half a world away, my daughter Sabrina, but at least I can hear her voice on a regular basis on the telephone.  I can absorb her delight when she tells me that she is completing a composition for an ensemble that will be performed in Boston, then in Metz, then in Stuttgart.

In my part of the world, we do enjoy our time with our on-line neighbours, as well as time with all our close family and friends – most of whom are not our neighbours. Still and all, there is a loss when so few of those who matter most to us live nearby. It means that when I walk in the rain, I can only imagine how the cakes or roasts of all my cherished non-neighbours might smell on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I can only imagine what new leaves are unfurling, waiting to be touched. Thankfully, I do imagine such things, when I am walking - in the not-meditating way that I do.

Curiosity & Remarkable Creatures

Both books - resting on my pool table.

A little over a year ago, Joan Thomas & Tracy Chevalier each had a novel published within months of each other. Each novel focussed on the life and times of Mary Anning, an impoverished fossil finder, born at Lyme Regis in 1799, who in time became increasingly respected as a significant early palaeontologist. If I had written and published such a novel, only to discover that mine was only one of two such novels, I would have bayed so loudly and plaintively at the moon that people in the northern hemisphere would have had to run for cover. It would not have been pretty. Seriously though, for the reader, there is a real dilemma: Which of the two books should I read? Or - if I read both, which one should I read first?

By sheer fluke, I ended up reading Thomas’ novel first , and then Chevalier’s. As I traveled around England and Ireland last fall on a research trip of my own, it was usually the last prose of the day before I keeled over onto my pillow. Not that my reading of the novel suffered from that. In fact, I had to be quite strict with myself. Only two more pages, Sharon, and then lights out.  I realized that I was starting to sound like my mother.

It is impossible for me to say how much the first read influenced the second. Since both were based on the historical record, there were considerable overlaps, but they turned out to be decidedly different books. Reading them reminded me of jazz riffs, and how two musicians can improvise, and each end up in quite different places. For this reason, I can recommend reading both novels. That being said, Curiosity remains my favourite.

I had to sit down with myself for a bit to figure out why this was so. Mostly it was because Curiosity took me more deeply into the feelings, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds of the various homes and places at Lyme Regis, whereas Remarkable Creatures was a bit more like an entertaining history lesson. Not that a history lesson is not a bad thing in itself. Reading it reminded me about some of the particulars of the impediments that 19^th Century women faced when it came to academic recognition. Also, Chevalier delved into the story in a way that stayed with me.

When I reread the start of Curiosity, I realized how much of my delight for that novel came from the cadence of speech. Speech patterns can be devilishly hard to get right, but when an author totally nails it, the physical delight ripples out to encompass more than just the language. I think of what Hilary Mantel pulled off when she wrote Wolf Hall, or Charles Foran when he wrote Carolan’s Farwell. As a reader in the hands of such novelists, I always appreciate how cadence increases how deeply I am plunged into each scene. In the hands of these three novelists, I was fully immersed.

In life as well as in literature, I am a sucker for humour. Give me loud and crazy, and about to come off the rails, or give me subtle and devilishly dead on, it is all no matter. Just make me laugh, or even just smile, and I am putty in your hands. The following passage is one of many in Curiosity that had me smiling before I even knew it:

Mary’s mother had worked the curiosity table until lately, and if a customer had trouble parting with his coin, she would fix a soft look on him and offer a charm against wizening. She was not bold in her manner and the gentleman would startle and wonder at her meaning. But usually he bought, after that.  

It is a tricky business when writing a novel based on real people. As my husband would say, don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. Fair enough. It does seem that Chevalier took a few more liberties with known historical facts, which need not be a problem – but for me, it was sometimes. In her version, Birch was portrayed as an utter cad who hadn’t paid Annie for her work and her fossils, when he definitely should have. A recent biography of Mary Anning, The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World, doesn’t support this version of events. This wouldn’t be a problem except that in Chevalier’s version, there is a scene where Birch auctions off the fossils that he had got from Mary, and uses the proceeds to belatedly help out the Annings, who were in financial distress at the time. This action didn’t fit with how Birch had been portrayed earlier on, nor was there any evidence of any moral and emotional shift that could explain this change of heart. It was not a big thing, but I was left feeling a little jarred as a reader.

I am getting too old to finish books that are really not worth the candle. I mention this only because in spite of my various quibbles with Remarkable Creatures, if Chevalier’s novel had failed utterly, I would never have finished it. It didn’t fail, and I am glad that I read it to the end. Even so, it is the novel Curiosity which is the one that has stayed with me, continues to resonate, and will be the one that I will be recommending to my book club.

One addendum – my ongoing curiosity about all things Jackson. There are a few scenes in both of these novels that I continue to be curious about. They involve finding the drowned remains of a Lady Jackson, washed up on the beach at Lyme Regis. In Chevalier’s novel, Lady Jackson is given a first name: Mary. Who was this Lady “Mary” Jackson? Apparently, she was on her way home from India, expecting to dock at Southampton. Perhaps someone reading this blog post will know the answer. If you do – please let me know.

Another  interesting link for more about Mary Anning: Fossils and OtherLiving Things.

Sometimes a Picture

Mrs G.M. Dare and George Mildmay Dare in car.
Photo no longer under copyright: One Hundred years of Singapore.

Years ago, when I was on a holiday in Ashland, Oregon and enjoying a couple of weeks of amazing theatre, I picked up a copy of Singapore Days of Old. It is a commemorative history published by the Singapore Tattler. As you might guess, it is a chatty romp through aspects of the history of Singapore, with lots of photos. The one above stayed with me, and I was curious to learn more. I already knew that the driver of the car would likely be the sister-in-law of Sir Thomas Jackson, but I knew nothing more about her.

After a bit of digging, I found out that she was born Annie Dorothea Caroline EARNSHAW of Knaresborough, Yorkshire, England. The story of her life sheds light on several aspects of the lives of the both the Dare and Jackson families, whose members rose to such prominence in the Far East in the 1800s. Her first husband was George Mildmay Dare, brother to Amelia Lydia Dare, the wife of Sir Thomas Jackson. Not surprisingly, it was the women who actively created the social connections which started the friendships, which in turn lead to ongoing business connections. More of these kinds of stories will be told in my upcoming book.

In the meantime, the car in the photo above was Annie’s first car, a 12hp, two cylinder Star. The man seated beside her is George Mildmay Dare. Although the photograph is undated, it would be between 1902 when the 10hp twin cylinder model of the Star was first produced, and December 1907, when George succumbed to heart disease. Already by 1902, he was limited from undertaking anything very strenuous. This is worth keeping in mind when considering what this meant for Annie’s life as a female driver in the early 1900s.

Bear in mind that there were no motor garages or other such infrastructure at this time. Drivers had to be something of a dab hand at roadside repairs, and also be able to undertake oiling, adjustments and possibly even a change of tire. You would think -  given that Annie had a semi-invalid husband - that she would have driven conservatively, and have been the owner of a car described as: Car for sale by old lady, used only to go to church.  In fact, she drove this car more than 69,400 miles all over Singapore, the Malay Peninsula, Java, England, and Scotland. She called it Ichiban, a Japanese word for Number One, echoing the licence plate number S.1.,  visible in the photo. Singaporean natives, when they saw her tearing past, had another name for it: The Devil Wind Carriage.

Eventually, she took this car back to England in 1908, to have it kitted out with a detachable back so it could be used as either a two or four-seater. Before she did this, she taught Hassan bin Mohamed how to drive. As a result, he earned the distinction of being the first Malay chauffeur to obtain his driving licence. I do not know if he is the man standing beside the car. It is the kind of thing that I wish I did know. It is also the kind of instance where cultural biases often lead to names that are not us getting left out of the picture.

Annie was also well known not only as a driver of the Devil Wind Carriage, but also for her musical and theatrical talents. In the late 1880s, she sang and acted in both the musical Iolanthe, as well as the comic opera Crimson Scarf with Sir Thomas de Multon Lee Braddell. He just happened to be the Attorney-General of the Straits Settlements and Chief Judicial Commissioner of the Federated Malay States, as stage manager.  This is how the social circles worked. In amateur productions then as now, the enthusiasts wore many hats. Annie was also singled out for her taste and skill in designing dresses, and her unflagging enthusiasm, much of the success was due, added to which her charming appearance and voice helped greatly in the work on the stage.

In 1893, she performed in The Mikado, by Gilbert and Sullivan. From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, it seems strange to be performing that particular play in Singapore, but I suspect that was the least of many incongruities of the time. Three years later in 1896, she performed in The Grand Duke in the role of Princess of Monte Carlo, while her future second husband, G.P. Owen performed the role of the Prince of Monte Carlo. I have no idea if Owen was also married at the time.

Three Little Maids in School. From Gilbert & Sullivan's Mikado.

 Annie’s first husband, George Mildmay Dare, was also an amateur actor, known often under his stage name of Miss Julia Brani -  Brani  being Malay for Dare, the name that he used when he took on female roles. He had joined the Corps Dramatique, just after he returned to Singapore at age seventeen. It was a troop of actors made up of young men in business, and his role was that of Lucy in the farce John Dobbs:  

It was a difficult part, but they say I performed it to everyone’s satisfaction, and made what they called “a stunning girl”! I went in a crinoline made out of rattan, and even after the theatre was not known till I commenced kicking the syce’s back on account of his not opening the door wide enough, which elicited a roar of laughter from the men in the portico of the theatre, who were all seeing four young ladies into their carriage. We all had a capital dance after the performance on the stage, in our theatrical costumes, and a good champagne supper afterwards, from which we got home at two in the morning.

Regrettably, I have no photos of his performances. As well as his activities as Miss Julia Brani, he was also renowned for his prowess with hunting, sailing, cricket, horse-racing and polo, an all round kind of guy. He was also a successful broker in Yokohama with considerable business interests in the exporting of silk. He started business there about the time that the port of Yokohama was just opening up, and rode the uptick in sales when the French silkworms at Lyons succumbed to a virus, and the French had to import 85% of their silk from China.

NOTE: The main source for much of the material in this blog comes from One Hundred Years of Singapore Vol II 1921. Also, I have transcribed and annotated published obits for George Mildmay Dare, and Annie Owen on my web site. They are quite lengthy descriptions, not the usual kind of obit that simply states who died and when.

In an odd bit of serendipity, I also have a photo of my father when he was in his mid-forties in the role of Poo-Bah in a production of  The Mikado  staged in 1962 on the 1^st Air Division Canadian Air Force Base at Metz France. Flight Lt. David Hugh Plunkett Brown is on the extreme right in the picture beneath. I suspect the other two men are Thomas Large in the role of Ko-Ko and Lauchlan MacQuarrie in the role of Pish-Tush.

Singapore Sling

My own connection to the drink is somewhat tenuous. In 1886: The Armenian Sarkies brothers bought the mansion of Captain George Julius Dare in Singapore’s prestigious "Twenty - House Street" (Beach Road). This Capt. Dare, a multifaceted businessman of his day, was the father-in-law of Sir Thomas Jackson. His extended family did pretty much every kind of business imaginable, including hotels, and the present day Raffles was built where he once lived. Dare died before the drink was invented, hence my tenuous link. Not that this stops me.

Photo at Wiki - licenced by Creative Commons

We afterwards strolled into the jungle in the hopes of getting some pigeon, but were rather aghast at coming across the fresh tracks of a tiger, and, having no kind friends to write our obituary notice and no gun with us for big game, returned in double quick time to the bungalow. None of the others would move out of the house, being too lazy, and their chief enjoyment consisted in making and drinking cocktails and sleeping !
George Mildmay Dare (1840-1907) – brother-in-law of Sir Thomas Jackson.

History of the drink: The Singapore Sling was invented by Ngiam Tong Boon (嚴崇文) for the Raffles Hotel in Singapore sometime between1910-1915. The version that he served was quite different from most of the recipes that are in vogue today, but was apparently also an innovation at the time, albeit based on other recipes that were popular back then. Apparently, there were many different Singapore Slings. While the recipes around the city could vary significantly from place to place, the cocktail served at Raffles remained pretty much the same. 

The original recipe: The original recipe incorporated gin, cherry brandy, and Benedictine (most often in equal parts). The drink was then shaken over ice, strained into a glass, and then topped up with club soda. The recipe used more recently by the hotel was based on the original recipe as recalled by former bartenders, as well as the information gleaned from written notes that the hotel staff were able to discover. The current Raffles Hotel recipe is a much modified version of the original, most likely changed sometime in the 1970s by the Ngiam Tong Boon's nephew.

My version: My own version comes from Adeline Tan, a long time staff member (retired) of Raffles. Her version of the recipe made no reference to club soda, thank goodness. Since I can’t buy cherry brandy on the Sunshine Coast – not a great loss in my opinion - I use Pomegranate Liquor in its place. According to all reports, this is a great and good thing.
You can tell by the quantities beneath, that this drink is a fave rave at some of our parties. The juices can be premixed ahead of time, but since I use fresh lime, it doesn’t keep for too long. Once I even juiced up a half dozen fresh pineapples for making drinks -  they were on sale at the time. They did it justice..

Ingredients	Metric	Imp	4Xs	8Xs
Gin	30 ml	1 oz	4 oz	8 oz
Cherry Brandy	15 ml	½ oz	2 oz	4 oz
Pineapple Juice	120 ml	4 oz	16 oz	32 oz
Lime Juice	15 ml	½ oz	2 oz	4 oz
Cointreau	7.5 ml	1 ½ tsp	1 oz	2 oz
Dom Benedictine	7.5 ml	1 ½ tsp	1 oz	2 oz
Grenadine	10 ml	2 tsp	1 ¼ oz	2 ½ oz
Angostura bitters	dash	dash	4 dashes	8 dashes
Garnish – Pineapple & cherry	A fresh fruit garnish is what I prefer to use, although my husband prefers maraschino cherries. More red dye #10 for my Mennonite lad!