NEWNHAM 2004 AN ILLUSTRATION OF A WEEKEND
‘And the lady in the hat comes from Canada but she’s really Welsh….’ Or was it Irish, I can’t remember. We were an international set from across the Pond and the Channel as well as all round the UK. We were a chatty set and we loved those old Cambridge drinking customs. Sherry, wine, cognac, coffee, cocoa or that modern drink mineral water, it didn’t matter so long as we could talk while we imbibed.
I was a Newnham virgin, seduced by two names on the programme, Frances Spalding and Henrietta Garnett. Frances Spalding I knew – in the literary sense – from my art school days. To my delight she blended art and literature by illustrating her talk about the nature of the Bloomsbury Group with paintings by Van Gough, Matisse, Roger Fry and, of course, Vanessa Bell. We learnt it was Roger Fry’s first post-impressionist exhibition which, while shocking the established art world, laid the foundations of the Bloomsbury Group by breaking with the tradition of Victorian narrative art. The new way of looking at the world paved the way for Vanessa to paint freely in simple lines and shapes, for Virginia to experiment with the novel form and for everyone to just ‘do their own thing’.
Paintings were also used by Juliet Gardner, who spoke on women war-time writers and by Jane Brown who described the garden designs of Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll. We heard about the ‘other’ Jekyll, Agnes, from Bee Wilson, a food writer. Her interest in the bee, bumble and honey, led to a biology lesson on the reproduction of this fascinating insect.
In my innocence I had no idea that originally women up at Cambridge were not awarded ‘proper’ degrees or that the National Dictionary of Biography only allowed for 4% of the great and the good to be women. My ignorance on these issues (the newly published NDB allows for 25% of the memorable dead to be women) and many more was blissfully removed from me as I listened to other speakers.
But it was Henrietta Garnett who was the star. I wrote in my notebook, ‘It is quite extraordinary to be sitting here watching and listening to the daughter of Angelica Garnett.’ Henrietta gave the impression of being small in body but great in soul. Standing in front of us she looked tiny. Her red hair was cut pixie style, her sharp eyebrows arched over huge eyes and her nose was reminiscent of her famous great-aunt. Exotic, dangling earrings and spectacles on a bead chain all helped to summon up the Bloomsbury atmosphere; her elegant shoulders sloped into the boat-shaped neck of her black top. She spoke slowly and emphatically about the work and loves of Leslie Stephen, finally treating us to a poetic reading of a love letter from him to his wife Julia, filling the room with much passion and a little sadness.
When I returned home I opened a book I have by Frances Spalding and found a newspaper cutting inside the front cover. It was an article published in The Times in 2001: a rare interview with Angelica Garnett, who described her second daughter as ‘fragile’. My dictionary uses an apt phrase to explain the word: ‘a fragile link with the past.’ Exactly. And what a privilege to have listened to that link.
THE PENGUIN BLOG for 30 APRIL 2009
If you wake up on Saturday morning and find that it’s wet and miserable, then going to work – or the equivalent of work – isn’t such a duff option. So I headed off to Stratford to spend the day at something called Novel Pitch with a spring in my step. If it had been dry and sunny, the concept (for the words ‘novel pitch’ were little more than that right then) might have been less of a draw.
I was one of a panel of five, and our task was to hear six novels pitched to us by six unpublished writers in the form of extracts and synopses and, gulp, to give immediate feedback. And because it was billed as a spectator sport there had to be an element of competition, so come what may a winner would be chosen – by us and, separately, by the audience.
Well, the whole thing was a bit like reading while balancing on one leg. Not conducive to thoughtful reflection, but certainly a way of keeping the mind active. And there’s nothing to make you concentrate quite like a theatre full of people hanging on your every word.
As a panel I’d say we acquitted ourselves quite honourably. We talked of strong beginnings, nice detail, good characterisation, the benefits of a good title, and the market (though this, we agreed, should be the publisher’s concern, not the writer’s). And we were able to say good things about everything we heard because the standard was undoubtedly high.
And, huddled over lunch, we picked our winner. Arguing loudly and at length was impossible: the winner had to be chosen in the time it took to eat lunch, and the writers were almost within eavesdropping distance. But despite these pressures we kept our cool and did our job.
It was 4 o’clock by the time proceedings were over. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and it appeared that the outside world had been enjoying itself after all. But I was quite happy to have spent the day indoors and at the receiving end of some excellent writing. After a working – for which read ‘waking’ – life of being hunched over a thousand manuscripts, of reading head-down, of being alone with my thoughts, what a blessed relief to be participating in a team sport. And it seems it was good for the writers too. Writing is, after all, far lonelier than what I do – at least I have colleagues – and here were six writers given the chance to meet some opinion-spouting readers face to face.
They were an impressive bunch. So well done to Paul Gapper, who we chose as our winner for his sparkling Birth of Stars; well done to Jarred McGinnis, the audience’s thoroughly deserving champion; and well done to the four other brave and talented writers: Funmi Adewale, Jane Hayward, Dawn Rodgers and Mohini Singh. And well done to Annette Brook and the rest of the team at Spread the Word. I’ve never watched Pop Idol, but I’m sure this was just as exciting.
Juliette Mitchell,
Editor, Hamish Hamilton
Apologies to Penguin. I’m quite surprised it’s possible to copy text like this!
