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Feb. 8th, 2024 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI found Among You Taking Notes: The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison, 1939-1945 in the in-library-use only section of the BPL, but when I went to the desk to check it out for my in-library afternoon, they were like "eh, you can take it home if you want."
This did not happen to anyone else who was there with me that day reading in-library-use-only books and I am not entirely sure why I was Chosen but I have been very glad of it! (genarti however may be less glad as I've been intermittently and without warning reading bits out loud to her from the couch ever since.)
In 1937, Mitchison and her husband had bought the 'big house' in the fishing village of Carradale, Scotland. She spent most of the war there except for occasional trips down south: trying to make the place into a functioning farm; trying to write; trying to raise leftist/socialist/feminist political consciousness around her; trying to interact with her neighbors in Carradale in a normal and human way while also painfully aware that she's always going to be set apart as The Lady of the Big House; trying to believe that there's a better society to hope for after the war.
Over the course of five years, she loses a baby, and a house, and a life of London intelligentsia, and a fair bit of her idealism; she gains a daughter-in-law, and a fairly romantic friendship with a local fisherman, and a deep attachment to to Scottish Nationalism. It's a really fascinating read -- difficult, in some respects, because there are so many people coming into and out of Carradale and Naomi's life always, and the diary is Selections Only and the annotations are not always helpful at grounding the dozens of names -- and in other respects it doesn't really matter keeping track of the dozens of names because what matters is how Naomi feels about it and how she's feeling is always compelling and interesting, often very relatable, often very funny, often very sad. A couple sample passages I took note of as I read:
Douglas wants to read his poems, Jack wants to talk about himself in some form. Bella just won't deal intelligently with coupons. One keeps on fidgeting about the news, but at the same time I try to keep it off, because I should have the Marxist morals being drawn all the time, and that is such a bore. It is like having very religious people in the house.
I wonder if anyone really becomes adult? One always supposed the great Victorians did. But--? I think I am in parts.
Poor Joan with an acute feeling that she is incompetent, that she just can't cope with things, that she gets everything into a mess (except --- a large exception of course) the children. Ruth who is really awfully competent, has the same feeling. So, my god, have I. It's just because these bloody domesticities are so boring that one inevitably thinks of something else, and then forgets, like ALfred, the cakes in the oven. Meanwhile we all try to be enthusiastic and competent and saving fat and similar idiocies. But it's a bloody shame people like Joan having to. She is not able to write anything. I say never mind, you are storing it up. But---?
I'd had a very nice letter from Leonard Woolf, explaining that Virginia had killed herself because she was afraid of going mad. [-- this hit me out of the blue like a brick wall and I had to stop and check that 1941 was indeed when Virginia Woolf died --] I do sympathize with that; one so often feels like that. [NAOMI??? WERE YOU OKAY?]
The Gills [the parents of Mitchison's daughter-in-law] left today. Mrs. Gill walked round the garden with me, asking my views on sex -- why had I put so much into my books? Some of her friends had been bothered at the idea of Ruth having a mother-in-law who didn't believe in God, but she added that as soon as she saw me she knew it was all right. I never quite know what to say, but explained that I thought sex was rather important, and so one should write about it, simply and straight [...]
[This last one is an absolute personal nightmare. Naomi Mitchison, you were stronger than any Marine.]
There are many other passages that are so deeply contextualized that I didn't quote them but found tremendously engaging and compelling -- a lot of the parts, in particular, about how she is trying to relate to the people around her, how she is grappling with the class stuff that is so unavoidably part of her position and situation and upbringing and also so antithetical to her beliefs; it's a celebration any time she gets one of her neighbors to call her Naomi.
The library also kindly gave me You May Well Ask, her 1920-40 memoir, so that'll be next or at least next-ish.
This did not happen to anyone else who was there with me that day reading in-library-use-only books and I am not entirely sure why I was Chosen but I have been very glad of it! (
genarti however may be less glad as I've been intermittently and without warning reading bits out loud to her from the couch ever since.)In 1937, Mitchison and her husband had bought the 'big house' in the fishing village of Carradale, Scotland. She spent most of the war there except for occasional trips down south: trying to make the place into a functioning farm; trying to write; trying to raise leftist/socialist/feminist political consciousness around her; trying to interact with her neighbors in Carradale in a normal and human way while also painfully aware that she's always going to be set apart as The Lady of the Big House; trying to believe that there's a better society to hope for after the war.
Over the course of five years, she loses a baby, and a house, and a life of London intelligentsia, and a fair bit of her idealism; she gains a daughter-in-law, and a fairly romantic friendship with a local fisherman, and a deep attachment to to Scottish Nationalism. It's a really fascinating read -- difficult, in some respects, because there are so many people coming into and out of Carradale and Naomi's life always, and the diary is Selections Only and the annotations are not always helpful at grounding the dozens of names -- and in other respects it doesn't really matter keeping track of the dozens of names because what matters is how Naomi feels about it and how she's feeling is always compelling and interesting, often very relatable, often very funny, often very sad. A couple sample passages I took note of as I read:
Douglas wants to read his poems, Jack wants to talk about himself in some form. Bella just won't deal intelligently with coupons. One keeps on fidgeting about the news, but at the same time I try to keep it off, because I should have the Marxist morals being drawn all the time, and that is such a bore. It is like having very religious people in the house.
I wonder if anyone really becomes adult? One always supposed the great Victorians did. But--? I think I am in parts.
Poor Joan with an acute feeling that she is incompetent, that she just can't cope with things, that she gets everything into a mess (except --- a large exception of course) the children. Ruth who is really awfully competent, has the same feeling. So, my god, have I. It's just because these bloody domesticities are so boring that one inevitably thinks of something else, and then forgets, like ALfred, the cakes in the oven. Meanwhile we all try to be enthusiastic and competent and saving fat and similar idiocies. But it's a bloody shame people like Joan having to. She is not able to write anything. I say never mind, you are storing it up. But---?
I'd had a very nice letter from Leonard Woolf, explaining that Virginia had killed herself because she was afraid of going mad. [-- this hit me out of the blue like a brick wall and I had to stop and check that 1941 was indeed when Virginia Woolf died --] I do sympathize with that; one so often feels like that. [NAOMI??? WERE YOU OKAY?]
The Gills [the parents of Mitchison's daughter-in-law] left today. Mrs. Gill walked round the garden with me, asking my views on sex -- why had I put so much into my books? Some of her friends had been bothered at the idea of Ruth having a mother-in-law who didn't believe in God, but she added that as soon as she saw me she knew it was all right. I never quite know what to say, but explained that I thought sex was rather important, and so one should write about it, simply and straight [...]
[This last one is an absolute personal nightmare. Naomi Mitchison, you were stronger than any Marine.]
There are many other passages that are so deeply contextualized that I didn't quote them but found tremendously engaging and compelling -- a lot of the parts, in particular, about how she is trying to relate to the people around her, how she is grappling with the class stuff that is so unavoidably part of her position and situation and upbringing and also so antithetical to her beliefs; it's a celebration any time she gets one of her neighbors to call her Naomi.
The library also kindly gave me You May Well Ask, her 1920-40 memoir, so that'll be next or at least next-ish.
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Date: 2024-02-09 03:47 am (UTC)Naomi Mitchson! I've been interested in her since I read Memoirs of a Space Woman, but despite eying the rest of her bibliography with interest I've yet to read any of her other books. One of these days I should pick up one of her memoirs.
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Date: 2024-02-12 03:07 am (UTC)I'm definitely intent on trundling my way through as much of her bibliography as I can get hold of, which so far has ... not been many, but I'm hoping for more luck as it continues to be a long-term bookstore quest.
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Date: 2024-02-12 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2024-02-09 12:31 pm (UTC)I am not planning to read her memoirs for my Readercon homework but I'm glad you are!
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Date: 2024-02-12 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-09 12:36 pm (UTC)Also, "a very nice letter from Leonard Woolf, explaining that Virginia had killed herself" - I know that the connotations of "nice" have changed over time but this was a startling sentence nonetheless.
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Date: 2024-02-09 09:49 pm (UTC)Well, damn.
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Date: 2024-02-12 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-10 08:49 pm (UTC)This sounds like a fascinating read overall and I'm so glad the BPL let you take it home so you could absorb it at your leisure rather than having to power through at the library.
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Date: 2024-02-13 03:11 pm (UTC)a lot of the parts, in particular, about how she is trying to relate to the people around her, how she is grappling with the class stuff that is so unavoidably part of her position and situation and upbringing and also so antithetical to her beliefs
yes, good call, this is so fascinating to read about, the way her situation and her beliefs and her feelings all intertwine.