Wednesday 10 April 2024

landscape with books (a visit to hereford, a raid on oxfam)

'astonishing the relief of going back to translation...' - antonia white.

deathday (1980) of antonia white (born eirene adeline botting; 31st march 1899) author, diarist and translator of some of colette's books (claudines mainly, a collection of short stories), a maupassant (a woman's life) and an early marguerite duras (a sea of troubles aka. un barrage contre le pacifique). 

the problem with antonia white's diaries 1926-1957 may be  that the major events are already over when we start them because she burned the two earliest volumes of them. or the problem may be that editing of the diaries  it was entrusted to her disaffected daughter susan chitty.  

horsemouth accessions diary tuesday 9th april 2024

- where I was from, joan didion - eight squid(!). horsemouth has read a little of this online already. 

- landscape with machines, l.t.c. rolt. an engineer remembers his childhood in and around chester, hay, and gloucestershire. a prolific writer and the biographer of major civil engineering figures, he is also regarded as one of the pioneers of the canal boat cruising on britain's inland waterways (he knew robert aickman), and as an enthusiast for vintage cars and heritage railways. two squid 49p.

the ltc rolt has stuff for horsemouth already because he lived as a child in cusop near hay-on-wye and was interested in trains (in part because of the amount of railway activity round hay - which now does not have a railway station, in particular the honeybourne- cheltenham line). so the golden valley railway gets a mention (spades in the ground at peterchurch) and the line between hereford and hay also. 

rolt was later a major fan of local diarist the reverend kilvert of clyro (near hay). he walked the same hills as kilvert but didn't know it at the time, the kilvert diaries had not been rescued when he was a child. he was also a fan of welsh borders authors arthur machen, traherne and henry vaughan. 

both books were from oxfam hereford which also had a copy of landscape with figures (volume 3 of his autobiography).  this horsemouth may pick up next.

horsemouth had a little delve into maxwell fraser's welsh border country to see if rolt was mentioned there (he was not - but father rolfe (baron corvo) was,more on that in an upcoming blogpost). 

after much trepidation yesterday a visit to hereford. this horsemouth pronounces a success. (there was even time at the end for the raid on oxfam). 

if horsemouth were in the wen tonight he would probably be going out drinking with his friends (a friend is over visiting from texas) but no he's anchored down in anchorage. there's still quite of bit of the m.john harrison viriconium to read, kafka continues to struggle with writing, etc. 

horsemouth is getting a little far ahead of himself with the blog writing. he has too much time to write.

No comments:

Post a Comment