Spring did not know

SPRING DID NOT KNOW

This has nothing to do with Martha, but my son Steve has recorded my "pandemic poem" and turned it into a video, as an 80th birthday present.  He reads the words quite beautifully, and I love it!  It seems to be much appreciated by many others too, so I am delighted.

House of Angels audiobook published

Volume 2 of the saga is published in the Bolinda audiobook edition tomorrow,  August 1st 2020.  Almost 21 hours of captivating listening, though I say it myself.  The readers (Malk Williams and Janine Cooper Marshall) have done another fine job.

Here's a reminder of some of the reviews:

“Placed in the setting of Angel Mountain and the surrounding countryside, this is an exciting story of intrigue, with villains galore, but given a feminine twist by the heroine Martha and her friends, family and servants."

"The diary format is cleverly used to push the story along -- at the end of each chapter, the reader just has to press on to the next. But one is led carefully through the complex story without ever getting lost.”

“The book portrays the heroine’s complex and changeable temperament and shows how she copes with life in a harsh and cruel world. It shows her humour, her strengths and her weaknesses, and because she is far from perfect one likes her all the more.

"I loved the accelerating pace towards the end of the book, and especially the climax itself.”

“There is a tangible reality about Martha. From the honesty of her diary entries she emerges as no perfect lady but as a flawed heroine. She drags you down with her in her battles against depression and carries you up with her into the bliss of new love and the joys of motherhood.”

The audiobook can be obtained from the Bolinda website, or from Amazon Audible and other audiobook libraries.

Where Martha was jailed -- Haverfordwest Castle

Posted on Facebook -- a lovely pencil drawing of Haverfordwest Castle and the roofs of the town below it -- the artist was Roy Saunders.

The saving of the mountain

A tale linked to the writing of "Guardian Angel", in which a mysterious lady called Susanna Ravenhill quite literally saves the mountain of Carningli from destruction......

In one of those strange conjunctions, I had already started to write this book when the Carningli Graziers Association and the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park signalled their intent to conduct aerial spraying on the bracken covering the lower slopes with a powerful herbicide. Their intentions were no doubt laudable, but immediately there was a cry of  “Save the mountain!” and a multi-faceted campaign built up a powerful momentum in the space of just a few weeks. It was a genuine grass-roots campaign, with no leaders and no orchestration. Local people felt so strongly about the threatened contamination and desecration of this special place that they promised to sit in on the mountain and to lie down in the spraying zone beneath the helicopter -- in full view of the TV cameras. Neither the graziers nor the National Park staff had taken full account of the number of springs on the mountain that are used for private water supplies.  A petition with over 1,000 signatures was submitted to the PCNPA, and with the officers responsible being placed under inexorable and increasing pressure, the proposals were at last abandoned.   In theory, a consent for the spraying was issued, but it was not worth the paper that it was written on, because -- quite deliberately -- so many onerous conditions were attached that the whole project became non-viable.

At the height of the campaign the mountain suddently produced two guardian angels in the form of a pair of hen harriers which were believed to have nested -- for the first time ever -- in the proposed spraying zone. Hen harriers are the most heavily protected birds in the UK. If the spraying had gone ahead, the Graziers and the PCNPA would have committed a serious criminal offence, and would have been liable for arrest and prosecution. The threat to the mountain described in the novel was of a different kind and was on a different scale, but “economic necessity” was the justification in both cases, and if anybody wants to see the novel as an allegory that’s fine by me..........

On not being dead

Guardian Angel and its theme....

The main scenario of this book, namely the apparent death of the heroine and her subsequent full recovery, may seem to be an unlikely one, but it is by no means impossible. There is even a medical name for it -- the Lazarus Syndrome, named after the man whom Christ is reputed to have raised from the dead. There are many recorded instances of successful resuscitations and even spontaneous “awakenings” of those assumed to be dead, and many learned scientific papers on the subject. A key factor in survival seems to be the cooling down of the body and the gradual slowing of all the vital functions to the point where all signs of life appear to be extinguished. The same principle is used in cryosurgery. The greatest danger in resuscitation is that once a clinical death has occurred, brain damage (usually irreversible) will occur if resuscitation does not take place within a few minutes.

It should be remembered that the three key indicators of clinical death in the mid nineteenth century were lack of breath, lack of pulse, and lack of eye movements. Examinations of “dead” people were often cursory and unreliable. In Victorian times there was a dread of being buried alive, and patent coffins were even marketed which would allow “dead” people to alert the outside world if they suddenly woke up and found that they were six feet under! There were many Gothic horror novels in the Victorian period based on the theme of death and resurrection. The Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive (it really did exist!) encouraged a practice whereby the deceased were left lying in their caskets for days or weeks on end before being deemed sufficently dead to bury. When the Duke of Wellington died in 1858, this macabre postponement ritual reached an extreme. The Duke was not buried until two months after his death.

A character a day: (11) Alban Watkins, dastardly squire

Alban Watkins, squire of Llannerch, plays a short but violent part in the story of Martha Morgan and the Plas. He appears early on, as one of a triumvirate of minor gentry (the others are Benjamin Rice and George Howell) who have designs on the Plas Ingli estate.   Why?  Well, like many of the other small gentry families in West Wales, they have limited amounts of land of modest fertility, houses that are grander than they should be, and large debts.  They have vast pretensions, and their ambitions are centred on good marriages for their children and the expansion of their estates -- with the objective of making their estates "safe" before they default on loans or before they get gobbled up by the bigger fish in the pond.  Watkins's estate on the floor of the Gwaun Valley has some water meadows and extensive woodlands but very few dry and fertile fields -- so he lives financially right on the edge.  The Plas Ingli estate borders his -- and it has wider horizons, south-facing fields, and land which is sloping and well drained.  Very desirable.

At the beginning of the story is he just over 40 years old, with a wife and two daughters -- and he needs dowries for them if they are to "marry up" and find wealthy husbands.  He starts off being a drinking friend of the sinister Moses Lloyd, but behind the scenes Moses is becoming more and more indebted since Watkins buys his drinks for him -- and before long Moses has to share his secret about the Plas Ingli treasure with him, with a promise of a share in the spoils when it is dug up.   This then becomes another motivation for Watkins, who is quite happy to see David and Martha and their family (and their new home) destroyed so that the treasure can be recovered.  The problem is that Moses never does tell Watkins exactly where it is  buried.........

Watkins is a big, overbearing, arrogant brute of a man, completely lacking in "sensibility."  Martha has her first clash with him when the three squires and their wives invite themselves to afternoon tea at the Plas.  They seek to intimidate her and demean her, and this gets her hackles up; and she manages to make them look small and very silly when discussions turn to the treatment of labourers, wages, land management, and even the circulating schools.  From this moment on, Martha is Enemy Number One, since she is clearly seen as somebody intent upon the destruction of the old order.......  Enemy Number Two is Grandpa Isaac, with whom Watkins has a dispute about the administration of justice (they are both magistrates).

Alban Watkins is the man behind the fraudulent claim on the Plas Ingli estate which causes David,  Grandpa Isaac and Bowen of Llwyngwair to go rushing off to London to fight the case in the Chancery Court.  The case is thrown out, and Watkins is arrested and later convicted for fraud and other misdemeanours, and shipped off to the penal colonies in Australia.  All of his debts are called in, and the Llannerch estate collapses.  His wife and daughters flee to Scotland.

In House of Angels Martha is terrified when Watkins reappears, having obtained a free pardon in Australia for services to the crown.  (What those services were is a matter for speculation -- but suffice to say that his actions were so depraved and so brutal down under that a price was placed on his head by assorted Irish convicts -- leading to him having his throat slit down on the Nevern Estuary by an assassin.)

All in all, Watkins is not a very nice fellow --  but as he explains at the end of his life in a letter to his daughter Rose,  all of his actions were driven by the determination (at all costs)  to keep his estate alive, and to provide for his daughters.  So he is indeed a villain, but a tragic figure as well.

A character a day: (10) Shemi Jenkins and his hidden talent

Shemi Jenkins, servant

As an author I’m very fond of Shemi, because he is a seemingly simple fellow who works on the farm and who habitually uses his great strength in working with animals and in shovelling manure. He was born in 1782 into the Jenkins family of Blaenwaun, and he starts work at the Plas in the year 1797. He has a blossoming romance with Sian and marries her in 1810, going on to raise a family of his own. 

But he has hidden depths. The reader sees that he has special powers from the beginning, and this is recognized by both Martha and Joseph. One special talent is the ability to talk with animals, and if there are uncontrollable cattle or horses to be calmed, he is the man to send for. The Wizard of Werndew realizes quite quickly that Shemi will be his successor, and when Martha comes to appreciate his talents fully she agrees that he should go away for training as a wizard. 

So off he goes to study with Dr John Harries of Cwrt-y- Cadno. He comes back and takes over Joseph’s work and his cottage, and from that point on he becomes a sort of mentor for Martha, in spite of the fact that he is much younger than she. 

He features quite prominently in Flying with Angels, and the high point of his career comes in the terrible and comical episode in Brynberian Chapel when he turns the tables on the sanctimonious deacons who are seeking to excommunicate poor Amos from their congregation.

That is one of my favourite episodes from the whole series of novels, and perhaps this explains my affection for the character of Shemi.