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Hope and Glory: A Life of Dame Clara Butt

October 11, 2012 By Catherine Pope

Cover of Hope and Glory: A Life of Dame Clara ButtSir Thomas Beecham cheekily remarked that when she sang in Dover, Dame Clara Butt could be heard in Calais. If you’ve listened to her rousing performances of Hope and Glory on YouTube, you’ll know that he had a point. Standing an Amazonian 6’2″ tall, Dame Clara was a towering cultural icon of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, symbolising the glory of an empire on which the sun never set. She won fans all around the world, performing concerts in America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, and commanding five-figure fees. With her entourage of 20 staff, she would sail the seven seas to reach her adoring public.

Although from humble origins as a trawlerman’s daughter, everyone knew that Clara was destined for a glittering career. Queen Victoria felt strongly enough to actually pay for some of her studies, and Clara became a firm friend of the royal family. Success turned her into a formidable woman, but Clara worked tirelessly to raise funds for good causes, and was honoured with a damehood for raising morale during the dark days of World War One.

Clara’s incredible talent brought her much joy, but she also suffered great tragedy in her personal life, losing two of her children and enduring crippling back pain. She sought solace in Theosophy, travelling to India, where she met Mahatma Gandhi and the socialist reformer Annie Besant. Even when diagnosed with a virulent form of spinal cancer, she immediately planned a final tour of Australia (most of us would take to our beds with some hard drugs). She died with great courage, in the same week as both George V and Rudyard Kipling, and the world was a sadder place without her.

I knew very little about Dame Clara before receiving the proposal for this biography, but was immediately captivated by the story of this extraordinary woman. One hundred years ago she was a household name and rarely out of the newspapers, but now she is known mainly by music aficionados. Working on the biography of Eugen Sandow last year made me realise that celebrity is ephemeral and even megastars are seldom remembered much beyond their own lifetime. Dame Clara is certainly one who should be celebrated all over again.

Hope and Glory: A Life of Dame Clara Butt by Maurice Leonard is available in print, Kindle and EPUB editions.

Filed Under: biography, books, reviews Tagged With: biography, empire

East of Suez by Alice Perrin

January 15, 2011 By Catherine Pope

Cover of East of Suez by Alice PerrinOriginally published in 1901, East of Suez was Alice Perrin’s first collection of short stories.  Although now largely forgotten, Perrin was one of the most successful authors of her day, commanding larger advances than the likes of Arnold Bennett (much to his chagrin, it must be said).  Perrin tells stories of illicit love and betrayal against a beautifully-drawn backdrop of the mystical east, interweaving the supernatural with exquisite details of her characters’ lives.  Unlike many of her contemporaries, Perrin handles Anglo-Indian relations with great sensitivity, showing equal humanity in her portrayal of powerful British officials and their more humble neighbours.  Through her writing, she depicts the social complexity of colonial rule, never resorting to stereotypes or simplistic representations of the people or the landscape.

Perrin’s Anglo-Indian stories are thought by some to rival the best work of Kipling, and I am inclined to agree.  Her economical yet evocative writing style, with its narrative shocks,  is well suited to the short story form.  Perrin has an unerring ability to lead the reader along a familiar path and then astonish them with an unexpected, and sometimes brutal, plot twist.  The good are not always rewarded, and the wicked often escape the sticky end they deserve.  Perrin’s endings are seldom happy, but they are always memorable.

In East of Suez Perrin uses ghosts as a form of social critique, making her writing both daring and distinctive.  The unruly spirits who inhabit her tales seek to subvert the idea of a neatly ordered colonial society, exposing both its limitations and hypocrisies.  Perrin allows the dead to speak, and occasionally to do much more.  Her use of the supernatural allowed Perrin to covertly criticise Imperial rule at a time when a more conspicuous attack would have been unthinkable.  Her politics are sexual as well as spectral.  Many of the stories are quietly feminist, showing the disastrous consequences of men failing to heed the advice of their womenfolk.  In ‘The Summoning of Arnold’, the eponymous husband realises his wife’s importance only after it is too late.  Major Kenwithin in ‘A Perverted Punishment’ spends the rest of his days in torment after judging his wife too harshly, also losing his friend in the process.  ‘A Man’s Theory’ is a terrifying depiction of a ‘rational’ husband dismissing his wife’s concern for their baby as hysteria.  My favourite story is ‘The Tiger-Charm’, a satisfying morality tale proving that the white middle-class man cannot conquer everything.

This edition includes many of the original illustrations from the serialisation of the stories in Windsor Magazine and the Illustrated London News.  There is also a detailed biography of Alice Perrin, of whom little has been written, and a thoughtful critical introduction from Melissa Edmundson Makala.  It’s hard to see why Perrin has been forgotten for so long, but I am very glad to have encountered her.

Filed Under: books Tagged With: Alice Perrin, Anglo-Indian writing, empire, ghost stories, Rudyard Kipling

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