Confused and disoriented, Georgina Ferrars awakens in a small room in
Tregannon House, a private asylum in a remote corner of England. She has no
memory of the past few weeks. The doctor, Maynard Straker, tells her that she
admitted herself under the name Lucy Ashton the day before, then suffered a
seizure. When she insists he has mistaken her for someone else, Dr. Straker
sends a telegram to her uncle, who replies that Georgina Ferrars is at home
with him in London: “Your patient must be an imposter.”
Suddenly her voluntary confinement becomes involuntary. Who is the woman in her
uncle’s house? And what has become of her two most precious possessions, a
dragonfly pin left to her by her mother and a writing case containing her
journal, the only record of those missing weeks? Georgina’s perilous quest to
free herself takes us from a cliffside cottage on the Isle of Wight to the
secret passages of Tregannon House and into a web of hidden family ties on
which her survival depends.
Hardcover, 257 pages
Published May 21st 2013 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Now, this is the first John Harwood novel that I’ve read but
it left me curious to read his previous novels. You see, 'The Asylum' is well
written and contains the usual Victorian Gothic themes of an overly emotional,
much too stimulated woman who ‘supposedly’ brings herself to Tregannon Asylum
using a different name! When doctors speak to her, her memories are sporadic
and she insists that her name is Georgina Ferrars and not Lucy Ashton. Now,
this could be a result of a few situations namely a possible doppelganger, a
family member trying to get rid of her or something much different.
John Harwood writes in a very descriptive and detailed
manner, so this will both capture your attention and keep you wanting to read
further or frustrate you so much that you give up. The plot supports the ending
which does contain a twist. I enjoyed the fact that this woman’s identity had
to do with letters and the possibility of a future occurrence so important
there is a special clause added to someone’s will. I highly recommend it! I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't find the plot and especially the ending predictable. I enjoyed 'The Asylum' very much and will read his other novels. I don't want to make this an overly detailed review because with these types of novels, it will ruin the enjoyment of experiencing the characters and the Victorian ambience for yourself! Just enjoy the twists and turns and have fun reading 'The Asylum.'
Happy Birthday to Leonard Woolf who was born on this day in 1880. Not knowing much about Mr. Woolf, beyond his marrying Virginia Woolf; I did a bit of research when I stumbled upon his autobiography! Imagine my surprise!! So, here are some excerpt quotes by the man himself describing some of his legendary friends...
The wedding photograph of Leonard Woolf and Virginia (Stephen) Woolf taken on their wedding day August 10, 1912, NY Times archives
“I emerged from nothingness was the early morning of November 25th,
1880, though in fact I did not personally become aware of my existence until
some two or three years later.I have
lived my life on the assumption that sooner or later I shall pass by annihilation
into the same state of nothingness from which I suddenly emerged that winter
morning in West Cromwell Road, Kensington, so many years ago.” Leonard
Woolf, Sowing: an autobiography of the years 1880-1904
‘Sowing: an autobiography of the years 1880-1904’ is a
wonderful autobiography written by the man known as the ‘husband’ of Virginia
Woolf but who was he really? He gives his opinions and observations about his
birth, childhood experiences that stand out in his memory for specific reasons including
those he met between the years of his life 1880-1904.
The one negative aspect of an autobiography is perhaps the
fact that it is one sided, sometimes grandiose in thought and belief with
definitely jaded moments of life experiences. I recommend it as a look into who
he thought he was.
Leonard Woolf as a schoolboy. Image source from Sowing: an autobiography of the years 1880-1904 by Leonard Woolf, 1960 edition
Leonard Woolf studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. He became
friends with Saxon Sydney-Turner, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, and Thoby
Stephen. They became known as the ‘Apostles’ and the beginnings of the
Bloomsbury Group began.
Leonard Woolf was a member of the Colonial Civil Service in
Ceylon for two reasons: once he became disillusioned with Imperialism he left
and he fell in love with Virginia Stephen. When Leonard married Virginia in
1912 she became Virginia Woolf! After her death in 1941 it was Leonard who took
charge of publishing her uncollected essays and diary selections.
Leonard Woolf joined the Fabian Society writing two reports
for them in 1916 serving the basis of the League of Nations. From 1919-1945 he
also served as secretary to the Labor Party’s advisory committees on
international and imperial questions. He and Virginia established what became
known as the Hogarth Press in 1917. Woolf
suffered a stroke and died on 14 August 1969 at Monk’s House which Virginia
bought in 1919.
On his friendships with Stephen and Strachey
Father of Toby Stephen and Virginia Stephen, Sir Leslie Stephen Leonard Woolf's parents and siblings
“By the time I left Cambridge I had become very intimate with Thoby
Stephen and Lytton Strachey and knew their families, and so the foundations of
what became known as Bloomsbury were laid. Thoby’s family seemed to a young man
like me formidable and even alarming. When his father, Sir Leslie Stephen, came
up to stay a weekend with him, Lytton and I were had in to meet him. He was one
of those bearded and beautiful Victorian old gentlemen of exquisite gentility
and physical and mental distinction on whose face the sorrows of all the world
had traced the indelible lines of suffering nobility. He was immensely
distinguished as a historian of ideas, literary critic, biographer, and the
first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. When I found myself, a nervous undergraduate,
sitting opposite to this very tall and distinguished old gentleman in Thoby’s
rooms in Trinity Great Court and expected to make conversation with him-not
helped in any way by Thoby-it seemed to me, as I said, formidable and alarming.
He was stone deaf and that one had to sit quite near to him and shout
everything one said to him down an ear-trumpet. This awkwardness and terror
were gradually dissipated by him. He had immense charm and he obviously liked
to meet the young and Thoby’s friends. He could see through our awkwardness and
even grubbiness to our intelligence, and was pleased by our respect and
appreciation. In the end we were all talking and laughing naturally (so far as
this is possible down an ear-trumpet) and enjoying one another’s company. This must
have been about three years before Leslie Stephen died.”
Toby Stephen and the Shakespeare Society Cambrige,Trinity top.Duncan Grant below. Virginia and Vanessa Stephen in 1902
“I also met Thoby’s two sisters, Vanessa and Virginia Stephen, when they
came up to see him. The young ladies-Vanessa was twenty-one or twenty-two,
Virginia eighteen or nineteen-were just as formidable and alarming as their
father, perhaps even more so. I first saw them one summer afternoon in Thoby’s
rooms; in white dresses and large hats, with parasols in their hands. Their
beauty literally took one’s breath away, for suddenly seeing them one stopped
astonished and everything including one’s breathing for one second also
stopped, as it does when in a picture gallery you suddenly come face to face
with a great Rembrandt or Velazquez or in Sicily rounding a bend in the road
you see across the fields the lovely temple of Segesta. They were at that time,
at least upon the surface, the most Victorian of Victorian young ladies, and
today what that meant it is almost impossible to believe or even remember. Sitting
with them in their brother’s room was their cousin Miss Katherine Stephen,
Principal of Newnham, with whom they were staying. But Miss Stephen was in her
cousin’s room for a tea-party, not in her capacity of cousin, but in her
capacity of chaperone, for in 1901 a respectable female sister was not allowed
to see her male brother in his rooms in a male college except in the presence
of a chaperone. I liked Miss Stephen very much, but it could not be denied that
she was a distinguished, formidable, and rather alarming chaperone. All male
Stephens-and many of the females-whom I have known have had one marked
characteristic which I always think of as Stephenesque, and one can trace it in
stories about or the writings of Stephens of a past generation whom one never
knew. It consisted in a way of thinking and even more in a way of expressing
their thoughts which one associates pre-eminently with Dr. Johnson. There was
something monolithic about them and their opinions, and something marmoreal or
lapidary about their way of expressing those opinions, reminding one of the Ten
Commandments engraved upon the tables of stone, even when they were only
telling you that in their opinion it would rain tomorrow. “
The Strachey Family by Graystone Bird, albumen print on the photographer's printed mount, circa 1893, NPG.
“I stayed with Lytton three years running in the summer in large
country houses which his parents rented, once in Surrey, once in Essex, and
once near Bedford. In this way I got to know his father and mother and all his
brothers and sisters. They stand out in my memory as much the most remarkable
family I have ever known, an extinct social phenomenon which has passed away
and will never be known again.In 1902
the Strachey Family consisted of five sons and five daughters, female and male
alternating down in the family thus: Elinor (Mrs. Rendel) Dick, in the Indian
Army, Dorothy (later Madame Simon Bussy) Ralph, married, in the East Indian
Railway, Pippa, later secretary of the Fawcett Society, Oliver, married, in the
East Indian Railway, Pernel, later Principal of Newnham, Lytton, Marjorie,
James. The level of intelligence in each
son and daughter and in the father and mother was incredibly, fantastically
high. They were all, like their mother, passionately intellectual, most of them
with very quick minds and lively imaginations. “
Leonard Woolf’s time in Ceylon
“I applied for Ceylon which was the senior Crown Colony, and
I was high enough up on the list to get what I asked for. I found myself to my
astonishment and, it must be admitted, dismay in the Ceylon Civil Service.
Looking back I can see that the dismay was natural, but
unnecessary, I am glad that I did not go into the Home Civil and did go into
the Ceylon Civil Service. My seven years in Ceylon were good for me, and,
though they gave me a good deal of pain, they gave me also a good deal of
pleasure-and a great deal of pleasure and memory of things past. But I am glad
too that I lived the kind of life at Trinity which was mainly the reason why I
did not do well in the examinations. It was, I think, a civilized life both intellectually
and emotionally. My intellect was kept at full stretch, which is very good for
the young, by books and the way I read them and by friends and their incessant
and uncompromising conversation. “
I couldn't help but associate Leonard with Virginia Woolf and the entire time would think of her. Sadly, his autobiography did not cover his years with his wife but I kept hearing one song in my head the entire time...Train's Meet Virginia. I think the lyrics actually relate to her!
