April's Shower of Photos 11

Two more buildings in Church Square, both of them opposite the Victorian terrace in yesterday's post. First, the Golden Bell Pub, which has slightly mysterious origins. One reference says it was built on the site of a lodging house used by stone masons who built All Saints Church, but there doesn't seem to be any proof of this. The first certain reference to the Golden Bell as a pub comes from the late 18th century, but a somewhat unreliable Victorian register says it was first licensed in 1603. The front of the building dates from the 18th century, but other parts are older.

And on the other side of the entrance way to the right of the Golden Bell in the picture, The Post Office, another Victorian building dating from 1887.

April's Shower of Photos 10

I love this terrace of Victorian houses in Church Square. Built in 1855 they were originally six upmarket private homes - plenty of room for the servants! - but now are all offices. The entrance to the church in the previous photos is just to the left. And yes, that church is still in use - Church of England of course. You can see photos of the inside here.

Simple Woman's Daybook: 27th April

Outside My Window ... cold, wet, wintry weather. Such a come down after a week of beautiful warm, spring sun.

I am thinking ... what a difference the weather makes to my mood.

From the learning rooms ... Cherub is being hugely enthusiastic about playgroup - asks every morning if she is going ... big cheers if the answer is yes, and groans if it is no.

I am thankful for ... hot water and central heating, after three visits from a repair man - first to fix a noisy water pump and then to work out why the fixing left us with no heating and only tepid water.

From the kitchen ... chicken stir fry.

I am wearing ... black jeans, grey sweater, silver pendant necklace, hand knitted socks, crocs. Back to winter clothes after a week of linen trousers and t-shirts.

I am creating ... mundane sewing - taking in skirts, turning up trouser legs, and sewing ribbons onto ballet shoes.

I am going ... to curl up in the warm as much as possible.

I am reading ... Yiddish Civilisation: the Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation by Paul Kriwaczek and The Planets by Dava Sobel.

I am hoping ... the spring weather comes back quickly.

I am hearing ... the TV. I am half watching Zoo Days while typing.

Around the house ... wet washing. No chance of hanging it outside today.

One of my favorite things ... hot bacon sandwiches with mustard.

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week ... play date for Cherub, meeting with parents of First Communion children, an English themed meal with neighbours (hmmm ... what to cook?).

A Picture Thought I Am Sharing ... the underside of a ray at the Sealife Centre - taken by Star, which tells you quite a bit about how Star's mind works! See its mouth?

Check out The Simple Woman for links to other Daybooks and instructions if you want to do one of your own.

April's Shower of Photos 9

Back home again ... and here is the beautiful thirteenth century Church (dedicated to All Saints) in the town centre:


The ironwork on the west end door is also thirteenth century, made by the same master craftsmen as the ironwork at Westminster Abbey (I couldn't get quite the whole of the door in the shot as I had to poke the camera through the metal grille that screens off the porch):


The Church has a glorious sixty metre tall spire which can be seen from all the approaches to the town - when we see the spire, we know we are almost home:


The brickwork on the spire is convex, curving outwards slightly to make it appear straight from a distance (I don't claim to understand how this illusion works!). I took this picture looking upwards from the base of the spire, and it is just possible to see the curve:

Churchill's Astrologer

This is kind of old news, as it was reported in the press a year ago when the relevant files were made public, but I only just discovered it ... did you know that during World War II MI5 (the internal intelligence agency in the UK) employed an astrologer? Partly to pass on intelligence about certain clients who were under investigation, but also to try to predict Hitler's plans on the assumption that he was following astrological advice.

Weird, but if you are into Catholic literature it gets stranger, as there is a high chance you will have come across books written by MI5's official astrologer. So who was he?

Louis de Wohl.

I read and enjoyed a couple of his books a while ago - fictionalised biographies of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo - and was searching for the title of his book on St. Helena, thinking it would be an interesting follow up to Evelyn Waugh's book about her ... and what did Google throw up? A whole series of articles about de Wohl's wartime career.

Oh. My. Goodness. Not what I was expecting at all!

Now, I'm not posting this to put anyone off reading his books, but purely out of interest in a rather extraordinary story. So far as I can discern, de Wohl "got religion" after the war, dropped out of astrology (if, in fact, he was ever genuinely into it in the first place) and into writing Catholic fiction. From what I found, he would be a fascinating subject for a full scale biography. I dug around a bit, and patched together this potted version ...

Louis de Wohl was born Ludwig von Wohl in 1903 in Berlin to a Hungarian father from a minor aristocratic family and an Austrian mother. He claimed his family were Catholic, but there is some suspicion that he was Jewish, or part-Jewish, and that his origins were the real reason he left Germany for Britain in 1935. He himself said he left because he could no longer stand Hitler and living in a country whose laws he could not respect. He had a brief career in banking before becoming a writer of popular novels and serials.

When the war broke out in 1939, he volunteered to serve in the British forces, but as a German national was declined. In 1940 he managed to coax MI5 into employing him as an astrologer, with the rank of Captain. His handler described him as "extraordinarily clever" and a "brilliant propagandist"In 1941 he was sent to America by the Special Operations Executive in an attempt to undermine the feeling that Hitler was invincible and to encourage pro-war sentiment. MI5 agents had very mixed feelings about de Wohl and some suspected he was a fake. An MI5 minute written in February 1942 says: "De Wohl is somewhat of a thorn in my side…a complete charlatan with a mysterious, if not murky past…struts about in the uniform of a British Army Captain and gives every reason for believing that he is in some secret employment…he is likely to be guided solely by his vanity…there is no case for interning him…if…left at large it is essential that we should keep a close tag on him…". Another described him as a "bumptious seeker after notoriety". Despite de Wohl's claims that Hitler was receiving astrological advice, it is now known that he was not.

Louis de Wohl's wartime experiences led him to rediscover his early faith. He became a committed Catholic and decided his writing career must change direction. In his own words:

Another seven years would pass before the late Cardinal of Milan, Ildefonso Schuster, would tell me: "Let your writings be good. For your writings you will one day be judged." But already then I knew that I had to undergo a radical change as a writer, and I knew that I had to make up for many years of time lost. I did not vow, like Franz Werfel, to write the life of some special saint if I would get out of the war alive. I just decided to serve God.

He began to write biographies of saints. His claimed his book on St. Thomas Aquinas was written at the direction of Pope Pius XII, who later told him to write about "the history and mission of the Church in the world". Is this true, I wonder? In the 1950s he lived for some time in the United States, married a German novelist, and moved to Switzerland where he died in 1961.

Fellow astrologer Felix Jay knew Louis de Wohl for twenty years and his recollections paint a picture of a charismatic man who combined self-aggrandisement and fantasy with real likeability. Jay strongly doubted that de Wohl was ever a real astrologer, although books he wrote on the subject are still quoted in astrological texts. He also thought his autobiographical snippets were suspect. This is his description of de Wohl in 1938, when they first met:

He occupied a large room in the hotel littered with books, papers in complete confusion, a large desk covered with all sorts of mementoes and framed and signed photographs and the inevitable leather cases of big cigars. Most objects of daily use were engraved with a baronial coat of arms. He was a man of medium height, but appeared to be much taller when sitting like an archduke in a high chair. More often than not he wore a flowing robe or a silken dressing gown. Everything around him oozed baroque or rococo opulence: he loved luxury of the peculiar Michael Arlen brand, and was surrounded by a Sydney Greenstreet aura of questionable taste, this serving not only to impress the visitor but most likely to generate in his own mind an illusion of grandeur ... He behaved initially like a duke giving audience to a petitioner. This attitude underwent a gradual change and another Louis began to emerge: smiling, humourous, sometimes puckish, sparkling. One felt happy in his company. His mind seemed to be receptive to any new fact or idea, and while giving the impression of dispensing his graces freely, he, in fact, drew from others all the time for information, ideas, facts, and useful items.

He was apparently genuinely affluent, with his writer's income supplemented by wealthy astrological clients (he charged 30 guineas for a horoscope, the equivalent of £800 today) and gambling. He had a talent for making a little knowledge go a long way, and for making full use of his contacts ... he didn't invent the myth that Hitler had an astrologer, but he certainly exploited it in his own interests. Interestingly, Jay thought that de Wohl's claim that his wartime role was as an astrologer was false - "I found it increasingly difficult to believe that the British High Command would consult an enemy-alien astrologer" - but the MI5 files show de Wohl was telling the truth. Jay clearly liked de Wohl as a man, but his verdict on him as an astrologer was damning:

Did Louis de Wohl believe in astrology? Did he regard it as an esoteric or scientific discipline? I must confess that after the end of the War, I began to doubt it: he could talk of his practice in the same superficial and often brilliant manner as of any other matter, be it women, card games, a new fashion or the shortage of cigars. I came to the conclusion that Louis, after his conversion to astrology, had seen in it quite early certain definite material advantages: in the first place it enlarged the already substantial impression he made upon his prospective rich and titled clientele whose company gave an added prop to his ego, and in the second place he saw endless opportunities for, 'selling' expensive horoscopes.

On the other hand, he seems in no doubt that Louis underwent a genuine religious conversion. When he first visited him after the war:

To my surprise, instead of an astrological conversation ... I was submitted to a religious homily, and looking around the room I saw crucifixes and religious prints and other objects. Louis had either been converted to, or had returned to, Roman Catholicism, and his monologues, which in the past had been spiced with the names of the worldly high and mighty, now contained references to bishops, abbots and saints.

Fascinating stuff!

Sources
Independent and Guardian articles describing de Wohl's wartime career
Brief autobiography at CatholicAuthors.com
National Archives
The Louis de Wohl I Knew by astrologer Felix Jay.

April's Shower of Photos 8

Doesn't this Georgian house in the village of Upwey, Dorset look Jane Austen-ish?

7 Quick Takes

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1. I was amused to hear Cherub singing this conflated version of I'm a little teapot and I'm a little snowman:

I'm a little teapot short and fat,
Here's my bag and here's my hat.
When the snow is falling hear me shout,
Tip me up and pour me out.

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2. Cherub is showing the same determined independence as her eldest sister - "I do it! I do it myself! I don't need any help!". The independent streak can be a mixed blessing. It took me 40 minutes to clean up the bathroom after one of those moments this week.

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3. Along with the independence goes contrariness, and a determination to do everything her way. Take the handprint dragon picture we made yesterday. I suggested that the dragon's feet should be on the ground - she stuck on the legs with the feet pointing upwards; I suggested the tail should be at his back end - she stuck it on his head; that being the same head she had already deliberately stuck on backwards. At that point I lost patience. It was not one of our finer crafting efforts.

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4. Bad parenting moment of the week: Angel pointed out yesterday that I had forgotten to get her the ballet shoes she needs for her exam on Monday. Oops.

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5. What do you get when you mix an Irishman with three Poles? In our case, new soffits, fascias and guttering. It has been like the United Nations here this week, but after lots of hard work and mugs of tea, the house looks a lot better. To say it was a long overdue job is putting it mildly.

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6. Why is Cherub eating a chocolate egg at 9.15 am? Because she already has a trail of chocolate down her t-shirt from a choc chip brioche she ate for breakfast. May as well get all the chocolate mess over before I clean her up.

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7. Visited a friend yesterday who had disturbed one of these in her garden earlier in the week. Not sure who was more startled, the friend or the hibernating glis glis.

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You can find more Quick Takes at Conversion Diary

Alarms and Excursions

Subtitled: Cherub's first trip to Accident and Emergency (Don't worry ... all is well!)

Tevye and Cherub were upstairs, K-next-door and I were downstairs ... and Cherub ran down the stairs to get to us.

Crash!

Howl!

Blood!!!!!

Which, it transpired, was pouring from a cut on the back of her head where she had caught it on the radiator at the bottom of the stairs. Tevye and I rushed her down to see the doctor before the surgery closed, leaving K-next-door to collect Angel, Star and friend from various dance classes (thank goodness for our neighbours. Again.) Cherub was rueful but entirely with it ... "I don't want to go to the doctor!" ... and I know from experience that head wounds bleed profusely, so we weren't overly worried despite the spectacularly blood stained flannel I was holding to her head. The doctor looked, decided it needed stitching or glueing and sent us to A and E.

Cherub had a doze in the car, and by the time we arrived was remarkably bright eyed and bushy tailed, and no longer bleeding. The doctor decided (as we expected) that there was no damage beside the 2cm cut, and that it could be glued rather than stitched. Cherub was a trouper and withstood the nurse sticking the cut together without so much as a squeak ... helped by the teddy she was given as a distraction, which she was then allowed to take home with her. By the time we got home only her gory, blood-stained t-shirt and matted hair showed there was anything wrong. She slept well last night and is fine this morning - though the matted hair has to stay as we are not allowed to wash it for five days.

Cherub's verdict ...
"My head broke and I had to go to hospital and have it mended with glue."
"Next day, I won't run downstairs ... and I will hold on!"

The Story of the Creation

The Story of the Creation
by Jane Ray

This is a lovely book for introducing young children to the story of the creation. The text is an adapted from the King James Version of the Bible story, keeping the flow of the Biblical version but with some simplification and additions that make it easier to read aloud to preschoolers. Here is a sample:

Then God said, "Let there be birds on earth and to fly above the earth. And the earth was filled with the song of birds as they rose into the sky: peacocks and flamingoes, sunbirds and turtle doves, parrots, thrushes, owls, hummingbirds and nightjars. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day."

The illustrations are beautifully done, with lots of rich detail. Cherub loved the pages devoted to sea creatures, birds and other animals, and spent a long time spotting the various animals she knew.

On Writing History

I have often come across people wanting to know whether a particular history book is accurate, or wondering whether a book is "Catholic", with the implication that if it is not, then it must be faulty.

Reality is not so simple. Very few history books (if any!) are 100% factually correct - however much a historian checks references they are likely to miss something, and survey texts based on the writings of other historians are particularly tricky as errors can easily be perpetuated. Moving beyond the facts, history is subjective. It is the historian's attempt to interpret the past, weaving the facts into a credible story of how things might have been. Different stories of the same time and place are not mutually exclusive, and two very different interpretations can both give an accurate picture because they are looking through a different lens. Both are true, as far as they go.

I am reading Yiddish Civilisation by Paul Kriwaczek, who summarises this beautifully in an explanation of why he has chosen to write about the positive history of the Yiddish nation and to largely gloss over the more commonly told story of persecution and catastrophe ...

Being neither a learned Jew nor a professional historian, I do believe that there is another story to tell. Not an exclusive story, for no story has a monopoly on the truth and many different narratives can be picked out of the same materials. None contain all, but all contain some, of the almost overwhelming, confusing, apparently random profligacy of fact and conjecture, evidence and guesswork. Picking a narrative out of history is like choosing a path through the woods. To decide on any one route between the trees means abandoning all others, to tell one story is to leave all others untold.

I wish I had written that!

April's Shower of Photos 7

My last building from Dorchester - Napper's Mite. Originally almshouses built by Sir Robert Napper in 1616, it now houses shops and a cafe. Just look at that beautiful stone!


The name and date of the building are on the plaque under the bell tower ...

This is the view through the entrance archway ... a series of consecutive arches, leading through a courtyard and out the other side ...


This is the rear of the building ... I love the roof line with all those chimneys ...

April 23rd: St. George's Day

For St. George's Day on Thursday I'm thinking we will :

• Read Saint George and the Dragon by Geraldine McCaughrean (or just look at the pictures if the story is way over Cherub's head)
• Make a handprint dragon
• Make fairy cakes and use red and white icing to make a St. George's cross

Again, there are a many ideas for activities and crafts at Activity Village.

For more about Saint George, see this post that I wrote back in 2006. And here is a prayer to St. George.

April 22nd: Earth Day

I am trying to organise myself to do some simple calendar related activities with Cherub. Tomorrow is Earth Day so I'm planning to:

• Look at a globe
• Read The Story of Creation by Jane Ray (lovely illustrations!)
• Plant some flowers
• Colour some pictures
• Play simple recycling board game (found this in Asda for 99 pence!)
  

You can find lots more ideas at Activity Village.

Window Tax

I should have explained my throw away comment in the post below.

A tax on windows (effectively a glass tax) was introduced at the end of the 17th century and lasted through to the 19th. The amount payable depended on the number of windows in a house. As a result, windows were sometimes blocked up in order to reduce the amount of tax payable.

April's Shower of Photos 6

Colliton House, Dorchester. The plaque on the wall (just to the left of the road sign) gives this information:

Formerly the town house of the Churchill family. Mainly 17th century with major 18th century alterations. The site is believed to be the location of the medieval hospital of St. John the Baptist, fragments of which may still remain in the building and its foundations. The building has been owned by the County Council since 1933.

I was intrigued by the blocked up windows, and wondered if they may have been filled in to avoid window tax. I couldn't find anything about them on Google, but I did discover that the house appears in Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge as High Place Hall.

Simple Woman's Daybook: 20th April

Outside My Window ... misty early morning with the promise of another warm spring day.

I am thinking ... about what I need to do to get back into a new term's routine.

From the learning rooms ... playgroup for Cherub this afternoon, then the older girls go back to school tomorrow.

I am thankful for ... a relaxing holiday and recharged batteries.

From the kitchen ... lamb steaks and kebabs left over from a bbq with Next Door yesterday.

I am wearing ... pink winter pyjamas, and thinking they are getting too warm and I need to get a lighter pair out.

I am creating ... more socks. One pair for my brother, and another for me with the soft yarn I bought to crochet a cardigan for Cherub. I tried the cardigan and gave up - too much hole and very dodgy tension. I did finish her knitted lilac one, though.

I am going ... to the library to swap holiday reading for a new book pile.

I am reading ... Yiddish Civilisation: the Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation by Paul Kriwaczek.

I am hoping ... a new dance class schedule doesn't make for too much running around in the evenings.

I am hearing ... Noddy on the TV.

Around the house ... piles of laundry in various stages. The downside of going away.

One of my favorite things ... Carte D'Or vanilla and chocolate brownie ice cream.

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week ... plenty of outdoors time while the weather is good.

A Picture Thought I Am Sharing ...

Check out The Simple Woman for links to other Daybooks and instructions if you want to do one of your own.

April's Shower of Photos 5

Lots of photos to add to my April Shower from our holiday. To kick off, here is the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester - more Victorian Gothic, built in 1884.

How gorgeous is this window?

Home Again

We had a lovely holiday in Weymouth - even the weather was on our side, most of the time. The girls current ages - 14, 10 and nearly 3 - seem to be a particularly good combination, with everyone getting along well and enjoying each other's company.

We did a lot of this ...

and this ...


And a bit of this ...

and this ...


Not to mention some swimming (all of us), a luxury spa session (adults), some clothes shopping (females over the age of three), and lots of ice cream and Easter egg eating.

And guess what? Angel and Star danced in the caravan park's talent show and won a free holiday for a week in October to go back and take part in the grand final. (This is not quite as wonderful an achievement as it sounds. They were ... ahem! ... the only entrants in their age group. But hey! They overcame the embarrassment of being the only ones and got up there on the stage and did their stuff, so I reckon they were winners.)

Happy Easter

Wishing you all a happy and blessed Easter.

We are off to chill out (literally!) on a south coast beach for a while.

Now to finish packing ...

4 x 10 Reading Challenge: Update 3

Finished book titles are blue, with those completed since my last post in bold; books in my current reading pile are green. I cheated slightly, and split biography and autobiography into separate categories. I'm not sure yet whether to the abandon the children's historical fiction or serendipity categories from my original list - I will see where the reading muse takes me.

Autobiography

• Nella Last's War: the Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 (ed. Richard Broad)
• Nella Last's Peace: the Post-War Diaries of Houseife, 49
• A Vicarage Family: a Biography of Myself (Noel Streatfeild) - a partly fictionalised story of her own childhood as the second of four vicarage children. She was also the most difficult child, and the least happy. Stubborn at home and uncooperative at school, she felt unloved, particularly by her mother. Now I want to read an objective biography of the author to find out how much of the book is accurate, and how much is fiction. I found this for 99 pence in a charity shop, which is just as well as the book met a sad end when I dropped it in the bath.
  

Biography

• Flora Thompson: the Story of the Lark Rise Writer (Gillian Lindsay)

Crafts

• A History of Hand Knitting (Richard Rutt)
• Sensational Knitted Socks (Charlene Schurch) - the sock knitters Bible. Teaches you to knit socks any size, in any yarn, in dozens of different patterns. If you like knitting socks - or have aspirations to knit them - you need this book!

Education

• Teach Me To Do It Myself (Maja Pitamic) - reviewed here.
  

Faith

• The Shrines of Our Lady in England (Anne Vail) - still reading as this is an easy book to pick up, read a snippet, and put down.
• My Life With the Saints (James Martin, S.J.) - three chapters in so far.
• A Pocket Guide to St. Paul (Scott Hahn) - arriving from Amazon any day, thanks to Alicia's review.

Fiction

• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer)
  
• The Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett)
  

Geography and Travel

• A Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria (Kapka Kassabova) - I picked this up from the new books display in the library because I knew next to nothing about Bulgaria. The author grew up in the capital Sofia during the last years of the Communist regime, before emigrating to New Zealand. In the book she explores both the memories of her childhood and the "new" Bulgaria. The echoes of teenage angst and the author's feelings of rootlessness make for some negativity. I thought at the outset that this was going to bug me, but as I got into the book it was outweighed by her vivid writing and the way she brought her Bulgaria alive.
  

History

• The Road to Wigan Pier (George Orwell)

Science and Nature

• Electric Universe (David Bodanis)
• A Year in the Country (Alison Uttley) - part of that Little Grey Rabbit / Alison Uttley rabbit trail.

Unfinished Business
Alison Uttley, the Life of a Country Child (Denis Judd) - print too small!
Beatrix Potter At Home in the Lake District (Susan Denyer) - started but didn't get far, so returned it to the library as I needed to free up space on my ticket.