SPORTS: Tennis and RERAD: An Abbey book
Oct. 29th, 2021 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllCongratulations to Cam(eron) Norrie for winning Indian Wells the other week and thus becoming the male British no. 1. He’s one of the players who the freeze in rankings because of the pandemic didn’t help, and as I remember from Queen’s, has certainly been threatening to advance like this in 2021, and now he’s finally pushed through the barrier of winning a final, which much be all the sweeter as he did it from being down in the final set. Having said that, I see he’s out of the Vienna Open.
Selma at the Abbey: Elsie J. Oxenham, Collins, 1954 edition.
This is one of the ‘fill-in’ books, where EJO went back and filled in what had happened between her already published Abbey books – you can tell because there’s a lot of talk about Lady Jehane and Ambrose and a mix of series staples and characters who are supposed to be important but were never mentioned in the original books.
It’s a very discursive book, mainly characters talking and a lot of that talk seems to be about what happened in ‘Strangers at the Abbey’ which I do own and had read years ago, but seems to be quite heavily recapped here if you’d forgotten it, as I had. Angus Reekie, who was a ‘sily ass’ trying to steal the Abbey jewels but repented as he was caught, has returned to the Hall to ask Joan if the Shirleys will invite his ‘lassie’ Selma Andersson to stay and save her from being a Glasgow shopgirl (the horror!) At the age of 21 and a promising violinist, he’s sure that he wants his 16 year old friend to be his future wife, and has an eye to preparing her for that future. Selma now has only a stepfather she doesn’t like and a half-Swedish heritage. As Joy says, it’s somewhat cheeky as they’ve already helped him, but Joan talks her around and it’s an excuse for them to ask Jen to come stay with them and be a companion for Selma, as she’s closer in age than the 19-year-old Joan and Joy. Jen does get them to think a little more about how Selma might react to all this.
Class and nationality play a big part in this… When Selma first receives a letter from Joan and talks it over with Angus, she finds it a little weird, (because, of course, it is, and this is before she knows about the plan to send her to Miss Macey’s school, although she has left school) but he lets slip a little of his feelings and they come to an understanding. I genuinely did think that despite being a few years older and having known relative poverty before being exalted to lady of the manor status, the Abbey girls had a cheek in trying to advise Selma on her love life when none of them had a sniff of one – Jen was wittering about having 10 kids with a hardly sketched out imaiginary husband. Mrs Shirley apart, they weren’t in much of a position to advise her on that, ut as they were so sure they and Angus knew best for her future, and this was only a part of it, on they ploughed. Because they were wealthy girls from a hiher class, and English, to boot.
Once we meet Selma, too, it’s clear that she is a perfectly nice Glasgow shopgirl. She does yearn for broader horizons (she has an explorer’s heart, which will endear her to Joy), but just needs more life experience. Initial jealousy of these wonderful Misses Joan and Joy Angus keeps praising teaches her that she is possessive when it comes to Angus’s affections, and after the most dramatic event in the book, she realises quite how strong her feelings are – it’s a rather sweet romance.
There are some slight developments of the series staples, Jen talks thoughtlessly, upsetting Selma, and fully realises what she’s done, blames herself and is on the way to being the more thoughtful older Jenny-Wren. Joy is Joy, quick to judge and sometimes harsh in those judgments, tempered by St Joan (although Joan gets really vicious right towards the end about new Queen Beetle’s ‘gaudy’ coronation train and, for that matter, her name.) For my part, I rather enjoyed Nesta, Beetle and Aileen Carter’s cameos. I also wondered what Jacky thought of Jen being allowed to stay at the Hall instead of boarding at the school…again, or her palling up with Selma, who only goes briefly to the school.
I said it was a sweet romance, but Angus very much sets the parameters, and his rewards is Selma be growing up ever prettier, which made me roll my eyes, as did all the commentary on Selma’s Scottish-tinged English. I never thought there was such a big difference between ‘shall/will’, so I rather think that’s dated, and ‘sleeping in’ has become common parlance, (also stop being rude about Scottish names for Scottish places and Indian names for Indian places, Joy.) Most of all, Selma is criticised for pointing her feet in the Scottish folk dancing style, not the English one. I presume EJO had been spending time with someone from Scotland’s west coast and been inspired to create the character, before she and Angus are whisked away from the Abbey.
And now I have to admit that this was an accidental reread. It turned out that I bought and read a copy of this two decades ago, and had bought and read a copy of ‘Strangers at the Abbey’ a few years before that. My system for avoiding rereads is clearly not foolproof. When reading the start of the book, I did wonder if I had read a borrowed copy of ‘Strangers’, except I thought I might have remembered ‘Rykie’, but not even the business about how they use the jewels didn’t much tickle my memory.
Selma at the Abbey: Elsie J. Oxenham, Collins, 1954 edition.
This is one of the ‘fill-in’ books, where EJO went back and filled in what had happened between her already published Abbey books – you can tell because there’s a lot of talk about Lady Jehane and Ambrose and a mix of series staples and characters who are supposed to be important but were never mentioned in the original books.
It’s a very discursive book, mainly characters talking and a lot of that talk seems to be about what happened in ‘Strangers at the Abbey’ which I do own and had read years ago, but seems to be quite heavily recapped here if you’d forgotten it, as I had. Angus Reekie, who was a ‘sily ass’ trying to steal the Abbey jewels but repented as he was caught, has returned to the Hall to ask Joan if the Shirleys will invite his ‘lassie’ Selma Andersson to stay and save her from being a Glasgow shopgirl (the horror!) At the age of 21 and a promising violinist, he’s sure that he wants his 16 year old friend to be his future wife, and has an eye to preparing her for that future. Selma now has only a stepfather she doesn’t like and a half-Swedish heritage. As Joy says, it’s somewhat cheeky as they’ve already helped him, but Joan talks her around and it’s an excuse for them to ask Jen to come stay with them and be a companion for Selma, as she’s closer in age than the 19-year-old Joan and Joy. Jen does get them to think a little more about how Selma might react to all this.
Class and nationality play a big part in this… When Selma first receives a letter from Joan and talks it over with Angus, she finds it a little weird, (because, of course, it is, and this is before she knows about the plan to send her to Miss Macey’s school, although she has left school) but he lets slip a little of his feelings and they come to an understanding. I genuinely did think that despite being a few years older and having known relative poverty before being exalted to lady of the manor status, the Abbey girls had a cheek in trying to advise Selma on her love life when none of them had a sniff of one – Jen was wittering about having 10 kids with a hardly sketched out imaiginary husband. Mrs Shirley apart, they weren’t in much of a position to advise her on that, ut as they were so sure they and Angus knew best for her future, and this was only a part of it, on they ploughed. Because they were wealthy girls from a hiher class, and English, to boot.
Once we meet Selma, too, it’s clear that she is a perfectly nice Glasgow shopgirl. She does yearn for broader horizons (she has an explorer’s heart, which will endear her to Joy), but just needs more life experience. Initial jealousy of these wonderful Misses Joan and Joy Angus keeps praising teaches her that she is possessive when it comes to Angus’s affections, and after the most dramatic event in the book, she realises quite how strong her feelings are – it’s a rather sweet romance.
There are some slight developments of the series staples, Jen talks thoughtlessly, upsetting Selma, and fully realises what she’s done, blames herself and is on the way to being the more thoughtful older Jenny-Wren. Joy is Joy, quick to judge and sometimes harsh in those judgments, tempered by St Joan (although Joan gets really vicious right towards the end about new Queen Beetle’s ‘gaudy’ coronation train and, for that matter, her name.) For my part, I rather enjoyed Nesta, Beetle and Aileen Carter’s cameos. I also wondered what Jacky thought of Jen being allowed to stay at the Hall instead of boarding at the school…again, or her palling up with Selma, who only goes briefly to the school.
I said it was a sweet romance, but Angus very much sets the parameters, and his rewards is Selma be growing up ever prettier, which made me roll my eyes, as did all the commentary on Selma’s Scottish-tinged English. I never thought there was such a big difference between ‘shall/will’, so I rather think that’s dated, and ‘sleeping in’ has become common parlance, (also stop being rude about Scottish names for Scottish places and Indian names for Indian places, Joy.) Most of all, Selma is criticised for pointing her feet in the Scottish folk dancing style, not the English one. I presume EJO had been spending time with someone from Scotland’s west coast and been inspired to create the character, before she and Angus are whisked away from the Abbey.
And now I have to admit that this was an accidental reread. It turned out that I bought and read a copy of this two decades ago, and had bought and read a copy of ‘Strangers at the Abbey’ a few years before that. My system for avoiding rereads is clearly not foolproof. When reading the start of the book, I did wonder if I had read a borrowed copy of ‘Strangers’, except I thought I might have remembered ‘Rykie’, but not even the business about how they use the jewels didn’t much tickle my memory.
