The Guns of August, Chapters 10 – 14

My thoughts: This section was a bit difficult to get through, to be honest. Chapter 10 starts off discussing Turkey (who ended up taking sides with Germany), then segues into a naval battle (which involved Turkey) between Britain and Germany. The section about the naval battle was cumbersome for me—I suppose that means I wouldn’t make a good sailor. One notable thing about this chapter is that Tuchman mentions that passengers on an Italian steamer witnessed part of this naval battle. Among these passengers, writes Tuchman, were “the daughter, son-in-law, and three grandchildren of the American ambassador Mr. Henry Morgenthau.” Barbara Tuchman, our esteemed author, was one of those grandchildren of Henry Morgenthau! But she was only two years old at the time, so I’m pretty sure she remembered nothing.

These chapters also mention the German invasion of Belgium. Perhaps I should back up and explain why the Germans decided to invade Belgium in the first place. The Germans wanted to stick to the Schlieffen Plan, which decreed that Germany would invade and defeat France, then focus on Russia. This was designed to prevent Germany from fighting a two-front war (because those are NEVER a good idea). And the way to France was through Belgium.

Chapter 11 documents the battle at Liège in Belguim, about which Tuchman writes, “The prodigal spending of lives by all the belligerents that was to mount and mount in senseless excess to hundreds of thousands at the Somme, to over a million at Verdun began on that second day of the war at Liège.” In other words, the prototype for how brutal World War I was to become began in that Belgian city. Although the city’s citizens had some fight in them, they eventually fell to the Germans, who mercilessly shelled the city. Their defense of the city reminds me of the poem “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay (which was written in 1919). The last lines of the poem are “Like men, we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,/Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!” The brutal treatment of the Belgians by the German army did not stop at Liège, and the invaders cut a deadly path across the country.

Chapter 14 documents the Battle of the Frontiers, which was when things got really ugly. The French were slaughtered by the Germans in the Ardennes forest (which, because I’m a huge fan of Band of Brothers, I know was the sight of The Battle of the Bulge thirty years later during World War II). We see that the desire to stick to military plans by both the Germans and the French led to really bad consequences. The French’s military plans did not include plans for defense—they were really big fans of offense. So they didn’t plan on how to respond to German attacks. The Battle of the Frontiers was the moment, perhaps, that everyone realized that it would not be a quick war. It was when a war of movement became a war of attrition. The French, at least, realized at this moment what happens to the best laid plans of mice and men. Tuchman writes, “Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers—danger, death, and live ammunition.” That is a very hard and age-old lesson. But, unfortunately, no one knew how long the war would be or how many lives it would cost.

This part of the book, while interesting, was not as engaging to me as the first ten chapters. I think that’s maybe because the beginning of the book was more history related, whereas Chapters 10 – 14 are more about military strategy. But Tuchman proves time and again that she was a wonderful writer. And because of this, I kept reading. The most striking thing about this book is that Tuchman wrote with her eye to the future—she constantly reminds us why the first month of the war is so relevant to how the rest of the war, which in turn influenced the entire 20th century, played out.

Great passage: The German march through Belgium, like the march of predator ants who periodically emerge from the South American jungle to carve a swath of death across the land, was cutting its way across the field, road, village, and town, like the ants unstopped by rivers or any obstacle.

Turtles!

I saw these turtles at the zoo yesterday. Aren't they cute? We were all just enjoying a nice summer afternoon.

The Guns of August, Chapters 1 – 9

History and cake

Author: Barbara Tuchman

Category: I’ve wanted to read this book since 12th grade

My thoughts: Dear reader, I’ve decided to write about this book in stages. The Guns of August is a project, a monumental thing. So I’m going to divide and conquer (since I’m reading about war strategies of various countries, I couldn’t resist a battle metaphor). Interesting side note: the events in this book happened almost 100 years ago this month.

The Guns of August opens with the funeral of Britain's King Edward VII, which occurred in 1910. This marked the end of an era (pardon the cliché). In a few years after the funeral, Edward’s nephew Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany would no longer be monarch, for starters. Other monarchies (like the ones in Austria-Hungary and Russia) would vanish as well. After the war, the map of Europe was recreated, and empires began to crumble.

The first few chapters are about the war plans of the countries involved (Great Britain, France, Russia, and Germany), and their alliances. I remember, in high school history class, learning that entangling alliances were one of the causes of World War I. At the time, I thought that it was as if the countries of Europe were mean girls, and if one is mad at another, all her friends are mad at that country, too (I was in high school, and surrounded by mean girls). Keeping track of those alliances is a bit tricky. The French couldn’t stand Germany because of the 1870 war that Germany won. Russia and France were in an alliance that stated one would protect the other in the event of a German attack. England was willing to help out France, and to protect Belgian neutrality in the event of a German invasion. This led to a tense environment that was akin to a balloon continuing to swell and swell until it finally pops. That “pop” is the murder of Archduke Ferdinand (of Austria-Hungary) by a Serbian nationalist.

When the Archduke is killed, Russia agrees to protect Serbia if Germany aids Austria. Because of all those alliances and understandings (and because Germany did, in fact, violate Belgian neutrality), France and England become involved. And this, dear reader, is how a war becomes a world war.

The first few chapters also introduce some of the main players: the Kaiser, Chief of the German General Staff Helmuth von Moltke, Czar Nicholas of Russia (whose physical resemblance to his cousin King George V of England is FREAKY; they look like twins), and Sir Edward Grey, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, who famously said of the eve of England’s declaration of war on Germany, “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time.” Also, Winston Churchill is also present, as he was First Lord of Admiralty for Britain at the time. No doubt he learned a thing or two for when he had to lead his country through war less than thirty years later. And despite all the plans and war strategies, no country thought the war would last for very long. European wars in the decades before World War I had been relatively short. Britain’s Lord Kitchener was the only one who foresaw a long war.

One interesting thing is that Barbara Tuchman wrote The Guns of August right in the middle of the Cold War. So we, as modern readers, know more than she does in regards to how this story plays out. When she was writing this (in 1962), Germany was still divided and the Soviet Union still existed. As a child of the ‘90s, I remember hearing about the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the drama and chaos in the Balkans. From the year of Edward VII’s funeral, until seeing images of people taking pickaxes to the Berlin Wall and hearing unfamiliar names like “Bosnia” on the news at the end of the 20th century, so much changed in European and world history. The Guns of August documents the slide into world war that caused these decades of change. That makes this book monumental.

Great passage: Although the defects of the Russian Army were notorious, although the Russian winter, not the Russian army, had turned Napoleon back from Moscow, although it had been defeated on its own soil by the French and British in the Crimea, although the Turks in 1877 had outfought it at the siege of Plevna and only succumbed later to overwhelming numbers, although the Japanese had outfought it in Manchuria, a myth of its invincibility prevailed.

P.S. As seen from the above passage, Barbara Tuchman could really construct a sentence!

P.P.S. Did you know, dear reader, that during World War I the British monarchy changed its name from the Germanic House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the (very British) House of Windsor? Here in America, sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage.” Luckily, only the first name change stuck around (because…liberty cabbage? Really?)

A Word About Tennyson

Nice beard, Mr. Tennyson

I’ve mentioned Alfred, Lord Tennyson here, here and here. So I thought I’d write a little bit about the man on his birthday—he was born on August 6, 1809. My favorite Tennyson poem (and one of my favorite poems, period) is “Ulysses.” Tennyson wrote it after the death of his best friend, Arthur Hallam. To me, this poem about getting that feeling that the best days are behind you, but pushing forward and realizing that good times can still be had. “Though much is taken, much abides,” he writes… I reread this poem quite a bit.

In grad school, I took a Victorian poetry class that I thought would be incredibly dull but in the end I really liked. We spent a lot of time on Tennyson. Actually, we spent a lot of time discussing his really long poem In Memoriam, which is also about the death of Tennyson’s BFF. And when I say “a lot of time,” I mean we analyzed EVERY stanza of that incredibly long poem. I’ll admit that somewhere along the way I completely lost interest in In Memoriam, and to this day, I have never read the whole thing. But I love the opening lines:
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.

This, to me, means growing up and maturing—evolving, really. Oh, I can’t forget about “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” The poem is spectacular, but the story behind it is even more intriguing. I think Tennyson is like Shakespeare, in that that a lot of people are familiar with certain lines and passages of his poetry. For example, “’Tis better to have loved and lost/ Than never to have loved at all” (from, you guessed it, In Memoriam). And: “Theirs not to make reply, /Theirs not to reason why, /Theirs but to do and die” (from “The Charge of the Light Brigade”). He was such an amazing poet. Remember, dear readers: “Tis not too late to seek a newer world” (that one’s from “Ulysses”).

Off topic: All About Eve

Movie: All About Eve (1950)

My thoughts: All About Eve is my favorite movie of all time. I have been a huge fan for over half of my life. I can recite entire scenes word for word (much to the amusement of my family). This movie, for those who don’t know, is about an aging Broadway star, Margo Channing (played by Bette Davis) who takes a seemingly innocent young woman, Eve Harrington (played by Anne Baxter), under her wing. Eve turns out to be a deviously ambitious usurper who wants Margo’s career and her man, Bill Sampson. The movie has amazing (and highly quotable) dialogue and a lot of references to theater that I have slowly but surely learned over the years. When I first saw this movie as a fourteen-year-old, the references to Arthur Miller, Macbeth, Hamlet, Ibsen, Sarah Bernhard, etc. went completely over my head.

All About Eve also has wonderful supporting characters: Karen Richards is Margo’s best friend and the wife of Margo’s playwright; Birdie Coonan is Margo’s wisecracking assistant; and Addison DeWitt, shrewd and heartless, writes about the theater and knows a little too much about everyone’s business. The latter two characters have some of the best lines in the movie. Thelma Ritter was in A Letter to Three Wives  and her character, Birdie, is the first person to get wise to Eve’s game.

I love this movie because it is witty and is a wonderful drama without being melodramatic. The characters are flawed but very compelling. Eve is a bit like Undine Spragg, our old friend from The Custom of the Country —she fights her way into the theater world and wants success by any means necessary. All About Eve was directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, who also directed the A Letter to Three Wives (and, interestingly, Guys and Dolls). Oh, and did I mention that the force of nature known as Bette Davis is in it? Dear reader, watch it, and thank me!

Great line (from Margo Channing): Infants behave the way I do, you know. They cry and misbehave; they’d get drunk if they knew how. When they can’t have what they want. When they feel unwanted or insecure or unloved.

The Shooting Party

Earl Grey tea goes well with English lit.

Author: Isabel Colegate

Category: This is the first time I’ve read this one. I discovered it while perusing reviews on amazon.com.

My thoughts: It took a minute for me to get into this book, but I really liked it. It did more to satiate my Downton Abbey cravings than Snobs. The Shooting Party, in fact, has some similarities to Downton. Both are set just before World War I and have an upstairs/downstairs vibe going on. The Shooting Party is set in the fall of 1913 at the estate of Sir Randolph Nettleby. He has invited a group of people to his estate for a shooting party. The action takes place less than a year before those fateful guns of August, and the threat of war is very much in the air. Colegate writes, “By the time the next season came round a bigger shooting party had begun, in Flanders.” It’s an ominous feeling reading about these characters, knowing that the very fabric of their lives would be rent in less than a year. There’s a parallel between the shoot and the brutality of war—the men in the story pick off pheasants left and right in a methodical way that foreshadows the mechanized warfare that was World War I.

I had to take notes on the characters, because there are quite a few of them. Aside from Sir Randolph, there is his wife Minnie, who may or may not have had an affair with King Edward VII (Minnie reminded me a bit of the Duchess of Cornwall), Lord Gilbert Hartlip, who is a renowned shooter, and his wife Aline, who is having an affair with Charles Farquhar, a fellow guest. Bob Lilburn, another guest, is there with his wife Olivia, who is smitten with fellow guest Lionel Stephens. Also, there is Cecily, Sir Randolph’s nineteen-year-old granddaughter, who is enjoying a flirtation with Tibor Rakassyi, a visiting Hungarian count. My favorite character is Osbert, Sir Randolph’s eccentric young grandson who has a pet duck.

The “downstairs” people include Glass, head groundskeeper of the Nettleby estate, and his son Dan, who shows a proclivity to science that is encouraged by Sir Randolph and looked upon skeptically by Glass himself. Also, there is Ellen, Cecily’s maid, who is in love with John, one of Sir Randolph’s footmen. There’s also Cornelius Cardew, an anti-blood sport fanatic who plans to “educate” those present at the shooting party about the perils of what they are doing.

I remember having to learn the causes of World War I in my high school history class, one of which was nationalism—the kind that is actually jingoism. And it’s very much on display here. Both upstairs and downstairs people believe Britain and the British Empire are the bees-knees. Ida, Sir Randolph’s daughter-in-law and Cecily’s mother, states that her husband is against Cecily marrying “anyone except an Englishman” (too bad for Tibor Rakassyi). Dan Glass liked “being part of an Empire that he had been told at school and had found no difficulty in believing was the best there had ever been.” There’s a very Kipling-esque vibe here. The Shooting Party gives a snapshot of a time when the sun never set on the Empire—an Empire that began to unravel when World War I was over.

Isabel Colegate’s writing reminded me of Maud Martha, in that both are written in a simple and profound way. There are no chapters in The Shooting Party, oddly enough. But this makes the story flow better. It’s just plain old damn good fiction. It’s a beautifully written novel, and I’m sure I’ll read this one again.

Great passage: He would have been surprised to learn that Sir Randolph, unlike Minnie who aspired to it, considered cosmopolitanism a vice. It was all right to know your way around Paris, Sir Randolph thought, and to visit Italian picture galleries or the relics of the classical world, but generally speaking a man should stick to one country and be proud of it. If one wanted to travel there was always the Empire.

Up next: The Guns of August (continuing the World War I theme)

The Age of Innocence

Fun bookmark!

Author: Edith Wharton

Category: I first read this about 10 years ago, and it ignited my utter love of and complete devotion to Edith Wharton.

My thoughts: It’s such a treat to read this book again! Edith Wharton won a very well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for writing this, and it’s easy to see why. This book is an absolute gem—a great story told by a master.

The main character of The Age of Innocence is Newland Archer, a product of upper-class late-nineteenth-century New York society. He is engaged to another product of this society, May Welland (Winona Ryder played May in the movie version of The Age of Innocence, and I can’t help but picture her as I read the book, even though May has blonde hair in the novel). However, their little world is disrupted by the arrival of Countess Olenska (what a great name), May’s cousin, who decamped to America to escape an abusive husband in Europe. Newland is at first sort of irritated by her presence, but soon becomes intrigued by her. Because she lived abroad most of her life, Ellen Olenska is different in ways that intrigue Archer. For Ellen, I think, Archer represents stability—which she never had during her nomadic upbringing or in her marriage. They fall for each other—but under some very impossible circumstances. Of course, Newland and Ellen are living at a time when divorce is a gigantic no-no. The whole of society seems to be forcing them apart.

I like how Edith Wharton depicts the slow burn of attraction and love that occurs between Newland and Ellen. The two only kiss a couple of times, but each encounter between them is quietly erotic. The Age of Innocence is mainly told from Newland’s point of view, but the novel, I think, is really about the women. Ellen Olenska and May Welland are very intriguing characters. May has the appearance of a placid milquetoast. She’s called childlike several times in the novel, but Wharton also compares her to Diana quite a few times. Toward the end of the book, a part of May’s personality is shown that suddenly renders her more complicated than her image suggests. Ellen Olenksa, for her part, seems like she’d be fun to hang out with. She is smart, loyal, and possesses a very hard-earned wisdom. She is sort like a tougher version of Isabel Archer. And then there’s Granny Mingott, May and Ellen’s venerable old grandmother who says and does the things that only older people can say and do—and get away with.

Another interesting female character is Medora Manson, Ellen and May’s weird aunt, who, if she existed now, would be some sort of New Age former hippie. I love Edith Wharton’s description of her outfit when Newland meets her: “This lady, who was long, lean and loosely put together, was clad in raiment intricately looped and fringed, with plaids and stripes and bands of plain color disposed in a design to which the clue seemed to missing.” Ha! This made me wonder how Edith Wharton would describe the outfits of hipsters.

I never noticed until now how literary The Age of Innocence is. Wharton mentions poetry by Tennyson (yay!), Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It warmed my little English major heart! I got the urge to dig out my Victorian poetry book from grad school and reread “The Lotus Eaters” and “How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix.” I have to say that although I love Tennyson, I’m not a big fan of “The Lotus Eaters” (neither is May Welland).

I had forgotten how melancholy the last chapter of this novel is. It has a wistful, almost sad tone, but is not maudlin. The last chapter highlights an element that has been prominent character in the entire novel—change. The novel starts in the 1870s and ends and ends about a quarter of a century later. During this time, the elements of change shift the strict mores of New York society, the face of New York itself, and the world outside the insular community in which the characters live.

Great passage: There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe.

Up next: The Shooting Party