Chapter 2 Scene 6

n uneasy return from Scotland

\link to Google Drive Chapter 2 Scene 6

I haven't a lot to say about this scene. Its purpose is to set up future conflict.

I was a bit disappointed that the train South was not then called the Flying Scotsman. The Scotch Express doesn't have the same ring to it. The Flying Scotsman was famous when I was young partially because I think someone had made a speeded up film of the journey.

 By 1904 the Scotch Express had a dining car and a corridor. The meal break stop was no longer necessary. I forget how the journey took - getting on for 12 hours I should think.

Chapter 2 Scene 3.5

The ladies of the Kensington Gore Croquet Club are attacked in a grotto.

Link to Google Drive

Chapter 2 Scene 3.5

This is an "then all hell broke loose" scene (a phrase Elmore Leonard says you must never use) Leonard is right of course - the trouble is he says you mustn't use "suddenly" either which I find much harder. Avoiding it does seem to me a good discipline though.

One of the things that was a great movie experience for me as a child was the atack on the Nautilus by the giant squid. Someone once said that if you want a single symbol of what steampunk is go for the Nautilas in 20,000 Leagues under the sea.  And let's face it, by the loch there does have to be some sort of monster.

I was hoping for something really atmospheric for the underground quay

When it comes to secret passageways my mind never goes far past Young Frankenstein. You remember? "Put - the - candle - BACK!"








There is supposed to be a secret passage at Boleskine to the graveyard at least. I don't think it's ever been found.

My idea of a Kraken - I could go quite as far as the one in Pirates of the Carribbean

Twenty thousand leagues under the sea is one of the first movies I can remember seeing and being thrilled by. No wonder I'm a steampunk fan.

This is the toy my parents bought me after the movie. I have a precise memory of playing with it in a rock pool at Brixham

Janet at her most dramatic.Who would have thought that that nice Geraldine McKewan from Miss Marple could look like that. Her fist film role was about when I was playing with my Nautilus. There's a thought.

I wanted something really KAPOW!!! for Angel's rifle / shotgun. I'm not sure the Winchester is exactly right but there's only so much research you can do.




Well here is one of the scenes that thrilled me all those tears ago. My goodness, doesn't it look like return to the forbidden planet?

James mason and giant squid

and here is the one that stayed in my mind.

Mason ventures out

Chapter 2 Scene 3.4

Recovery in the Kitchen. Eliza investigates the hearth

Chapter 2 Scene 3.4 link to Drive

More footage of Crowley and Boleskine - this time a little less frantic - here

BBC programme about Crowley and Boleskine

 This is an Edwardian kitchen. The one in this picture and the one in the next are, I suppose, close to what I envisaged for this scene - not exactly though.







I really think of the one my grandmother worked in. It was in the basement of a large house just off Kensington Gardens. There was a very long table (or so it seemed to me when I was small). There wasn't much activity in the house; only Colonel Mountenay lived there. My grandmother and another couple of elderly ladies sat round the table drinking tea most of the time. That is my memory. I particularly remember the servant bells like the ones in the picture below.

Here is my grandmother Sarah (She liked to be called Pollie by her friends - as in put the kettle on, she would say,) The place is Kensington Gardens, I think, with the Round Pond in the background. It is not far then from where she worked. The alien moonface in the pram is me.

At times like this you always wish you had better photos. I know that it is a bit out of place in this blog but, well - there you go.

By the way this picture would have been about 1950; Forty-five years after the events in my story. It is sixty - two years old so closer to then than now.

 I expect the hearth where Eliza found the charred scraps looked like this one.

Chapter 2 Scene 3.3 (V1.0)

The ladies are surprised bt the madwoman

Chapter 2 Scene 3.3 (V1.0)

Another picture of Boleskine House. This is the front.






The house and surrounds.

I was hoping this picture of Mrs Rochester would give a clue as to what my madwoman looks like.

Chapter 1 Scene 4,1

This is the scene in which I introduce the ladies of the Kensington Gore Croquet Club.  I really enjoy writing them and they seemed to muscle their way into the story and elbow their way to centre stage. The trouble is, of course, that the story may get unbalanced. Another problem for the re-write, I guess.

Here the first half of the scene is on Google Drive

Chapter 1 Scene 4.1


I have already gone on about some of the background for Alice Lutwidge. I'll post something about the other ladies later on. In the meantime here are two thoughts.

 Bicycles were important to me.  I wanted to get them into the story. It only grew in my mind as I wrote (what everyone else knew already) that bicycles were an important symbol of Edwardian / late Victorian women's liberation. I mean literally liberating. Women could get around unescorted. Moreover it was a technological innovation that caused it. Both these themes are important to the story I am trying to write so they seemed to flow naturally.

This next thought it going to be a bit harder to explain.  Here goes. All the while I was creating the four ladies of the Kensington Gore a line from 'The Usual Suspects' was going through my head, It was the one that Kevin Spacey, as Roger Kint) says - something like.
'What the New York cops didn't know, and what I know now, is that these men would never lie down, they'd never give in, they'd never bend over for anyone.'
And strangely, that is how I saw the Ladies of the Kensington Gore Croquet Club from the moment they all pushed their way into my head. So all I have to do is to get that down in the writing :).

More about how I see the ladies in later posts.

Alice Lutwidge in the Gentleman Rankers

In my story, Alice is in her late teens and an orphan. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lutwidge, his mother's maiden name) was her guardian but has been dead for six years at the beginning of the story. His self portrait is to the left.

 Alice is one of the four members of the Kensington Gore Croquet Club. She has a small private income, She lives with Gwendolyn Darling (who is fabulously wealthy) in a large mansion in South Kensington. She has occasional flashbacks to the events of the two Alice stories but can never quite be sure how real they were - if at all.

My present thinking of how she might look is coloured by how Reese Witherspoon looked in the movie of The Importance of Being Ernest.

I think she makes a good Alice.

Alice in Wonderland

Without the pressure of having to have a new scene ready for the Richmond Writers' Circle for the next couple of weeks, while I'm in Australia, I am letting my tendency to procrastination take hold. In the meantime here are some thought of one of my main characters. It will be clear, early in the story, that my Alice has much to do with Lewis Carroll's. I didn't want to base her on Alice Liddell - undoubtedly the ordinal Alice. Notwithstanding Alice Liddell's appearance in Phillip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series, she would have been too restrictive a character for my purposes. In point of fact there were at least three Alice's among Carroll's child friends. To be candid I haven't fully worked out how my Alice fits in yet. Tidying up such things may well have to wait until a rewrite.

In the meantime, here are some versions of Alice that have influenced my thinking.

Let's start with Alice from the story. Here she is, blonde fair, blue dress, as we all have thought of her from the Tenniel drawings or Disney. Someone once said that ,to make her story sound Freudian, you merely had to tell it. She comes across to me as candid and direct - qualities that I have tried to preserve in my story. It is she who will ask the innocent but penetrating question. She is also quite fearless.






I could fill up pages of this blog with Tenniel drawings but I'll restrict myself to just this one. Playing cards are a recurrent these in my story so this seems appropriate











Here is the Disney version. Already Alice seems to be getting a bit older. I saw this movie as a child and must have been captivated by it because it never left my head.

If a little girl wants to be Alice on her birthday, this is the costume.

To prove that the dress does not always have to be blue, here is the 1985 American movie. I don't doubt that it will be reviled by Alice purists. I quite enjoyed it though. Certainly it didn't give me the heebie jeebies nearly as much as the recent Tim Burton film - of which more later. In this scene, by the way, Alice is a queen, having made it to the eighth rank of the chess board. This is something that will get a reference in my story.,

Here by contrast to all of the about is the original Alice - Alice Liddell. You can see why this pic inevitably raises an eyebrow, Nevertheless, it seems that this would not have be en the case from the viewpoint of Victorian sensibilities. In any event, anything that cause THAT kind of raised eyebrow is omitted from my story.

It has always stuck in my mind that Alice Liddell, who grew up to marry a cricketer of some renown, had two sons. They were both killed in the first world war. That is part of how I see the Edwardian era ripped apart. That will perhaps be another story although I shall have to finish this one first.

I hope I make it clear in the first chapter that it is not Alice |Liddell I am writing about.

Of course, there are now a vast number of illustrations of Alice. I chap I knew who had a stall at a Sydney Saturday market specialised in versions of Alice. There are many many of them.  The illustration here is one of a countless number.

Here, so I can dismiss it quickly, is the Tim Burton Alice. Its good points were simply overwhelmed by its total lack of empathy with its subject.

 Here, of far more interest to me is the Alice from Jonathan Miller's 1966 television play. This had a profound impact on me. It envisages Carroll's book as a satire on Victorian Society. This is a completely different Alice figure - close to but no quite reaching womanhood. This what Miller said -
 "Once you take the animal heads off, you begin to see what it's all about. A small child, surrounded by hurrying, worried people, thinking 'Is that what being grown up is like?'" Miller's 'child' is of course not small. She is much more a rather sulky teenager. She is a hub around which eccentrics revolve.



Here is another shot from the same play.  I strongly advise anyone to see it.

Aside from its own virtues I think this Alice is closer to what I want than others. I still don't have a clear picture of my Alice in my mind. I don't really yet have a completely clear character as I would want it to be.  I still have much work to do on that. It is always fun to play the game of which actress would I like to be playing the part. More of that in another post.