Eliza Eynsford-Hill

The next chapter I shall post features the ladies of the Kensington Gore Croquet Club. I thought before I do that I should say a little more about my character Mrs Frederick Eynsford-Hill -( to be formal with her name.) Shaw was right she did marry Freddie and Alan Jay Lerner was right too. He 'upped and ran away with a social climbing heiress from New York'.  Eliza, who, you may remember, was an accomplished mimic, became an actress. How she met with Vivie Raffles will be told later in the story. Here I want to talk about how she is forming in my mind.

Shaw always thought he was good at writing strong characters. I think though he was really best at strong men. I wanted to write some strong women. 



I think that this poster for My Fair Lady is perceptive.Higgins manipulates Eliza: Shaw manipulates Higgins. Higgins will probably stay offstage in my story although I imagine Eliza still invites him and Pickering to her opening nights.











Here is the original stage Eliza - Mrs Patrick Campbell. Eliza in my story is a bit jealous of her; especially as Shaw write's such good plays for her!

I think Audrey Hepburn is probably the most famopus Eliza now. To me, she is closest to the Eliza I want to have in my story pre-transformation. But there is no denying she looks good in the glad-rags. Her place in my story, and indeed in the croquet club is because she has made the leap from the underclass to a position where she can control her own destiny. I read someone saying that her being a flower-girl was a euphemism for prostitute   I dont agree with this interpretation at all but it does suit my purposes.

But let's not waste the lovely Audrey while we're on the subject of Eliza. And, while we're at it two more Elizas - Diana Rigg on the stage and Carey Mulligan who will shortly play her in the My Fair Lady remake. None of the Elizas so far though are quite what I had in mind.

Mind you Hepburn made her so iconic that she achieved Barbie status!


I think I get closer to the Eliza that I want with Julie Andrews; the first My Fair Lady (did you know that is supposed to be cockney for Mayfair Lady?) on Broadway and the West End.

















Julie Andrews comes closer to the strength in Eliza that I wanted but lacks perhaps the playfulness.






















But now we begin to other resonances. In the movie 'Star' Andrews captured a star of an earlier era, Gertrude lawrence. Lawrence had been a notable Eliza in Pygmalian.

Here she is. I think this comes very close to how I see my Eliza. The picture has a natural datedness but aside from that, I think Lawrence's natural comic talent shows through th glamour.

But wait: there is more.  Julie Andrews followed up her stage Eliza with Mary Poppins. Everyone expected in that year Hepburn would win the Oscar for My fair Lady but instead Andrews won it.

So in my mind, all these images come together to make my Eliza. I shall now share with you something that is not well known.Clearly, in the story, Poppins has some supernatural powers. Her author RL Travers (seen below very appropriately as Titania was trained in mysticism by none other than GI Gurdjieff who makes an appearance in my story.

So there you are; somewhere among all of that, my Eliza is taking form.

Gentlemen Rankers - Influences 3 (and final) (for now)

Finally, here are three sergeant's from Gunga Din.  I had forgotten that they were actually Royal Engineers.

Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Junior and Victor McLaglan (1939). Victor McLaglan is often thought of as irish but in fact he was English. He rose from the ranks of the British army to be provost Marshal of Jerusalem at the end of WW1. George McDonald Fraser said (in The Holywood History of the World) that his was the authentic voice of the army at the close of the imperial era.

On film he evinced a kind of general affability that puts me in mind of my Ambrose Delahay.

Here is a picture from the 'Rat Pack' remake of Gunga Din - Sergeant's Three.

An finally (perhaps) everyone's favourite Colour  Sergeant played by Nigel Green in Zulu.


So I haven't exactly found Reuben Chatham or Ambrose Delahay. At least they are not as derivative as I thought they might have been.

I'll have another search for them trough the Holywood back catalogue another day. In the meantime I had better get back to writing some story or I won't have anything to read at the Richmond Writer's Circle when I get back to Blighty.

Gentlemen rankers - Influences - 2

Here are two famous pairs of imperial sergeants.  Michael Caine and Sean Connery in The Man Who Would be King and Sean Bean and Daragh O'Malley in Sharpe. More British of course than are the three musketeers and undoubted influences but not really what I have in mind for my characters. None of them are close to Ambrose Delahay.  There may be bits of Sharpe and Caines's Peachy Carnehan in Reuben Chatham, perhaps. None of them have the bleak view of the world that a gentleman ranker would have.

The Gentlemen Rankers - influences -1

I had wanted to write about the gentlemen rankers ever since I read Kipling's poem. My original plan was to set them in the late 19th century. It was only recently that I thought of combining them with the magical years 1904 / 05 which I had also wanted to write about for a while. To be candid, I still have not got a clear a picture of them in my mind as I should like. However, they must owe something to the three musketeers. O have been a fan of Dumas' story (which I confess I have never read) since I first saw a film.

I think these were my favourites. Oliver Reed & Co from the Richard Lester film.

But these, from the Man in the Iron Mask, come a close second.

and of course I mustn't neglect these from the latest steampunk version.

As you can see the Three Musketeers are a powerful meme indeed!

But they are not the only influence on my gentlemen rankers, as I shall show in my next post.

Prendick

The last few scenes I have written involve Edward Prendick, who was the narrator of HG Wells' Island of Doctor Moreau. Actually I think that David Thelwis who played the role in a film (left) looked pretty much right but I had Roger Allam (right)more in mind as I was writing. It was funny though when I re-read the last few lines of the book (which I had forgotten) how good a fit Well's Prendick was for the story I am writing.

It finishes
“I hope, or I could not live.” A line I shall definitely steal.

It seems to me that when your intuition is on the right track writing there are many happy fits.

Rewriting Ch 1 Scene 1

Everyone agrees that the opening is so important. I have never been satisfied with mine and have had to change it anyway since since I wrote it I have made a big plot 'discovery' that has been a major structural enhancement to the story. Despite a debilitating head cold I made a draft rewrite that I think can be made to work. Y gave the thumbs up to my nest Writer's Circle reading so all in all I think I'm ahead of the game! Of course I should have worked out all the plot before I started writing I expect. And then again I should have done all my research first and in fact should probably have learned to write first. The trouble is I want to get on with the writing and anyway I usually get the best plot ideas in the process of writing. My hero, George MacDonald Fraser, author of Flashman, had it all worked out I think. He learned to write crisply as a journalist and for each novel did about six month research at the London Library and then six month writing. Alas, the London Library is beyond my means and if I were to do it all in the write order I should still be writing when I'm in the grave.

I think of it sometimes as someone painting in oils, they seemed always ready to smudge over something and repaint it when it seemed not right. This is what I'm doing.

My influences

Pretty much for the last 30 years or so there have only been two writers of fiction whose books I would buy in hardback immediately I saw them on the book shelves. They are George MacDonald Fraser and Terry Pratchett. MacDonald is a master of adventure story writing. Pratchett is the greatest conjuror of ideas I have known. I don't want to (and indeed, lacking the skill, cannot) write like them. But more generally they are what I aspire to. It doesn't matter if I fail. The aspiration is enough. Then of course there are all those adventure writers of the Victorian age that push me on and defy me to do better - Jules Verne, HG Wells, Rider Haggard, Kipling, Anthony Hope, Conan-Doyle, Jerome, Chesterton, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson and so many others. I like to think in the dark times that I have a cheer squad in heaven rooting for me to write the next line.