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.

Chapter 1 Scene 7

The Master of Dover Castle confers with the Laird of Boleskine

Chapter 1 Scene 7

Dover Castle

 I have posted some pics of Crowley already but there are so many great photos of him that I can't resist two more. I may have been unfair to him in my story but he was so determined to promote his own notoriety that I have no conscience at all.

After all... anyone who can pose like this...!

Mind you he was very much admired by some back in the sixties. Here he is on the Sergeant Pepper cover.

Gentlemen Rankers Chapter 1 Scene 3.2

This is the second half of the scene in which I earlier introduced my gentlemen rankers. I've posted a bit about them recently and earlier I posted about General Kitchener.  This scene also features Mortimer Angel who features  a lot in he story. By contrast to most of my characters he is neither real nor an established fictional character from the turn of the century.  I'll confess now that I always have Lee Van Cleef in my mind when I am writing him.

Anyway here is the scene

Gentlemen Rankers - Ch 1 Sc 3.2

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.

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.

The Master of Dover Castle / Oneshovel

I often think of this character as Charles Laughton or Alastair Sim. The wheelchair is there partially because it offered some steampunk opportunities and partially to emphasise his infirmity. But more truthfully a big influence was the wicked town mayor in Rango which I had recently seen.

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.