Cornwall and Coal, Mining for Romance in the 18th Century

Wallowing in 'tween-season of "Downton Abbey" and the aptly dubbed "Droughtlander", I stumbled across the PBS Masterpiece Theater gem,"Poldark".  Unlike the decadent binge-watching that usually follows my discovery of a long-overlooked television series, I was limited to a single season, since that's all that has been produced to date.




My compulsive tendencies, aided and abetted by Google, revealed that the series is based upon a treasure trove of novels by Winston Graham, first published in 1945.

The main character, Ross Poldark, was born in the 1700's.  His youth was rather unremarkable before he joined the British Army and spent several years fighting in colonial America.  Poldark finally returns home to Nampara in Cornwall, anxious to claim the beautiful young Lady Elizabeth Chynoweth.  Although not formally engaged before he left for his stint at soldiering, they had a youthful understanding that they would be so, upon his return.  Rumors of Ross's death as well as the actual death of his father, Charles, have preceded his return, and Poldark arrives to find his beloved engaged to his cousin.  His home at Nampara has been sorely neglected, overrun with the remaining livestock as well as two drunken servants.  With little money and even less hope, he sets out to repair and rebuild both his life and the remnants of his country property.



 While visiting the country market to purchase meager supplies, he comes across a lamentably dirty child being punched and kicked by a group of rowdy boys.  When no one intervenes, Ross steps forward and rescues her.  He takes her back to his home with the intention of returning her to her family in the morning, but she begs him to let her stay on as a kitchen maid.  The bruises and strap marks across her back bear testimony to her father's abuse, so Ross agrees with reluctance.  Gossip and rumors fly about as young Demelza stays on, gaining the novelty of enough to eat and new clothing sans beatings.  As she blossoms into a young woman, her gratitude develops into a desperate desire for Ross's affection, despite their difference in class.

Torn between his lingering desire for the gentile Elizabeth and the fiery Demelza, Ross finds himself at a crossroad as he works to revitalize his family's old, closed copper mine.  Should he follow the manners and conventions of polite society of the 18th century or seek the happiness that may ostracize him from everyone he knows?

Note that this blog post previously appeared in "Girl Who Reads".

IF IT'S WINTER, IT MUST BE CORNWALL

If you are like most people, you watch more television during the cold, winter months.  That was me, too, until the arrival of a streaming box.  You are scratching your head now, wondering why I would not watch even MORE television with this commercial-free viewing device.  I did…at first.  I cannot diminish the joy of snuggling under a down throw and binge-watching shows I’d postponed or just plain missed.  Two series were so addictive that I wound up reading the books (more than once) as only a single season had been filmed.   First was the Starz channel adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” and the second was Masterpiece Theater’s “Poldark”.

My viewing of the “Poldark” series was completely by accident.  I was depressed by the long wait for the next season of “Outlander”, which is supposed to resume in March 2016, and had already read the approximately 10,000 pages of the books.  Slowly, the story of the British soldier returning from America to his neglected, inherited property in Cornwall began to grow on me.  By the time I finished the televised series, I found myself in a similar state of mind as post-Outlander before discovering that the Masterpiece series was based on actual books.

Quickly doing a google search, I found that Winston Graham had written a slew of novels – 32 in addition to the Poldark books (of which there are 12).  They have opened a new world to me: the world of 18th century Cornwall with all the mountains and valleys of human existence in this mixture of society.  The first of the series was written in the 1940’s and more than once has been the subject of a television series.  The BBC broadcast an adaptation of the first seven books back in the 1970’s.  I haven’t watched the older series, as I don’t want to lose my identification of Aiden Turner as Ross Poldark.  Author Graham also wrote “Marnie”, which was made into an Alfred Hitchcock motion picture in addition to a Nazi spy thriller and a history of the Spanish Armadas.
If you want to try one of this prolific author’s works, they include the following:

• 1945 – Ross Poldark (original U.S. title: The Renegade)
• 1946 – Demelza
• 1950 – Jeremy Poldark (original U.S. title: Venture Once More)
• 1953 – Warleggan (original U.S. title: The Last Gamble)
• 1973 – The Black Moon
• 1976 – The Four Swans
• 1977 – The Angry Tide
• 1981 – The Stranger from the Sea
• 1983 – Poldark’s Cornwall (non-fiction)
• 1982 – The Miller’s Dance
• 1984 – The Loving Cup
• 1990 – The Twisted Sword
• 2002 – Bella Poldark

Other works

• 1934 – The House with the Stained Glass Windows
• 1935 – Into the Fog
• 1935 – The Riddle of John Rowe
• 1936 – Without Motive
• 1937 – The Dangerous Pawn
• 1938 – The Giant’s Chair (revised edition, 1975, as Woman in the Mirror)
• 1939 – Keys of Chance
• 1939 – Strangers Meeting
• 1940 – No Exit
• 1941 – Night Journey (revised edition, 1966)
• 1942 – My Turn Next (revised edition, 1988, as Cameo)
• 1944 – The Merciless Ladies (revised edition, 1979)
• 1945 – The Forgotten Story
• 1947 – Take My Life
• 1949 – Cordelia
• 1950 – Night Without Stars
• 1953 – Fortune Is a Woman
• 1955 – The Little Walls (Gold Dagger Award)
• 1956 – The Sleeping Partner (filmed as Sócio de Alcova / Carnival of Crime)
• 1957 – Greek Fire
• 1959 – The Tumbled House
• 1961 – Marnie
• 1963 – The Grove of Eagles
• 1965 – After the Act
• 1967 – The Walking Stick
• 1970 – Angel, Pearl and Little God
• 1971 – The Japanese Girl (short stories)
• 1972 – The Spanish Armadas (non-fiction)
• 1986 – The Green Flash
• 1992 – Stephanie
• 1995 – Tremor
• 1998 – The Ugly Sister
• 2003 – Memoirs of a Private Man (autobiography)

Kathleen Barker is the author of“The Charm City Chronicles” which include the following:

“Ednor Scardens” http://www.amazon.com/Ednor-Scardens-Charm-City-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B008BODK0E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454536041&sr=8-1&keywords=ednor+scardens

“The Body War” http://www.amazon.com/Body-Charm-City-Chronicles-Book-ebook/dp/B008D983ZY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454536168&sr=8-1&keywords=the+body+war+by+kathleen+barker

“The Hurting Year” http://www.amazon.com/Hurting-Year-Charm-City-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B00CR8K8T6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454536228&sr=8-1&keywords=the+hurting+year+by+kathleen+barker'

“On Gabriel’s Wings” http://www.amazon.com/Gabriels-Wings-Charm-City-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B00EG5VK54/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454536276&sr=8-1&keywords=on+gabriel%27s+wings+by+kathleen+barker

Barker also is a contributor to "Girl Who Reads" and Myrddin Publishing.

READ, CLEAN, WRITE, REPEAT

***Please note that this article previously appeared as my contribution to the Girl Who Reads blog****


Most authors I know are also voracious readers.  We love beautifully crafted words that paint rich tapestries.  Yet life intrudes, in the form of jobs, families, and the day-to-day minutia that consumes us, leaving little time for us to pursue our own writing much less enjoy that of others.

I tend to get involved in books that are series, most recently Diana Gabaldon's Outlander (2004, Dell, Amazon).  After devouring roughly ten thousand pages, I felt lost when the most recent book ended.  Stories on a grand scale are what I want most, and my next reading project is Winston Graham's Poldark (2009, Sourcebooks Landmark, Amazon).  I'll let you know when I resurface from the complete 12-book narrative.

Needing a short fix while waiting for the Amazon Stork to Prime-drop Poldark, I discovered an unlikely candidate:  Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (2014, Ten Speed Press, Amazon).  How on earth could a cleaning book make the New York Times' best seller list?  Why would anyone want to spend more time than necessary on cleaning, much less read about how someone else does?  There had to be a reason.

I have not finished testing her methods yet, but Kondo's weird little ideas are resonating with readers who have adopted her mantra that the things you own must give you happiness.  If they don't, you should get rid of them.  As I begin my journey of shedding decades of accumulated "stuff", I find myself happier.  Gone are the categories of clothing that were jammed in my closet...the fat clothing, the perfect size clothing (which is never quite achieved), and the sentimental items that haven't been worn since college.

Kondo's description of her younger self sounds downright obsessive-compulsive, as she searched to fine-tune her skills.  Her near-desperation feels foreign to the possession-loving Western world.  Yet it is these very things that make us dread the cleaning and organizing that those ever-growing amounts require.  It made me think of comedian George Carlin's routine about organizing our "stuff" so that we could make enough room to go out and buy more "stuff".

As a cleaning consultant in Japan, Ms. Kondo has lists of clients who wait breathlessly for their turn to secure her guidance in their own homes.  I WILL eventually reach my goal of possessions that spark joy, but I cannot do it all in one fell swoop as she recommends.  A dark 18th century Englishman from Cornwall beckons, promising his own sort of joy, and I'm answering his call first.