A return to Cornwall — and Winston Graham’s Ross Poldark

The photo used on the 1970s printing of Ross Poldark (the decade in which the first TV serial was aired)

The 1970s Demelza cover photo (novel first published 1946)

Dear readers and friends,

I spent a good chunk of my reading time today re-reading Winston Graham’s Ross Poldark (first published 1945) for the first time in a number of year, and have been genuinely surprised — I marveled — at how I found myself deeply engaged by the story, the characters, and thus the author’s Cornwall. Anyone who has been reading this blog for several years knows for a few of these I was committed to reading the Poldark books, watching both TV serials, and then reading many of Graham’s other fiction, about him, and about Cornwall. I’m just loving this material all over again.

1975 First still of Robin Ellis as Ross Poldark returning home, the revenant to Cornwall

First glimpse of Angharad Rees as Demelza, an impoverished abused young girl protecting her dog, Garrick

2015 Aidan Turner, as Ross, filmed as magnificent hero

Early in relationship Elinor Tomlinson as an angry Demelza in servant girl’s dress

I’ve returned to it because I find myself taking great pleasure in a many-sessioned on-line course sent out from a European OLLI at York University, From Lyonesse to Launceston: The Literary Landscape of Cornwall. Unfortunately we didn’t begin with the Arthurian tales, but rather poetry by Thomas Hardy; for me this choice for beginning the only flaw thus far in the course. Eight registered older adults, and a touchingly enthusiastic (idealistic about literature in the way I once was openly) teacher, Ruth Beckett (I find her by the end of each 2 hour session irresistible and enter into her awed discourse) who works very hard to take us into the texts in an original ardent spirit:

she uncovered a Blake-like John Betjeman (Jim loved his poetry for the nostalgia as well as the unafraid caustic critiques), has introduced us to Charles Causley’s poetry (website), Patrick Gale a experienced in his unusually organized novel, Pictures from an Exhibition, and now taken us through three (in my case at one time) deeply loved favorites: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (I also once again reveled in the 1983 movie featuring Rosemary Harris and Michael Gough); Daphne DuMaurier’s still mesmerizing Rebecca (I managed to break free of the interpretation of the book where Maxim de Winter is a kind of Bluebeard tyrant — he’s another vulnerable soul) and re-saw the best movie, 1970s, 4 parts utterly faithful to the book, with Joanna David as mature heroine looking back, Jeremy Brett a volatile de Winter, and the inimitable Anna Massey as Mrs Danvers; and Graham’s first Poldark book.

No longer focusing on the sadomasochistic strain in DuMaurier’s dark visioned books (think of The Scapegoat, “The Bird,” Jamaica Inn), and browsing her Vanishing Cornwall, I am as I return to my Poldark secondary matter: how much of the spell Graham casts in this rooting of the story in this ancient neolithic place (I’ve visited three times, become a privileged periphery, edge territory like the Scottish Highlands. Each of our texts thus far picks up on different aspects (the art colonies since the 1890s; a wildness of liminality; poverty and corrupt splendor), but all perpetually come back to the importance of the sea, solitude and rituals, the cliffs and rocks, flora and trees, the mines and all they brought, fishing and grief, poverty. Books to read to come include Philip Marsden’s Rising Ground, which I’ve read bits and pieces of, but also quite new to me authors and books, Helen Dunmore’s Zennor in Darkness, Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvelous Ways, Peter Hobbes, A Short Day Dying, and books to touch upon (Rosamund Pilcher, The Shell Seekers, Judy Finnigan, I Do Not Sleep, on childhood isolation and an unromantic Cornwall, Charlie Carrolls’ oddly titled The Lip. I’ve added A. L. Rowse’s A Cornish Childhood (reading for 3 in the morning) and P. D. James late murder thriller fantasy, The Lighthouse, set on an imaginary island just off Cornwall. The course ends end of July. I did not pay for this one myself; it is a precious gift from a German friend, also taking the class.

What will be the outcome? anything concrete? Can I return to my Poldark project, only in a different form. My social abilities are poor, and now what mobility I had at risk, much weakened. I am told to use a wheelchair during all airplane travel. I am thinking, could I invent a new perspective from which a longer essay or book could come, say Cornwall as a place and edge/marginal/liminal ground.
Have a look here on Causeley’s life and poetry and a walking tour through Launceston

For tonight, I’ll begin with historian Bernard Deacon’s somewhat grim (highly factual), The Real World of Poldark, a rare book-length study centering on extrapolation’s from Graham Poldark books (books have hitherto been versions of film adaptation and cultural studies).

Ellen