Monday 11 July 2016

Emergent Occasions - Catherine Butler


You all know Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, right?

No? Are you sure? Perhaps this part is familiar, at least:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne wrote that 1623, along 22 other meditations, as he was recovering from a serious illness. The “emergent” in the title refers to his emergence from illness back to health. Good stuff, isn’t it, for a man feeling distinctly below par?

Convalescence is a strange, liminal condition that probably hasn’t received as much literary attention as it deserves, despite Donne’s efforts. As an occasion for writing it has both pros and cons. The thought of mortality concentrates the mind, I suppose, even as it saps the energy. Having deserts of time to trek across, no obligations, a pen and paper, is in many ways an ideal state for a writer; but it’s cruelly counterbalanced by tiredness, illness, impatience and general enervation.

I mention all this because I spent a week in hospital myself last week, and am still convalescing at the house of some kind friends. Not that my condition was life-threatening, but it was serious enough to take me out of work for a while, and to present me with a wad of days marked “Convalescence”, a blank notebook begging to be filled. I’m not used to being ill, and at first I very much enjoyed being waited on – a luxuriously regressive experience. I even liked having a catheter and bag for a few days, and not having to worry about deciding when to pee. But every sweet must cloy, and now my brain crouches for employment.

Convalescence has been a friend to children’s books, both in real life and in fiction. Several children’s writers – Alan Garner and Rosemary Sutcliff for example – laid the imaginative groundwork of their future lives during the illness and isolation they endured as children. They needed to something to do with their minds, whether inventing their own stories or reading other people’s. If not for those prolonged periods of incapacitation, their lives might have taken a very different and less productive turn.

Within children’s fiction, too, convalescence has been a regular feature. One lineage runs from the School of Pain in What Katie Did (1872), which uses illness as an occasion to teach humility and selflessness to young children whose waywardness might otherwise lead them astray. If only Mrs Craven had had a copy in Misslethwaite Manor she might have taken note of Katie’s fate and avoided that fatal swing in the Secret Garden, thus making her own son’s prolonged convalescence towards bodily and mental strength superfluous! But it’s too late for regrets. More interesting to me is the tradition running from Katharine Pyle’s The Counterpane Fairy (1898), in which a fairy introduces a convalescent boy to the adventures to be found in the squares stitched into his bed cover. From there it’s but a short recuperative stroll to such books as Catherine Storr’s Marianne Dreams or even Philippa Pearce’s Tom’s Midnight Garden, both published in 1958, where the boredom of convalescence joins forces with the powers of magic to create memorable fantasies. (Admittedly Tom is not convalescent himself, at least at first – that’s his brother Peter – but he is cooped up in what we might call a quasi-convalescent state of high-pressure boredom, receptive both to Peter’s frustration and his own, as well as to the powerful memories filtering from the frail sleeper on the floor above.)

In such stories young minds starved of stimulation grow worlds from tiny seeds of crystal. Ceiling cracks, tree shadows and wallpaper patterns expand and flourish into forests. Reality becomes a Magic Eye picture in which the semi-feverish, half-focused eye of convalescence can perceive a hidden dimension.  Perhaps such experiences are less common now, thanks to penicillin and the MMR jab. Children aren’t often kept in prolonged quarantine for fear of infection or sent to farms run by family friends to get their strength back in landscapes pregnant with adventure, like Will Stanton in Susan Cooper’s The Grey King (1975). I suppose we should be grateful.

And yet, children still have serious illnesses, after all; they still convalesce. Where are their stories? I wish I had time to answer that question, but I'm a little tired after all this typing. Also, some thinly buttered toast would be nice, if you really don't mind, and a pot of tea - not too strong! - to go with it. Oh, and Pointless is on in five minutes...

11 comments:

Gillian Polack said...

I'm rather pleased you're bored in convalescence. It's a good sign.

Clementine B said...

Lovely post... yes, there's rather a lot of convalescence and ill children in older books (also Stevenson's poems) but less in contemporary ones. And yet there are still some ill children! I wonder if contemporary texts might be less tolerant (=more scared) of the idea of convalescence being truly a problem.

A friend of mine wrote a book for his teenage daughter who was convalescing from a broken arm. The book features a teenager convalescing from a broken arm. And fighting zombies...

Stroppy Author said...

Hope you feel better soon, Catherine, and back to characteristic sprightliness. I think you're right about MMR and antibiotics; few children have 'proper' illness any more. And there is more fear and relief around convalescence when it does happen as it is associated with more dangerous conditions. Measles was horrid, but for most people it did not produce long-term damage so the whole sick-child scenario must have been less fraught as well as more common. And sick children now just watch CBeebies, they don't have adventures.

Catherine Butler said...

a teenager convalescing from a broken arm. And fighting zombies...

The world needs more of that!

Yes, Stroppy, I agree. back in the day it was taken for granted that you'd go through some combination of measles, mumps, scarlet fever, and a chocolate-box selection of other infectious nasties. And, with no CBeebies, there was really nothing else to do to pass the time but be sucked through a portal.

Katherine Langrish said...

The heroine of Diana Wynne Jones' 'Hexwood' is recovering from an illness, isn't she? And watching the road outside though her bedroom mirror, like the Lady of Shalott? But 'sick-lit' has taken over; today's heroines are likely to be actually dying, (while falling in love at the same time)

Catherine Butler said...

I believe you're right on all counts, Kath. Not of course that people didn't die of illness in the old days (poor Beth March! poor Helen Burns!), but not usually the main character. The modern trend perhaps has something to do with the perception that, as Stroppy was hinting, serious illness is now seen as anomalous and potentially catastrophic rather than as a normal and expected feature of childhood.

farah said...

Lovely, I had six weeks in 1997. I sometimes long for it again. And what happened to Convalescent Homes? Do they still exist?

Leslie Wilson said...

When I was recovering from severe major surgery 10 years ago, once I'd got past the stage when I could only listen to music, I watched videos, progressing from Ferris Bueller to Heimat. Maybe that's the adult equivalent of CBeebies? But I watched all of Heimat and, since I was in the middle of Saving Rafael, it was very useful. I hope you're soon much better, Cathy, but enjoy convalescence!

Catherine Butler said...

Well, Saving Rafael is a great book, so convalescence is certainly justified in that case. I'm in the middle of The Water Babies: who knows where that will lead?

Alison Waller said...

Interesting - I also wonder if contemporary authors are more nervous of writing lengthy descriptions of ennui as a starting point for adventure. Is there an editorial trend towards encouraging stories that begin in media res, rather than in the tedious sickroom (or - in variations on the boredom opening - on a rainy afternoon or the first day of a disappointing holiday)?

Catherine Butler said...

An excellent point, Alison!