tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post5491795980375095069..comments2024-03-28T10:31:55.774-07:00Comments on The Passing Tramp: How Fell of Bell to Blue the Jews: The China Roundabout (1956), by Josephine BellThe Passing Tramphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-6772750318533411922023-02-12T16:30:57.574-08:002023-02-12T16:30:57.574-08:00One day I'll blog about the treatment of Mitzi...One day I'll blog about the treatment of Mitzi in A Murder Is Announced. The characters have to clean their own gutters and care for their own hens (if they want eggs). Middle-class people have to work, good grief! Though the young people, apart from Edward, are cheerfully studying or working as gardeners. But they all have a blind spot for what's been happening in Europe. Mitzi the "Mittel European" is a figure of fun, and a "terrible liar", and nobody has a good word for her despite her bravery in helping to unmask the murderer.Lucy R. Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-784803511425084472022-08-04T14:20:35.091-07:002022-08-04T14:20:35.091-07:00Nothing about the antisemitism, interesting it pas...Nothing about the antisemitism, interesting it passed right by her!The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-91442777961303882202022-07-30T01:19:40.173-07:002022-07-30T01:19:40.173-07:00Here's the full of Bowen's review, in The ...Here's the full of Bowen's review, in The Tatler (5th December 1956):<br />With an opening demure, domestic as a page from Jane Austen, The China Roundabout, by Josephine Bell, has an end like an Elizabethan tragedy. More and more mystery, tinged with violence, accumu lates in what seemed, that first afternoon, a drab but highly respectable Hampstead house. Gloom of summer rain fills the ground floor rooms entered by Eileen Forrestal and her mother: here, out of touch with his relatives, had lived Uncle Monty (or Major Beresford). Now, he lies dead in a London hospital. And where, oh where, is the china roundabout?<br />From the time this pretty (and valuable) jewelled-and-porcelain musical box re-enters Maple Square, things begin to go wrong. The late major had subdivided his house: each floor had its tenants – some shady, some merely seedy. All have in common one interest: the china roundabout.<br />Mrs. Forrestal's lamentable exit from the story lowers the character interest a shade, I think. One misses the fussy, plaintive, pig-headed lady. In view of the still grimmer dramas to follow, she is possibly better out of it all, poor lady. Eileen, left to cope, is aided by more than one sleuth. Full marks for "atmosphere" go to The China Roundabout.<br />Nick Fullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05668031989499870182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-78611944650169116802020-10-03T14:58:47.359-07:002020-10-03T14:58:47.359-07:00Was that Death of a Delft Blue, I will have to che...Was that Death of a Delft Blue, I will have to check. Mitchell to me sometimes comes off like a naughty precocious adolescent, I think that's why she got a long with young boys so well! She seems to have been really proud of her ability to write impenetrable dialect speech and she did the whole Yiddish schtick thing sometimes, ill-advisedly. But, yeah, it doesn't strike me as mean-spirited like Bell's writing sometimes. I like Bell but she often come across as cold and starchy, kind of like the aristocratic mother of that one main character in Call the Midwives, I forget her name.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-48979682671037933642020-09-20T14:37:20.638-07:002020-09-20T14:37:20.638-07:00Fascinating Curt, and very off-putting. I have jus...Fascinating Curt, and very off-putting. I have just posted about a post-war Gladys Mitchell with too much casual racism and anti-semitism - Mitchell isn't (on the whole) disliking the Other characters, but finds teasing and jdugemental remarks about them to be acceptable. It is depressing. <br />I have enjoyed some of Bell's books, but you have successfully put me off this one... Clothes in Bookshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00058207970686573597noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-62327966562028185362020-09-08T13:30:38.516-07:002020-09-08T13:30:38.516-07:00Concerning the Mystery*File review, I think like a...Concerning the Mystery*File review, I think like a lot mystery writers from her generation she went downhill in the 1970s. If they were having trouble with social changes in the Fifties, just imagine the Sixties and Seventies. But I actually like some of her books even from that period, especially such a nice client. I'm not someone who believes that there's no room for conservative discourse in society.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-28444803760284511742020-09-08T00:42:14.257-07:002020-09-08T00:42:14.257-07:00I wrote about in Masters of the Humdrum Mystery ab...I wrote about in Masters of the Humdrum Mystery about how a lot of GA British mystery became hostile to the post-WW2 changes in society. You might see Bell as someone who became more conservative after the war than before it. The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-48573616183496509582020-09-07T13:28:14.044-07:002020-09-07T13:28:14.044-07:00http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=70476 for a really ...http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=70476 for a really hostile look at Bell!<br />As I said, it's odd. You'd think that training snd working as a doctor and what she saw as a result would give her a certain toleration of human oddities, but it seems to have left her with a full collection of intact prejudices.Roger Allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11012987757094423896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-48556770771053136222020-09-07T13:15:37.463-07:002020-09-07T13:15:37.463-07:00Supercilious--a good word for Bell's frequent ...Supercilious--a good word for Bell's frequent heroines!The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-16932289778573738402020-09-07T12:08:09.833-07:002020-09-07T12:08:09.833-07:00That's interesting that Ballantine left it in....That's interesting that Ballantine left it in. Christie's American publisher censored antisemitic language in her earlier books after the Anti-Defamation League complained about a character she included in The Hollow after WW2. The Jewish woman boss of the "nice English girl" with dyed hair and a "voice like a corncrake."<br /><br />I wonder whether the language in Roundabout led to it not being published in the US in hardcover? She had a spotty publication record in the US. <br /><br />Yes, it was actually your comments on a previous Bell thread that made me resolve to read this book again. I had forgotten about the antisemitism though I had annotated it in pencil in the book. So we owe this blog post to you! The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-19348016023981622422020-09-07T12:00:17.655-07:002020-09-07T12:00:17.655-07:00It all seems to tie in with the complaints about n...It all seems to tie in with the complaints about not being able to get good help anymore!The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-25161083655069441652020-09-07T11:59:09.731-07:002020-09-07T11:59:09.731-07:00Oh, I agree, when people call these books "da...Oh, I agree, when people call these books "dated," in fact they are less dated than we think. Similar issues continue to present themselves in these times. It can be complacency to think we are so much better.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-60277514235920293832020-09-07T09:03:57.343-07:002020-09-07T09:03:57.343-07:00Sad to say, there's still a lot of leniency in...Sad to say, there's still a lot of leniency in some circles toward racism and anti-Semitism. The KKK hasn't been laughed out of existence yet! And the attitude of some people toward today's refugees (who are fleeing horrors that most Americans can't even imagine) is a lot more dangerous than the shudders and snark of English gentlewomen. Martyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17570040930983242270noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-16997790598798959032020-09-07T08:49:06.493-07:002020-09-07T08:49:06.493-07:00Political correctness is form of consideration for...Political correctness is form of consideration for other people's feelings, which is something decent people shouldn't object to. Sure it can get nitpicking and extreme. But not calling people names based on their Other-ness, so as not to offend them, is hardly extreme. Apparently Trump supporters, like Trump himself, really hate not being treated with the respect they think THEY deserve--but hate to extend that respect to anyone who isn't (in the old-fashioned term) "One Of Us." Martyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17570040930983242270noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-29849579951968713112020-09-07T08:34:43.027-07:002020-09-07T08:34:43.027-07:0050% in your dreams, maybe. He's a minority Pr...50% in your dreams, maybe. He's a minority President. Martyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17570040930983242270noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-5706783442415755252020-09-07T01:56:38.636-07:002020-09-07T01:56:38.636-07:00One way Jews could come from Germany to England in...One way Jews could come from Germany to England in the 1930s was as domestic servants - some of them nominal - which might explain Mitzi and Lotti. References and skills were not required. I can't recall the book, unfortunately, but I remember a story where assorted German refugees are "employed" as servants and working as scientists. The complication comes when a "footman" maintains that as he too has a Ph.D. he should also be a "butler".Roger Allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11012987757094423896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-9203696819395056162020-09-06T17:56:47.633-07:002020-09-06T17:56:47.633-07:00For what it's worth, I tried to read this nove...For what it's worth, I tried to read this novel in the American 1965 paperback, and none of the anti-Semitism had been edited out--or at least enough of it remained that it turned me very much off.<br /><br />I've attempted to read a number of Bell novels over the years, and she can never help her petty prejudices and superciliousness coming through. It's a shame because she does write well, and sometimes she can be sympathetic--"Easy Prey" is the one novel of hers I finished and I did enjoy it. But I cannot imagine she was a person whom it was pleasing to spend time with, though I suppose that's not really relevant to whether she is a writer of merit! <br /><br />I checked and I'm the commenter who compared her to Christie, and I agree with you that Christie was not prejudiced in the same way, and certainly not by the 1950s. Christie was politically right-wing, in the genteel upper class British way, but she led a full and varied life where she met people of different races and creeds, and she wasn't really bigoted, I don't think. Sometimes insensitive, certainly--I'm thinking of the bit in Ordeal by Innocence where she writes something about the adopted biracial daughter that's like "she's a dark horse, it must be the part of her that's now white"--but she doesn't have this kind of visceral dislike of the Other. Kacperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15219607289740142139noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-9677124445604836142020-09-06T12:22:03.319-07:002020-09-06T12:22:03.319-07:00The fact that Bell's book seems to have been s...The fact that Bell's book seems to have been so praised by reviewers like Elizabeth Bowen with no mention of the racism (excepting Christopher Pym) shows people still had a very lenient attitude toward this sort of thing, I think.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-67701767159818805052020-09-06T12:20:29.095-07:002020-09-06T12:20:29.095-07:00When I was in line for the primaries in 2016, a wo...When I was in line for the primaries in 2016, a woman next to me loudly announced to another woman that she was voting for the "blunt man who tells it like it is." I wanted to ask her, you mean Bernie Sanders, lol. but, no, she was voting for Trump. I think Josephine Bell felt she was just "telling like it is," as it were. In one of her books she writes, so-and-so decided to be honest. I thought uh-oh and sure enough she really unloads. I'm sure Bell would just say I'm being politically correct. But I think it's legitimately bad, what she did in this book, no question.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-3196117221670392432020-09-06T10:10:41.698-07:002020-09-06T10:10:41.698-07:00Right on, Curt. I see no reason why a reasonable p...Right on, Curt. I see no reason why a reasonable person without a guilty conscience would would want to interpret and depict that specific statement in your review as an indictment of Trump supporters. Christophehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978885973806549838noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-35400114682238483712020-09-06T08:28:47.104-07:002020-09-06T08:28:47.104-07:00Not having read any Josephine Bell I cannot commen...Not having read any Josephine Bell I cannot comment directly, but the last two books I read were Death On The Lawn by John Rhode and Checkmate For Murder by E C R Lorac. Both of those books contained the N word although neither book contained any characters of colour. I mention this to illustrate how casually acceptable racism was in the world prior to The Holocaust showing us where such attitudes lead. The words would surely be excised from any current work. Sadly, I think the only real change has been one of substitution, that of Muslim in place of Jew. How many current books are relentless and pervasive with nasty Arab characters (and usually one "good" one for contrast)? Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose. Haters gotta hate and heroes need villains. Ron Smythhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00575735524072816238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-69504290632177330682020-09-06T06:35:48.528-07:002020-09-06T06:35:48.528-07:00Thanks for the interesting response. I will proba...Thanks for the interesting response. I will probably add more later, but when I was writing this of course I thought of Agatha Christie’s famous Middle European refugee Mitzi from A Murder Is Announced, the ditzy au pair. John Rhode has one too at the same time, Lotti. But Bell’s Mr. Mackenzie isn't a refugee and hes just as bad, or worse, as the rest. He's very much the stereotypical well off “Scottish Jew” of between the wars detective fiction, wearing rings and stinking of hair oil. And Ernst Meyer speaks English well, unlike Mrs. Rosenberg, yet he's a crook too, I guess its just that Bell is so relentless and pervasive with the nasty Jewish characters in this book, it seems exceptional. The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-89613224991348274412020-09-06T05:44:59.731-07:002020-09-06T05:44:59.731-07:00How odd of God
To choose the Jews.
But not as odd...How odd of God<br />To choose the Jews.<br /><br />But not as odd<br />As those who choose<br />A Jewish God<br />But not the Jews. <br />-someone responded. A Jewish friend maintains that "picked on" is a more accurate translation than "chosen".<br /><br />"It's interesting that an author who was a doctor, who must occasionally have dealt with unclean, poorly groomed and smelly people, should present her ostensibly sympathetic focal character this way."<br />Not only that, but as a doctor in London in the 1930s Bell would undoubtedly have worked with Jewish colleagues. <br />Her hostility to Jewish refugees could also be connected with the fact that most were middle-class and were not allowed to practise their professions in Britain when they first arrived, even - or especially - if they came from countries with higher levels of training. If Dr. Bell encountered someone better qualified than she was but unable to practise she might have felt both guilty and offended.<br />As for cleanliness, the tin bath in front of the fire for the whole family once a week was the standard in much of Britain. Many of the middle-class refugees who found themselves in rented working-class accommodation were shocked by British levels of cleanliness and hygiene.<br /><br />Anti-semitism seems to have been a trope, a rather nasty game, for British writers for a few years after WWI. They don't seem to have thought about it or to have taken it seriously or allowed it to interfere with friendships or even love and marriage, but it crops up arbitrarily now-and-then in books. After Hitler turned up people realised the implications of what they'd swallowed and regurgitated and clammed up, unless they were genuine anti-semites or contrarians or both.<br />On the other hand, in the 1950s there seems to have been exasperation and hostility to refugees in general and their failure to assimilate - or for their attempts to assimilate - into British life - Michael Gilbert features Polish gangsters in some of his books, for example - so Bell may have been going with the cultural flow and/or showing that suffering can degrade more often than it ennobles.Roger Allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11012987757094423896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-36677106816170629722020-09-05T19:59:20.236-07:002020-09-05T19:59:20.236-07:00Well, I will try to parse this one out for you.
Q...Well, I will try to parse this one out for you.<br /><br />Quoting: "No doubt Josephine Bell would have countered that she just "called things like they are," (Donald Trump's supporters say the same thing today)"<br /><br />I hear all the time supporters of Trump saying, when he says something outrageous, things like, "Trump just tells it like it is." And if you don't like it, you're being "politically correct." I think a lot of people of that sort might say, well, there are bad Jews (or blacks or Hispanics or gays), why can't you say so? You're trying to "cancel" my speech, etc. I think Bell might have said, why can't I portray villainous Jews in my novel if I want to? And apparently Hodder & Stoughton was just fine with that. I'm not, and I tried to explain why.<br /><br />Perhaps you were under the impression I was accusing Trump supporters of being antisemitic. I wasn't, though obviously the neo-Nazis and fascists who support him are. But that's really by the by. My reference to Trump only had to do with the whole issue of purported "political correctness."The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-79662121195084773702020-09-05T19:44:58.976-07:002020-09-05T19:44:58.976-07:00(Donald Trump's supporters say the same thing ...(Donald Trump's supporters say the same thing today). You just insulted 50% of the American people. You are wrong about President Trump and bigoted toward his supporters.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10989116618735923899noreply@blogger.com