Bad Blood: A Memoir

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Sage's spent her entire academic career at the University of East Anglia, where she became Professor of English Literature in 1994. She was twice Dean of the School of English and American Studies (in 1985–1988 and 1993–1996). [4] She edited The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English in 1999, which has become a standard work. As she wrote in the Preface: "In concentrating on women's writing... you stress the extent and pace of change, for the scale of women's access to literary life has reflected and accelerated democratic, diasporic pressures in the modern world." [6] Ms Sage is a wonderful writer. The structure and style are somewhat unusual for a memoir, and I definitely appreciate that. This is a compendious, layered novel – see ‘historiographic metafiction’ in the narratology handbook – the sort of novel that intercuts time zones and genres of fiction (realism, fantasy) and so fleshes out the present’s bleakness. In the present, middle-aged Charlotte FitzRoy is having a breakdown, precipitated very likely (thinks the business-like psychiatrist who plies her with anti-depressants she doesn’t take) by the death of her daughter Miranda in a car-crash; though as Charlotte sees it, loss of her political faith, dating from the coming-down of the Berlin Wall, has had rather more to do with it. Having absolutely no idea who Lorna Sage is/was, I ventured into the memoir because I was hungry for a woman's story—but not looking for trigger-warning events. I apologize for that; I just can't stomach horrible news on top of what's already out there.

Bad Blood has been split into three parts, which cover distinct periods in Sage's life - the first her early life at the vicarage in Hanmer, the second her transition to grammar school and living with her parents, and the third her surprise pregnancy at aged sixteen, and her determination to receive a University degree. These sections are peppered with photographs. Of Hanmer, Sage writes: 'So Hanmer in the 1940s in many ways resembled Hanmer in the 1920s, or even the late 1800s except that it was more depressed, less populous and more out of step - more and more isolated in time as the years had gone by.' Though childhood takes up much of the book, her teenage years are intriguing, for here the family rises above convention and supports Lorna in her time of need, at a time in history when many young women in her position would have been shamed and treated in a worse manner. That she gets through this challenging period in her life, supported by her family and goes on to complete a university education without hindrance, is astounding.But her concern was not simply to write about women, rather to make their work more widely and intelligently known. She wrote introductions to fiction by Katherine Mansfield, Christina Stead and Virginia Woolf. In 1994, she was appointed editor-in-chief of The Cambridge Guide To Women's Writing In English. Neo-Platonism was a source of endless fascination. It played a crucial role in the English poetic tradition, something that could be traced in the work of Milton, Shelley and, in a transatlantic version, the poetry of Wallace Stevens. More than a set of philosophical doctrines, it offered a way of both imagining and managing the world; it was possible to be both this worldly and other worldly at the same time. Even though their marriage was to end in divorce, the intellectual and emotional partnership Sage established with Vic was to last throughout her life. Their careers ran in parallel; both graduated with first-class degrees in 1964, both moved on to Birmingham University, where Sage studied at the Shakespeare Institute. In 1965, she became an assistant lecturer in English at the recently established University of East Anglia. In 1967, Vic took up a similar post at the same university. Bad Blood is often extremely funny, and is at the same time a deeply intelligent insight by a unique literary stylist into the effect on three generations of women of their environment and their relationships. In the past, she is revisiting a possible ancestor, the FitzRoy, nephew of Castlereagh, who captained the Beagle, and whose missionary Christian faith was horribly called in question by the works of his (later enormously famous) passenger Charles Darwin. And there’s a third layer, a tribute to the other Victorians, in the form of Dodgson’s Alice, a mad hatter’s tea-party set in a pastoral landscape, where Charlotte (or one of the people she’s split into) converses looking-glass style with an orang-utan called Jenny and three men who turn up in a boat, and are always demanding more to eat and drink and smoke – Marx, Freud and Darwin (again – he is, as we shall see, the real guru in the woodpile). As Jenny the orang-utan says to these rather bewildered guests of our heroine’s imagination, ‘She believes herself to be doomed. Psychologically. Politically. And genetically. Welcome to the wonderful world of disappointment, boys.’ Until Charlotte gets the hang of her playground by the sea their déjeuner sur l’ herbe is a comically glum affair: ‘The three elderly gentlemen sat in a languid circle on the grassy bank around a bright white cloth covered with the detritus of a picnic lunch. They looked neither comfortable in their formal suits, nor relaxed, yet they sat on.’ In fact they have no choice about the matter since Charlotte herself is, in the colloquial phrase, out to lunch most of the time – just about capable of putting them on trial for having sold her their grand theories (‘I sentence them to wander helplessly in the historical wilderness’) but not very efficient at organising the catering. In this stratum of narrative we’re in ‘Lineage Alley. Limbo Park. Dementia Place. Idyll Mews’. Nowheresville.

For Sage, reviewing was serious criticism. Her habit was to read all the available published work of any author she was reviewing. She was deeply engaged by the idea of writing about literature before it became canonical. Her reviewing was an opportunity to forge a style that could be both intelligent and accessible. The coverage that ‘The Sages’ received in the press on getting their degrees, shows just how extraordinary it was that Lorna should have been married (with a quite grown-up ‘baby’) and have graduated. In a boiling summer, punning headlines (‘It’s all a matter of degrees’ and ‘The Couple Who Are One Degree Over’) in the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail emphasise how far they were outside the norm. The best (or worst) of all of these from the Daily Mail, June 27th, 1964, reads: ‘The only marriage where honours are even…’ You dashed in and out as if saving the world wasn’t just more important than your kids, but more interesting, too ... Remember when you used to go to that feminist bookshop ... and I had to wait out on the street because, although I was only nine, they didn’t allow males in? ... I like being a rich young man with a portable telephone, instead of being an unwanted little boy standing outside a feminist bookshop. Sage's major study of neo-Platonism and English poetry was uncompleted at the time of her death. Instead, there was an abundance of other published work. During the 1970s, she established her reputation as an authoritative reviewer of contemporary fiction. She worked with a number of distinguished literary editors, including Terence Kilmartin at the Observer, and Ian Hamilton at New Review.

This kind of teaching appealed to Sage, precisely because it made teaching a form of research. She believed university teaching should open up fields of inquiry rather than deliver settled doctrines. Her teaching grew out of the latest discoveries in her reading. Her seminars were intellectual events, where some new line of critical thought would unfold. a] rich, justly acclaimed autobiography ... this almost perfect memoir is a tribute to imperfection' Independent Lorna Sage's Bad Blood has, like many of the books I review, been on my to-read list for years. I so enjoyed her non-fiction book, Moments of Truth: Twelve Twentieth Century Women Writers, and was eager to read more of her work. Rather than a collection of critical essays, Bad Blood is a memoir of Sage's early life in rural Wales during the 1940s and 1950s, and ends with her University graduation. It was published in 2000, and won the Whitbread Prize for Biography just a week before Sage passed away. The book spans the 40s, 50s and 60s, the years from her unconventional upbringing in a filthy vicarage, through her council house teens to her graduation from Durham university. One of the most compelling sections is her analysis of the failings of her vicar grandfather, responsible for the ‘bad blood’ she is later believed to inherit. Without reverting to bitterness or emotionality, but instead approaching her grandfather as text — it is his diary she plunders for evidence of his depravity — Sage painstakingly pieces together the clues as to what drives his hypocritical and unethical behaviour, not only as vicar but as husband, father and man.

Life grew very hard for her. Her second marriage was under strain, but she was heroically supported by Sharon and a small circle of friends. At the time of her death, she had many projects in train and more to give to a literary culture she had done so much to shape. She is survived by Rupert Hodson, Vic Sage, Sharon and her granddaughter, Olivia. If having such a brilliant mother and her towering book is a burden, Sharon Tolaini-Sage carries it well and with cheerful good grace. "It is a bit exposing," she says at one point. "It's nice when you meet someone and they know nothing about it." But still, how wonderful to have your family history – and what a family and a history it is – written so beautifully, for ever. "It is amazing," says Sharon, always smiling. Spending time in a post-war Welsh vicarage with Lorna's lusty vicar grandfather, perpetually sour and angry grandmother, and her ditsy mother----none of whom could manage to lift a broom or to teach Lorna to bathe, apparently---was definitely one of those "Gee, I didn't know people lived like that" experiences. Again....a plus for me Moving out of the vicarage and into "council housing" once her father returned from the war provided yet another look into that period of time. a b c d e Fenton, James (13 June 2002). "The Woman Who Did" . Retrieved 21 October 2019. (subscription required)She remembers there were always groups of students around, and people would come to stay for months on end. "This travelling procession of people. That was how life was." Did she never want them to go away so she could have her parents to herself? "Not then. Later, at various moments maybe. I think then I was OK with all that because there were lots of fascinating people usually in various states of interesting falling-to-bitsness. She was aware from a very young age how glamorous her parents were, especially her mother. She remembers clomping alongside her on a walk across the park, Sharon in ugly Clarks shoes, her mother, barefoot and wearing a slinky catsuit zipped down to her navel. "I always think of going to nightmare parent-teacher nights at my junior school and my dad turning up in a brown velvet suit and my mother wearing a Biba outfit. I was horrified, of course. My school friends would say it must be fantastic to have such groovy young parents, but I just wanted them to be middle-aged." In the final section of the memoir Lorna became pregnant and married at age 16. She left the maternity ward one day, and took the first of her A-level exams the next day. She and her husband, Vic Sage, both graduated from the university in Durham with degrees in literature in 1964. When Lorna's father returned to their village in Wales, she had a more normal life, but never felt that she fit in with her family. She felt that her parents were so close that they really had no need to let anyone else in emotionally. Reading and running wild outdoors were her salvations.