151. Elspeth Barker — O Caledonia

AMY: Welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I'm Amy Helmes here with my cohost Kim Askew, and today we're going to talk about an author and book, which dovetails really well with our episode last week on Elizabeth Smart.

KIM: Yes. If you listen to that episode, you'll know that Smart wrote a masterpiece of poetic prose called By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. It was all about her obsession and affair with the English poet George Barker.

AMY: And Kim, I still don't understand how many women could so slavishly throw themselves at this guy. I guess you had to be there. I didn't get it.

KIM: I feel like it must be that he must have had laser charm or something. But anyway, after 19 years romantically entangled with Barker, Smart eventually snapped out of it a little bit. She never stopped loving him, but she did stop wanting that hassle of a life with him, which let's face it, usually was a life without him being there.

AMY: Yeah. I get the sense that raising her four children on her own and not really getting any help from Barker, financial or otherwise, is what sort of turned the tide for her, because it was one thing for her to carry this torch for him and be sort of treated like an afterthought. But she was definitely a mother bear to her four kids, so once she started seeing that he wasn't there for the kids and he was just sort of like a come and go presence in their lives, she was like, “No.”

KIM: Yeah, and I imagine she was also just exhausted with it all at a certain point. That kind of passion, maybe it isn't sustainable.

AMY: Yeah, at one point she had even written a letter to him, a sort of breakup letter in which she said, “I see no beauty in lopsided true love. It really is in sorrow and not anger that I say, I do not want you anymore because I simply cannot bear it.”

KIM: Wow. Yeah.

AMY: So she kind of recognized like, “Okay, I am enthralled with this man, but he's not giving me…”

KIM: It's never gonna be enough, basically.

AMY: Yeah. Yeah.

KIM: It's never gonna be enough.

AMY: And she actually wrote that letter six months prior to the birth of their daughter Rose. She was pregnant and she's realizing like, “This is done.” And George didn't even see that kid until she was six months old.

KIM: Hmm.

AMY: That's how he operated.But anyway, what I really wanna talk about today is Elizabeth's relationship with George Barker's final lover, Elspeth Langlands. She would go on to marry him and become Elspeth Barker. She was a Scottish writer. She was about half the age of Elizabeth Smart, but Elizabeth knew her very well. They were good friends in London before Elspeth ever met George Barker. And in fact, Elspeth met George one time at Elizabeth's place, and she said she found him “incredibly rude.” But later George and Elspeth met again in Rome. She was an aspiring writer at this time, and he sort of mentored her the same way he did with Elizabeth back in the day. And then one thing led to another. And, uh, we know how he operates. She fell madly in love. He charmed her, too. Uh, so Elizabeth finds out that, okay, Elspeth and George are now an item. She was furious at first, not because they were together (it's not that Elizabeth still wanted George) but because Elspeth turns up pregnant with George's kid, and Elizabeth knew that this meant they would have, like, a real lasting connection. So she was definitely jealous of Elspeth at first.

KIM: Yeah. I wonder if she just also felt it was like more competition for her own children's time.

AMY: Yeah, because we know he had 15 children with an assortment of women. Um, in Rosemary Sullivan's biography of Smart, she recounts an incident at one of George Barker's book launches where a photographer asked, you know, “Could Mrs. Barker step into the shot?” Well, both women stepped forward.

KIM: Awkward! Oh my God.

AMY: I know, I love that. So anyway, the two women were pretty chilly with one another for apparently around six or seven years. But then gradually a thaw occurred and eventually they became incredibly close and they remained really good friends for the rest of their lives. All three of them really, Elspeth, Elizabeth and George, they were all chummy despite everything.  And looking back, Elspeth Barker once said “Grand Central Station was a marvelous book, but as a human being, Elizabeth went far beyond it.” And she also said that Elizabeth “never did anything despicable. She was the glory to the world.”

KIM: Wow. What an incredible thing to say about someone. I love that they managed to form this friendship. I mean, they both kind of knew what it was to love George. They have that in common. 

AMY: Yeah, that kinship. And actually we have a leftover anecdote from last week's interview kind of about that. Um, it's a story that Rosemary tells that's kind of funny. So let me just play that here. 

ROSEMARY SULLIVAN: And then there was this lovely moment that Elizabeth describes in her diary where Elspeth begs Elizabeth to take George back. And she says, “No way.”

AMY: She had learned by then. Yeah. 

KIM: Oh, that's so great. I think I read that Elspeth sometimes referred to Elizabeth as her “co wife,” so maybe there was a part of Elizabeth Smart that was like, “He's all yours, Elspeth. You deal with him.”

AMY: Like, “I'm washing my hands of him, but I'll come visit and play cards with you guys or whatever. Come over for dinner. But he's yours. He's all yours.” Um, and this is interesting also, George had told Elspeth that her poems were crap when he first met her. You know, I said she was an aspiring writer. He kind of dealt her a blow. It was not for many years when she was in her fifties, actually, that she finally published her one and only novel. O Caledonia. 

KIM: Maybe that was part of his method. It's like, tear you down and then build you back up because they, you know, when we talked last week, I think that seemed like something that he did with Elizabeth. 

AMY: Yeah. And Rosemary said that he actually kind of did that with her the time that she met him.

KIM: Oh, that's true. You're right. Yeah.That's his way. 

AMY: Tear him down, then build him up. And then they're so grateful to you. 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. 

AMY: Um, O Caledonia, that came out in 1991, the same year George Barker died. Prior to that, she taught classics at an all girls school. But with the publication of this novel, which won several literary awards, she began to work as a contributor to many British outlets, including the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and The Observer. She also went on to teach creative writing at Norwich University of the Arts.

KIM: Interestingly, around this time, she got to know a young Maggie O'Farrell the author of Hamnet and A Marriage Portrait. It's her most recent book, I think. Amy and I love those books. Anyway, she actually wrote the introduction to a recent 2021 reissue of O Caledonia, and I want to read from that. She says, “On one level, it's possible to read O Caledonia as autobiographical fiction.The strict upbringing in a windy castle, the fiercely bright and non-conformist heroine, who finds love and companionship only in the animal kingdom. But this would be a reductive take on a skillful and brilliant novel because O Caledonia is a book that at once plays with and defies genre to give it that most vague and limiting of categories.The coming of age novel is to miss its point and to underestimate the ingenuity and droll subversion Barker is employing here.”

AMY: Hopefully that little blurb enticed you a little bit. Uh, but Kim and I are gonna talk about this novel a little bit more. I was originally interested in checking it out only because I knew she was Elizabeth Smart's romantic successor, you know. So I saw the name and I was like,” Oh, wait, I know this name.” But then I read the book and was like, “This is great.” Kim, I know you loved it too.

KIM: Yeah, this is another situation where Amy and I are texting each other. I was like, “Oh my God, this book is so good.” And she's like, “I knew you would love it.” It's incredible. Um, and it's basically about, this heroine named Janet and this is not a spoiler alert, but we find out in the beginning that she has been murdered. And it's not a traditional mystery story. It's not really a whodunit, but it's more her life from birth up until that point where she is murdered. And it is absolutely fascinating and the language is just thrilling. It is so, so gorgeous.

AMY: I kept thinking while I was reading it… well, first of all, the novel, um, it kind of gets compared a lot to I Capture the Castle because they are living in the Scottish castle and it's kind of that world. Um, I also was thinking a lot of O the Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith, which is a book we did a previous episode on, and I kept thinking, “Oh my gosh, Simon Thomas would love O Caledonia.” Simon, if you're listening and you haven't read this one yet, it is so up your alley. 

KIM: Yeah. Oh yeah, totally. I'm sure he's read it. I bet.

AMY: Yeah, so it's that kind of coming of age. Um, Janet is a naughty girl, kind of terribly misunderstood even by her own family. There's all these little vignettes about her childhood and her life. That's part of what really reminds me of O the Brave Music is the way it's kind of sectioned off into these little vignettes. Um, but another thing I kept thinking of Kim, was Wednesday Addams.

KIM: Oh yeah, absolutely.

AMY: Goth, dark. Wednesday Addams meets Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, but set in like this pastoral Scottish realm, you know. She just, she doesn't fit in with anyone. I kept thinking too of that Radiohead, “I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo.” Like that would be the soundtrack to this book. And she's got a pet crow or a pet raven, right? I mean, so that just kinda adds to this aura of…

KIM: It's slightly got a supernatural feel. You know, like the castle is decaying and it's its own character almost.

AMY: Yeah, and the aunt is kind of like hidden away, like Rochester's wife or, you know, doesn't she end up in the asylum later and Janet goes to visit her there?

KIM: Yeah, she goes to visit her there and it doesn't go the way she planned. I mean, there's so many things. She's so sensitive. And she's just so, so loving of everything. 

AMY: Yeah, but even her parents are just kind of like, “You're the bad girl.” Like, “Go away,” You know? She's always getting in trouble.

KIM: Yeah, she overhears her mom saying she only loves babies. She doesn't really like them when they get older. And she alludes to Janet, you know. They wanna get rid of Janet, and she loves where she lives, so she may have all these things with her family and stuff, but she gets sent away to school, and it's devastating. At first she thinks it's gonna be great, you know. She's so open to all these things being great, and then they just are terrible. She doesn't fit in at all.

AMY: Right, but it's exactly how a lot of girls feel when they turn that kind of awkward. 12, 13. And you feel like “My parents, not only do they not understand me, but they think I'm weird.”

KIM: No one understands her. She is weird. Yeah.

AMY: And she is 100% weird. 

KIM: Yeah. yep.

AMY: And then she also, she loves language so much. She loves poetry. She's obsessed with poetry, and that kept making me think, “Okay, if this is even semi autobiographical of Elspeth, no wonder she fell for George Barker,” right? Because she's obsessed with poetry and he's like the quintessential poet of his day or whatever. So you're like, “Okay, now I'm starting to see why she fell so hard for him.”

KIM: Yeah, that's true.

AMY: …based on this young girl's attitude toward poetry. She's witchy almost, right? like a little witch in training.

KIM: Yeah, which… Lyla's kind of a witch, too, the relative. And you almost think she's going to sort of train her in that. I, you know, I'm getting Lolly Willowes vibes like the cousin could have become Lolly Willowes, but instead she just gets thwarted, too. 

AMY: We’re gonna be talking about Lolly Willowes a few episodes from now, uh, which also has some witchy vibes. So, yeah, 100%. Um, and yeah, it was a startling way to begin the book with this dead body in a purple gown lying on the stairs of a castle. And you're like, “what the hell?” And, like you said, it's not even a whodunit? It doesn't even matter at the end who did it. Although you do kind of think as you're reading, she's starting to have all these growing pains and issues with all these different people. So occasionally you do hearken back and think, “Oh, is this the person that's gonna kill her? Is this?” 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. We could totally say more, but we don't wanna spoil it. But there's definitely hints dropped throughout the novel as to who it might be. But it, like Amy said, it isn't about that. It's really about, um, you know, her life and this potential for beauty and brilliance that she has because of the way she sees the world. And it just keeps getting… 

AMY: And lots of dead animals throughout this book.

KIM: Absolutely. Decapitated rabbits, sitting in a bowl in the kitchen, you know, hanging off of someone's belt. Um, 

AMY: Speaking of her little crow pet that she has that kind of lives in the dollhouse in her room. I went to Disney World this summer with my kids. At Disney's Animal Kingdom, we watched the wild bird show or whatever and they had a crow come out and do funny little stuff and it untied some guy's shoelaces. And I was watching it thinking of O Caledonia and being like, “You know what? A crow would make a really good pet. They are very smart.”

KIM: Oh, right, okay.

AMY: It seemed almost a little, like, fantastical that this girl would have this pet crow. But once I saw that, I was like, “No, I could see somebody having a pet crow.”

KIM: It felt like her familiar a little bit too. Um, it was like the animal….

AMY: Like her spirit animal.

KIM:It's her spirit animal. Yeah. And I mean, the thing that's strange about this book, too, is like her mom wants her to have this beautiful, girly room. But that bird is literally pooping all over the room, and it's very strange. It's like, how is she living in that? It's a bit fantastical in that way, I would say.

AMY: Dark academia. This is that vibe.

KIM: Oh, it's totally that vibe. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely am gonna be reading this book again, by the way. And it's a quick read, too.

AMY: Yeah, it is quick. I listened to it on audiobook. 

KIM: Yeah. Was it a Scottish Accent?

AMY: No. I don't, I don't think so. Actually, the narrator might have, I'm not sure. I can't remember. It was a couple months ago. Um, oh, another thing that made me laugh, you got the conventional mom and Janet doesn't wanna live a conventional girly life at all. The scene where she goes to the hairdresser…

KIM: Oh…

AMY: It’s like she's going to a lunatic asylum or something.

KIM: It's the worst. The worst ever. Oh my God. Yeah.

AMY: So there's lots of humor in the book. 

KIM: You want me to read a passage? Okay. [reads passage].

AMY: The magic of the Scottish moors or wherever she is. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and speaking of, I don't think we mentioned this, but I think Barker did grow up in a castle in Scotland. 

KIM: That would make sense. Yeah. 

AMY: I think the intro talks about that.

KIM: Yeah. Cause it did say you could see it as autobiographical, but it's more than that, so yeah. 

AMY: So anyway, Elspeth Barker actually just died last year in 2022. I kind of wish she would've written more novels based on this one, right?

KIM: Yeah. I hope George wasn't responsible for her not writing or novels, but, um, we should also add that her eldest child, Rafaella is also a writer, and we'll link to her books in our show notes for this episode.

AMY: So, yeah, that's all for today's episode. We hope if you've enjoyed it, you'll consider giving us a five-star rating and review wherever you listen.

KIM: Yeah, we really appreciate it. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.