Review: An English Woman-Sergeant In the Serbian Army by Flora Sandes

 

Original Publication Date: 1916

Genre: Memoir

Topics: Army life, World War I, Serbia, British nurses, soldiers, women soldiers, sisters doing it for themselves, smoking-drinking-shooting

Review by : Chrisbookarama

Have you ever stumbling across something by accident and then instantly became obsessed with it? That is me right now with Flora Sandes. Obsessed! I was just minding my own business, scrolling through the Librivox catalogue, when I came across An English Woman-Sergeant In the Serbian Army. Well, I thought, this sounds intriguing. I started listening and couldn’t believe my ears. Is this real life? Was Flora Sandes a real person? I had to find out for sure. Fool me once, Public Domain! And it was true! This really happened!

Flora begins her story with herself travelling back to Serbia after a brief vacation from the action during World War I. England was an ally to Serbia. Serbians needed all the help they could get. Flora volunteered to be a nurse with St John Ambulance. She quickly became a favorite with the men. She’d smoke, drink, and share a laugh with them, as well as hold their hands as they died.

Flora decided early on to stick with the Serbian Army even though she was British. The Serbians’ ideas about women in the combat were more enlightened than the Brits’. She travelled with the army while they retreated from the Austrian advance, taking care of the wounded and sick men. At some point Flora is asked to make a choice.

They said the journey through Albania would be very terrible, that nothing we had gone through so far was anything approaching it, and that they would send me down to Salonica if I liked.

Flora says Yes! to Albania, though they find the locals very hostile to their presence. They get fired upon a lot. But here Flora finally gets to be a real soldier and holds her own against the enemy.

I had only a revolver and no rifle of my own at that time, but one of my comrades was quite satisfied to lend me his and curl himself up and smoke.

It isn’t all shooting dudes all day long though. The Serbians were constantly on the move. Along the road Flora saw the corpses of horses that died of starvation or exhaustion. The men themselves weren’t doing so good, as the locals put up the prices of food when the soldiers arrive in their towns.

As for the men, they showed her great respect. She says she expected resistance, but never experienced it, even in her interactions with the British commanders. Her Serbian commander makes her a corporal, and eventually a sergeant, making her the only woman to officially serve in the Serbian Army during World War I.

An English Woman-Sergeant In the Serbian Army ends unexpectedly, but this is because Flora wrote it in 1916, while the war was still ongoing, to raise funds for the Serbian Army. Flora ain’t got time for writing memoirs. The writing is what you would expect from a woman like Flora: to the point, honest, unadorned. It’s also pretty short. In 1927, she wrote her autobiography, An Autobiography of a Woman Soldier. I will be reading that, I can tell you.

The only thing I didn’t like about this memoir was the patronizing introduction by a Serbian politician:

But she only took to a rifle when there was no more nursing to be done, as, owing to the Army retreating, the wounded could not be picked up and had to be left behind.

No, dude, she would have “took to a rifle” if that had been an option from the start.

Here are some facts about Flora:

• She was 38 when World War I began, 40 when she wrote this memoir. (Yay!)
• After the war, she married a Russian soldier 12 years younger than herself. (Get it, girl!)
• They lived in Serbia until he died in 1941.
• When World War II broke out, she joined the army again. She was 65. (A Boss!)
• The Nazis imprisoned her. (Oh no they didn’t!)
• She moved back to England and drove around in a motorized wheelchair until she died at age 80. (Only death could stop her.)

Project Gutenberg doesn’t have the text but The University of Toronto has a text version.

Download An English Woman-Sergeant In the Serbian Army by Flora Sandes at |Librivox|

Review: THE PASSENGER FROM CALAIS by Arthur Griffiths

Original Publication Date: 1906
 
Genre: Adventure
 
Topics: Rule of law, honor among thieves, travel, trains, love, motherhood, women























 
Review by heidenkind:

Lieut.-Colonel Basil Annesley, traveling to Lake Como for some R&R, hops aboard the train from Calais only to find that the train is completely empty of any other passengers, except for one small party consisting of a lady, her maid, and a baby. When he overhears the lady confessing to a theft, he decides she's bad news and that he's going to have nothing to do with her. After she tells him off for being a judgmental douche canoe, however, the Colonel abruptly realizes two things: 1. he IS being a douche canoe; and 2. he's totally in love with this woman and will do anything to help her, despite the fact that he still doesn't know who she is, what she stole, or why. Will the larcenous party be able to evade the private investigators on the lady's trail, and will the Colonel's feelings for her survive the trip?

I was so pleasantly surprised by The Passenger from Calais! It's a game of cat-and-mouse stretching across Europe in an extended chase that reminded me of Around the World in 80 Days–only better, because it includes several awesome female characters. There are fights, run-ins with the law, a slippery villain, double- and triple-crosses, and identity switches. The story takes an unexpectedly feminist turn in the middle, and I thought the ending was pitch-perfect despite an all-too-convenient death.

Even though the Colonel seems a bit dense at the beginning of The Passenger from Calais (his abrupt one-eighty in regards to the mysterious lady was enough to give me whiplash), as the book goes on he proves himself to be a clever and worthy adversary to the people chasing the woman. The story isn't only told from his viewpoint, however: we also hear parts of the story from Falfani and Tiler, the detectives, as well as the lady herself. The switching of viewpoints was confusing sometimes, especially listening to the book on audio, but that's my only real criticism of The Passenger.

The rest of this review is going to be spoilerific, so if you want to read The Passenger from Calais and still be surprised by some of the twists and turns, you may want to avert your eyes.



As for the mysterious woman on the train–whose name is Lady Claire Standish–I absolutely loved her. She's intelligent, capable, steady, and 100% principled even though she *did* steal something. The something that she stole is where the book takes that unexpectedly feminist turn I mentioned.

See, Lady Claire's sister, Henriette, married the vicious Lord Blackadder (cue Blackadder gifs), and several years later was just as unfairly divorced by him, resulting in a huge scandal. Naturally Blackadder got custody of their child, and made it known that he would never allow Henriette to see the little munchkin again. So, while her sister hied off to the Continent, Claire and her maid took her nephew from the house of Blackadder and planned to reunite mother and child in Italy.

So not only is the plot generated by the actions of two women, it centers around a woman's right to have access to her children as well as chose her own husband and maintain her own autonomy (Henriette was forced to marry Blackadder by her guardians, and the divorce hinged on rumors of infidelity sparked by her daring to socialize with men other than her husband). Not only that, but Annesley immediately and genuinely recognizes the women's plight as a just cause.

Blackadder is just as horrible as you can imagine. At one point he pulls the, "Do you know who I AM?!" card with a French official, which I think we can all recognize as a stupid move. The French judge's reaction to it, however, made the scene totally worth it.

And then there's Henriette. When we first meet her it's through the eyes of Colonel Annesley, and she's definitely a Difficult Woman. Completely unlike her sister, she is not cool, calm, and logical in the face of adversity. She's histrionic, temperamental, emotional, and refuses to listen to reason. Colonel Annesley thinks she's a harridan, actually, and when he's telling the story you can understand why Blackadder might have wanted to divorce her.

Lady Henriette is also very suspicious of men in general–understandable, all things considered, but not something I encounter a lot in older novels. Henriette and Claire are painfully aware of the power imbalance between men and women, and Henriette takes care to point it out (in the most annoying way possible, of course):

"Oh, how like a man! Of course you must have your own way, and every one else must give in to you," she cried with aggravating emphasis, giving me no credit for trying to choose the wisest course.

Why should she give you credit, dude? She don't know you. Lady Henriette is sick of doing what the goddamn patriarchy tells her to do. SICK OF IT.

What's interesting is that when Claire's telling the story, Henriette is still difficult and unreasonable, but much more sympathetic. And by the end Henriette redeems herself by taking the initiative to find the people who testified against her in the divorce trial and convince them to confess to the authorities they were bribed by Blackadder, which means everyone can to return to England.

Basically, Claire and Henriette each possess certain attributes of a classic femme fatale (that's certainly what I thought Claire would be when The Passenger from Calais started), but they're not the femme fatales–they're the heroines! Annesley really just provides a supporting role to their adventure.



Despite a few little too-convenient blips now and again, I really enjoyed The Passenger from Calais. I can imagine this book as movie directed by Wes Anderson, à la The Grand Budapest Hotel, and I loved that movie. I'd definitely recommend this novel!



Download The Passenger from Calais by Arthur Griffiths at Project Gutenberg|Librivox

Review: THE DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE - JEROME K. JEROME

Original Publication Date: 1895
Genre: Satire/Travel
Topics: Germany, Edwardian, travel, satire
 
Review by : Liz Inskip-Paulk (www.ravingreader.wordpress.com)















Jerome K. Jerome is a Victorian/Edwardian writer most famous for his literary comic masterpiece of “Three Men in a Boat”, but his range was larger than that as evidenced by the enjoyable “Diary of a Pilgrimage”. It’s a novel about an overland journey of two gentlemen who travel to see the Passion Play at Oberammergau in Germany. This play has been performed every ten years since 1634 (almost every year that ends in “0” and is a religious event for the villagers (in perpetuity) to say thanks for sparing them from a plague that ravished the surrounding countryside.

Jerome’s writing is strong, but this is a confusing work as it seemed to vacillate wildly between being pretty funny and satirical (Jerome has a good sense of humor) to serious contemplations of religion to travel writing. It’s rather a roller-coaster as I was never certain what kind of writing the next chapter would bring: would I laugh or would I be asked to consider something serious such as Christianity? (And that’s ok – this book revolves around a Christian play after all.)

Apart from that slight confusion, Jerome writes some fabulous descriptions of some of the characters that he and his traveling companion B come across especially a scene at the beer garden as they wend their way home post-play. It’s a quick read with some similar humor to “Three Men…” but also a surprisingly serious side as well.

Download Diary of a Pilgrimage by Jerome K. Jerome at Project Gutenberg|Librivox|

Guest Review: THE ART OF TRAVEL by Francis Galton

Original Publication Date: 1854

Genre: non-fiction

Topics: travel, how-to, adventure
























Review by Liz Inskip-Paulk:

Subtitle: Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries

A how-to manual of how to explore countries back in the Victorian days.  Incredibly detailed and was THE go-to book for beginning explorers at the time.

Who should explore?

Qualifications for a Traveller [sic].--If you have health, a great craving for adventure, at least a moderate fortune, and can set your heart on a definite object, which old travellers [sic] do not think impracticable, then--travel by all means. If, in addition to these qualifications, you have scientific taste and knowledge, I believe that no career, in time of peace, can offer to you more advantages than that of a traveller [sic]. If you have not independent means, you may still turn travelling to excellent account; for experience shows it often leads to promotion, nay, some men support themselves by travel. They explore pasture land in Australia, they hunt for ivory in Africa, they collect specimens of natural history for sale, or they wander as artists.

In addition, the explorer does not necessarily need to be powerful – “it is rather those who take the most interest in their work that succeed the best…”.  Additionally, he needs to have Good Temper (as “tedious journeys are apt to make companions irritable”) and as for the problem of Reluctant Servants: “leaders should make great allowance for the reluctant co-operation of servants; they have infinitely less interest in the success of the expedition than their leaders…”

“Neither sleepy nor deaf men are fit to travel quite alone.”  (You need to have good hearing and be alert.)

If natives want to bring their wives, it’s fine as well:  “a woman will endure a long journey nearly as well as a man, and certainly better than a horse or bullock”… “It is in the nature of women to be fond of carrying weights; you may see them in omnibuses and carriages, always preferring to hold their baskets or their babies on their knees, to setting them down on the seats by their sides.”

Equipment suggestions range from large (rafts and pontoons for 1-2 men) to small (sealing wax and pens for writing letters). (Triple H pencils are the best tool though – less smudging when damp.) Don’t forget to take a small table or two and a stool, and do remember your protractor and your iron. (Unwrinkled clothes are important in the bush.)  A hare’s foot comes in handy for cleaning lenses and you can easily make your writing ink if need be from burnt sticks and a bit of milk. (Milk is always handy when you’re exploring, I think. :)

Pay for help from the locals in beads, but don’t forget that “there is infinite fastidiousness shown by savages in selecting beads…” The following colors are the most popular ones: dull white, dark blue, and vermilion red, all of a small size.

Food stores need to include an ass, a small mule, a horse, an ox and a camel but note that it is “very inconvenient” to take more than six pack animals that whenever one gets loose, the progress of the overall exhibition is seriously slowed.  This volume also contained copious information of the “theory of tea-making” including using a make-shift teapot (of course, since it’s English).

Huge detail down to how to label your medicine tins – always label the bottom of the tins as the lids can get mixed up.  A handy emetic is a “charge of gunpowder in a tumblerful  of warm water of soapsuds…” Satisfy your thirst by drinking water with a teaspoon – just as effective as drinking glassfuls and will “disorder the digestion very considerably less”…  Mercury (mixed with chewed up old tea leaves and added with spit) can make a good lice repellent when worn in a bag of material as a necklace, but only lasts about one month until it needs to be renewed.  Blisters in new boots can be prevented by putting raw egg into the boot to soften the leather. Oh, and cats can’t stand high altitude and it can be fatal for them (according to one Dr. Tschudi).

Oh, and if someone ends up being half-drowned, don’t hang them upside-down by their feet for the water to come out of their mouths. That’s ineffective.

An artery cut might be able to be stopped if you pour boiling grease into it (ouch), but this is a “barbarous treatment, and its success is uncertain…”

With regard to transporting fragile research instruments, Galton recommends entrusting them to “some respectable old savage, whose infirmities compel him to walk steadily. He will be delighted at the prospect of picking up a living by such easy service…”
Everything is included: how to measure how far your expedition has traveled (whether by wagon or a cantering horse), the lunar measurements of the night sky, the best way to climb trees or go down a cliff (but remember – “it is nervous work going over the edge of a cliff for the first time”), what size and shape to make an axe blade…”

It seems that almost everything (if not everything) has been covered in this book.  Make your own snow glasses using a piece of soft wood with a slit cut into it (a la Esquimaux [sic]).  Holding a horse’s tail as they walk ahead of you can help you up steep hillsides.  Bite a cow’s tail to make him/her stand up from lying position. 

An explorer traveling and making notes noted this about asses:

The instincts of the mulish heart form an interesting study to the traveller [sic] in the mountains. I would (were the comparison not too ungallant) liken it to a woman's; for it is quite as uncertain in its sympathies, bestowing its affections when least expected, and, when bestowed, quite as constant, so long as the object is not taken away.

And don’t, for God’s sake, wear linen. (It is “by universal consent a dangerous dress wherever there is a chance of much perspiration, for it strikes cold upon the skin when wet. The terror of Swiss guides…and of Italians…is largely due to their wearing linen shirts.” If you need a pith helmet, you can buy them in London under the Opera Colonnade in Pall Mall, and a dressing gown never goes unused. (“It is a relief to put it on in the evening…”)

If you’re stuck out in the cold without shelter, it’s recommended that you creep within the warm and reeking carcass of a recently-dead horse (a la Bear Grylls, although this particular case is referenced to Napoleon’s troops).  Speaking of animals, Galton also tells you how to avoid on-rushing animals attacking you (except a buffalo who “regularly hunts man, and is therefore peculiarly dangerous”...) Instructions are also included for crocodile-shooting. (You never know…)

And if you’re traveling to a “rich but imperfectly civilized country”, one option for making certain that you always have a small capital to fall back on to bury jewels in your flesh (the left arm is recommended at the spot chosen for vaccinations). You make a gash, put the jewel(s) in and allow the flesh to grow over them as it would a bullet. (You could also put the jewels into a small silver tube which might be less irritable to your body as it heals.)  Good idea if you’re concerned about robbery.

So – I bet you get the idea. This is THE manual for exploring for Victorian explorers. With so many topics and such detail, I don’t think it was a small book but I bet if you weren’t the poor person carrying it, that would be ok.  A fascinating read.

Don’t forget your pith helmet when you leave the house today.



Download The Art of Travel by Francis Galton from Project Gutenberg|Librivox

Review: PENELOPE'S ENGLISH EXPERIENCES by Kate Douglas Wiggin

Original Publication Date: 1900

Genre: comedy

Topics: travel, society, comedy of manners













Review:

Penelope is one of three American women living in London. Although they're of different backgrounds and ages, they all share one talent: social faux pas among the British!

Penelope's English Experiences is a collection of very short (think newspaper column-length), humorous essays about the travails of living in England for an American woman. The essays center around things like trying to understand British currency, British humor, and how intimidating English servants are. Kate Douglas Wiggin (of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm fame--which I didn't know until I googled her) pokes gentle fun not so much at the British but at Americans traveling abroad and how they desperately want to be liked by everyone, including the servants.

Mind, when I say "humorous" I don't mean these stories are laugh-out-loud funny. They did make me chortle once or twice (there's a comment Penelope makes about Americans procrastinating that struck me as particularly clever... no idea why, of course ;), but mostly the stories are just cute, and some are pretty obscure.

I suppose you could call Penelope's Experiences Abroad a proto-chick lit novel. It's all about her adventures as a single woman living in London, and is very episodic. Unfortunately I've never been a big fan of chick-lit, and since there wasn't any narrative to speak of, it was easy to get bored during the more obscure columns. Honestly, the only saving grace is that the stories are so short.

I would say Penelope's English Experiences, as unoffensive as it is, is skippable--unless you have a particular interest in turn-of-the-century women living in London, in which case you'll probably get all the jokes and find this book pretty interesting.



Find Penelope's English Experiences at Librivox|Project Gutenberg

Review: Baddeck, and That Sort of Thing

Original Publication Date:  1878

Genre: Travel journal

Topics: Travel, Canada, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, Baddeck, complaining, how to be an ass when travelling in a foreign country.

Review:

I was browsing the Project Gutenberg catalogue, like you do, when I had the brilliant idea to plunk in the name of my native province, Nova Scotia, into the search function. Not a lot came up, a couple of reports and one travel journal with the intriguing name of Baddeck and That Sort of Thing by Charles Dudley Warner. Baddeck is not all that far away and since we’re coming into high tourism season here, I thought I’d give this a try. I wondered what travelling in my province before the days of highways were like. I was also curious as to why I had never heard of this book before. Oh my, I was about to learn why this wasn’t hailed as the greatest thing for Nova Scotia tourism since lobster.

Charles Dudley Warner and a friend decide to visit Baddeck for the  fishing. They’ve heard some vague stories of the place. For some reason, they insist that they must get there by Saturday, or “why even leave Boston.” Don’t ask me, I don’t know why they’re in a rush. They get themselves to Boston and the belly-aching begins. Boston is just too loud! So they hop on a boat, and after a brief stop in Eastport, Maine (which is “bleak” by the way), they land in Saint John, New Brunswick and begin their travels in Canada. Was Warner suffering from intestinal discomfort or something? There was definitely something wrong with him because, there is absolutely no pleasing this guy. Here is a list of just some of his complaints.

• Saint John has too many flags. Americans would never fly so many flags, not even on the President’s birthday.
• The largest tides in the world in the Bay of Fundy are not that great.
• He despises Halifax, Nova Scotia, our capital city.
• The beautiful Annapolis Valley is meh.
• Farmers have no fashion sense!
• The hotels are awful.
• The trees are too small, damnit!

A brief respite from the complaining for the reader occurs when he reaches Antigonish, which he declares is “pretty” and “home like.” But there is no time to stop, Saturday is coming! Tick, tock! Warner finds  a driver who apparently pleases him. The driver loves his horses and talks about them the whole trip. There is one in particular he is fond of. This was the first time I was amused by Warner:

“May I never forget the spirited little jade, the off-leader in the third stage, the petted belle of the route, the nervous, coquettish, mincing mare of Marshy Hope. A spoiled beauty she was; you could see that as she took the road with dancing step, tossing her pretty head about, and conscious of her shining black coat and her tail done up "in any simple knot,"—like the back hair of Shelley's Beatrice Cenci. How she ambled and sidled and plumed herself, and now and then let fly her little heels high in air in mere excess of larkish feeling.”

If only the whole journal was so entertaining. They continue on, Cape Breton Island their destination, the driver declaring “Never was on Cape Breton… hope I never shall be. Heard enough about it. Taverns? You’ll find ‘em occupied.” He actually likes the sound of this and is even more pleased when a couple of Cape Bretoners are picked up along the way: a guy who only speaks Gaelic and a fiddler. By Saturday morning, they reach the Strait of Canso, the body of water separating Cape Breton from the mainland. Here they leave their amusing driver for the ferry (we have a causeway now). On the other side, they learn there is another 80 miles before reaching Baddeck. They find some guy who agrees to drop them off on his way to somewhere else. This ride is too fast and bumpy (he spent the first part of this journey complaining about how slow everyone was).

The Bras D'Or from the Iona side

  

The trip, he declares, is worth it once he sees the Bras D’Or Lakes, which I have to agree, are pretty freaking spectacular. “The Bras d'Or is the most beautiful salt-water lake I have ever seen, and more beautiful than we had imagined a body of salt water could be.” He waxes poetic for a bit until the driver drops him off at an actual honest-to-goodness nice hotel.

The next day being Sunday is a non-fishing day, so Warner and friend entertain themselves by making fun of the local religious practices, public houses, and well, everyone and everything. Monday they fish and then head back to the States.

I realize I have a bias, but Warner annoyed me before he even left the States. The whole purpose of his trip is to ridicule people wherever he might find them. He’s in a hurry to get there and be away from the city but when he gets to Baddeck he complains about how peaceful it is. When this was published, Nova Scotians were a tad upset. Honestly, I don’t think they should have been. Warner comes off as a pompous ass and this says more about him than the people he writes about. Making fun of honest, simple country folk when you’re a cultured rich guy from the city shows how small you really are. And he’s not even that funny; he tries too hard. The sad thing is there was some very nice writing in there too.

When I could ignore his mean spiritedness and his cranky-pants, I found some interesting little tidbits. I recognized places, these are the same places the highway goes through now. I learned that Baddeck has always been a tourist town, that hasn’t changed. I’m not surprised that Warner ran into people who only speak Gaelic, though you won’t find that now. In the 1950s, folklorist Helen Creighton recognized that modernization was creeping across the province and spent the decade collecting old songs and stories in the language before they disappeared as the last people who spoke it died. According to Canada Cool, only about 1000 people in the province still speak Gaelic, though there is a push to revive it.

Warner may have had his laugh but we have the last. Every year city folk spend lots of $$$ to relax and have old fashioned outdoorsy fun in Nova Scotia. It is also possible that Warner’s book caught the attention of another wealthy cultured gentleman, Alexander Graham Bell, who built his summer home, Beinn Bhreagh, in Baddeck in the late 19th century. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Warner. Things have changed since then. Nova Scotia has the TransCanada highway, inns, resorts, and enough fancy restaurants to fill any tourist’s lobster craving, but some things never change: “We received everywhere in the Provinces courtesy and kindness, which were not based upon any expectation that we would invest in mines or railways, for the people are honest, kindly, and hearty by nature.”  These are still the things you will find in “the Provinces.”