James Agate was a drama critic for The Sunday Times and the BBC. Between 1935 and his death in 1947 he published nine volumes of diaries. Wryly he called them Ego.
Ego will be my upstairs reading this winter. Meanwhile I am re-reading John Fowles’ first novel, published in 1963, The Collector. He was not a prolific author. I have read The Magus (twice, first time on Spetses), Daniel Martin, Mantissa and A Maggot and that’s just about the lot; except for his best known novel, The French Lieutenant’s Woman. I must read it or at least see the film, which I doubt does it justice.
The eponymous collector is a lepidopterist who abducts and imprisons a girl with whom he has become obsessed. It is grippingly narrated by the collector and his victim. The story in 1963 must have seemed a fantasy. Now we know otherwise; there have been horrific kidnappings with multiple victims held for years, quite possibly unwittingly inspired by John Fowles’ brilliant debut as a creative writer.
Collecting is an instinct more prevalent in the male of the species. You will recall Lord McAlpine was an incontinent collector. The pictures and sculpture he amassed are of museum quality but Wikipedia lists some of his quirkier, sometimes less expensive, fads:
… beads, books, furniture, police truncheons, dolls, textiles, ties, sculpture, rare breeds of chicken, Renaissance tapestries, a five-legged lamb in formaldehyde, and a dinosaur penis.
I used to collect stamps and have quite a good collection of Irish stamps, 1922 until about 1970. Now I collect books by Leslie Charteris, Dornford Yates, PG Wodehouse, Simon Raven, Evelyn Waugh, Alec Waugh, Patrick O’Brian, Pevsner and diaries and letters of which you may have read in previous posts. Lord McAlpine periodically deaccessioned items; likewise I bade farewell to Charles Dickens. It isn’t an attractive edition, the print is tiny, the paper flimsy and the only one worth re-reading is Pickers. I found a good home for CD in Wales and we are going to see him next week.
I am also a fan of The Magus and The Collector. They are books of extraordinary power and grip. John Fowles lived for many years at Belmont a fine 18th c maritime villa in Lyme Regis overlooking the Cobb. He wrote four books there but not it appears either of the above or surprisingly FLW. It is now under the tender care of Landmark Trust and can be rented for short stays by us all. The restoration was a little controversial as it returned the building to its Georgian roots which upset Widow Fowles who was attached (not physically) to the poorly constructed 19th and 20th century extensions. These days, conservation correctness would make you keep these additions however aesthetically disturbing they might be.