the not so nice Jan Morris

This comes up again and again from many people.

No one cares about the presentation, the clothes, the names, the bit they won't put up with is the bloody awful and entitled way of treating other people.

It is never possible though for someone who protests this to see that the presentation and the behaviour/treatment of others is two separate things. To resist the illtreatment is perceived as a rejection of the transition.

Yes, I remember somebody called Jan, who was a transwoman, who said they had transitioned decades before.

I believe they were asked whether or not they would still have transitioned, if there was no one there to see it. If I recall correctly, they either didn't understand the question, or refused to answer it.

There is someone who often pops up in the Times comments whose argument is always "but remember the lovely Jan Morris, why would you not want to share toilets with someone like that?"

Did he used to post on FWR? I scandalised someone here because they assumed I would back down on my hardline stance because they mentioned the sainted Jan Morris. I did not.

I was at University with one of those children. No way did they consent to that self indulgent , sensationalist ‘memoir’

“She sounds not like a woman, but like a man's idea of a women.”

Rebecca West sums it all up in 1974. Incidentally, I’ve read a lot of her early journalism from when she was about 19 in the early 1910s, and she was brilliantly perceptive (and genuinely hilarious) even then.

I wonder why…?

Those last couple of lines - "finding myself still incapable of the role" !
Honestly I struggle to have any understanding or empathy for people who spend their lives rejecting reality in this way. We all have things in our lives that we wish were different. I have my moans and gripes but I have observed that the happiest people seem to be those who aren't spending their lives chasing an impossible dream and feeling bitter because it never happened.

This excerpt from Conundrum about how Morris really wanted to be a mother, and if not a mother then a father seems somewhat dishonest when compared with Morris's actions.

mobile.twitter.com/STILLTish/status/1339244654848569346

“She (daughter Suki) said Morris had refused to go to hospital when the baby born four years before her was dying, upsetting Elizabeth.”

This statement crushed me. I’m a bereaved mum, and the thought of my partner, our little boy’s Dad, not being there as our child died, would be unforgivable. Poor Elizabeth, and poor baby too, so horribly sad.

I love Eric Newby’s books so I’m glad to hear he wasn’t a dick in real life.

That Nora Ephron review quote - what a scorcher, and spot on. She was one smart woman.

Esma, I didn’t know that about PLF and Ricki Soma. Gosh.

It’s so very sad to think about Elizabeth Morris. Compare and contrast with Eric Newby, such an excellent travel writer, and his wife Wanda, whom he clearly adored and who's a major presence in almost all his books.

I had a look for the Nora Ephron review, but couldn't find it. I did find the review by Rebecca West mentioned in your link.

www.nytimes.com/1974/04/14/archives/conundrum-by-jan-morris-a-helen-and-kurt-wolff-book-174-pp-new-york.html

Also this about the Rebecca West review.

elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/from-the-archives-rebecca-west-reviews

One of the comments there says that the Nora Ephron review is in her book 'Crazy Salad'.

Thanks for the link GrumpyPanda - interesting reviews!

Oh wow, that really hits the spot. That's exactly it. It's not about becoming a woman, it's about pretending to be a girl, and not even a real girl, a weird fantasy version of a girl as imagined by a male person with real issues about gender roles.

Nora Ephron did a great review of Conundrum at the time pointing out its inherent sexism. Apparently Esquire, for which the column was published, has recently - surprise surprise! - taken this particular piece down. I may have a pdf saved somewhere but offhand all I could still locate is this quote:

"I always wanted to be a girl, too. I, too, felt that I was born into the wrong body, a body that refused, in spite of every imprecation and exercise I could manage, to become anything but the boyish, lean thing it was... I wanted more than anything to be something I will never be – Feminine and feminine in the worst way. Submissive. Dependent. Soft-spoken. Coquettish. I was no good at all at any of it, no good at being a girl; on the other hand I am not half bad at being a woman. In contrast Jan Morris is perfectly awful at being a woman; what she has become instead is precisely what James Morris wanted to become all those years ago. A girl. And worse, a forty-seven-year-old girl. And worst of all, a forty-seven-year-old Cosmopolitan girl."

zagria.blogspot.com/2013/11/jan-morris-1926-part-3-travel-writer.html?m=1

Apologies for the derail, but one of Patrick Leigh Fermor's many affairs was with Enrica Soma, the wife of John Huston and mother of Angelica Huston. She accused him of giving her crabs and he wrote a reply where he apologises if he did give her crabs, then suggests that she caught them elsewhere, but somehow manages to keep the letter charming and flattering and seductive. You can see why he rarely had to fork out for a hotel.

@EsmaCannonball Ooh naughty. Well , he was a 'kept man ' and I suppose thought he could get away with it with his charm and good looks. The cad !

I didn't mean that Elizabeth was a battleaxe, I just mean that she is alluded to in some of Morris's travel books but she isn't really a presence, whereas Patrick Leigh Fermor and Joan had a lot of adventures together and she figures prominently in his writing.

From the little I know about PLF, I imagine he would have been an absolute nightmare to be married to, but it wouldn't have been dull. He walked across Europe from the UK to Istanbul as an 18-year-old who'd just left school. I can't remember whether his parents knew what he was doing. He must have given them a few grey hairs. Lots of exploits of incredible recklessness and bravery during WW2 in Greece as well, I believe.

IIRC, Somerset Maugham invited him for lunch or dinner, PLF rocked up with enough luggage to sustain a stay of several months, and then proceeded to get so rip-roaring drunk that he unconsciously started mimicking Maugham's stutter. He was asked to vacate the premises by the time Maugham arose for breakfast the next day.

I suspect Maugham probably had designs on PLF, and the latter wasn't above at least flirting with a man if it got him a nice holiday.

Most of what I know about Morris comes from this thread and a vague memory of reading a Sunday Times supplement article about his transition back in the mid 70s when I was a naive teenager. I could make no sense of it all so put it out of my mind as something that was unlikely to touch my life in any way. Hmm.

Anyway, I'm posting to take issue (mildly) with this sentence:

Morris's wife is akin to one of those Captain Mainwaring/Rumpole/Arthur Daley wives; sometimes mentioned but never on screen.

The wives mentioned above were all stereotypical battleaxes created by male writers (see also: Les Dawson and innumerable male actors/comics/writers in the 1970s). Actually, Mrs Rumpole had a bit more of a hinterland, and she did appear on screen, as did their son, whose view/memories of both his parents and his childhood were revealingly very different from Rumpole's.

The impression I'm getting of Elizabeth Morris is of a woman who totally suppressed her own wants and needs to support her spouse, as she believed was her duty before God, to the extent of accepting things that were quite obviously harmful to their children. Thank goodness times have changed (well, to an extent).

@EsmaCannonball Leigh Femor could be a bit of a shit too , though I agree he is a good travel writer. He was almost improbably handsome as well. Why did Maugham sling him out , was it an unrequited crush ?

There's a Mrs Merton gag in that sentence right there.

😁

The Venice book is dreadful.

Yes, when I've read Morris's books it's clear, but unsaid, that no-one who has to actually a living could live the lifestyle.

My absolute favourite travel writer is Patrick Leigh Fermor, a man who appeared to be the world's most brilliant freeloader. He married well, had an open marriage (which one suspects was only truly open at the one end) and was labelled 'a middle-class gigolo for upper-class women' by Somerset Maugham, the only person who ever kicked him out of the house. The difference is Joan, Fermor's wife, was a big presence in his life and his books, but Morris's wife is akin to one of those Captain Mainwaring/Rumpole/Arthur Daley wives; sometimes mentioned but never on screen.