the not so nice Jan Morris

[JanieAllen]

Review of new book about Jan Morris 'disgracefully self centred' after having Jan Morris shoved down our throats this really cheered me up.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jan-morris-by-paul-clements-review-pqtd7z7jl

archive here archive.ph/usCl8

Always happy to help 🫡

‘Her second son, Henry, chose to go and live abroad. Asked about Morris after her death, he said: “We were introduced, but we never actually got to know each other.

Crikey! That is very very telling.

Suki had this to say on twitter last year

"I didn't find Jan's transition extremely difficult at all.I don't care what gender anyone wants to be. It's the person that's important.The way Jan treated us caused the rift. The unkindness."

Oh that is perfect. Bloody love GG sometimes

‘I’m not Daddy any more. I’m Jan’

announced, no discussion allowed, to all four children.

You can say that again, love.

Morris never parented any of the children. They’re fine about expressing how the Morris legacy is a huge fail.

It’s very sad. He was pretty useless from the off with the kids ie both pre and post trans.

The kids judged Jan as a person and as a parent, not a gender, and she didn’t pass.

"....she had no desire to sleep with women, she returned to London and performed a U-turn (a Morris characteristic). A coup de foudre with Elizabeth, the daughter of a tea planter in Ceylon...."

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

he was a phenomenally boring travel writer (I own an old copy of his book about Venice) and now apparently also a total fucking arsehole. I’ve never understood the sacred cow approach to his stuff. Poor, poor Elizabeth - trapped by the conviction that god wanted her to stay married.

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.

The Venice book is dreadful.

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

😁

@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 ?

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).

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.

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.

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.

@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 !

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.

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

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.

Thanks for the link GrumpyPanda - interesting reviews!

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'.

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

“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.

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.

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