Bookish Update: Mad Madge - The "But I Don't Want To Finish It" Book Moment

Mad Madge: The Extraordinary Life of Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, the First Woman to Live by Her Pen - Katie Whitaker Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life - Linda H. Davis, Charles Addams

  I really love this history book. It's very much a historical biography, in that this is a person living in the 1600s and there's always going to be a lack of complete biographical material compared to people who lived centuries later. But somehow I've really fallen in love with the Margaret in this book, even when I recognize the facts that would make her a pain in the ass to deal with on a daily basis. Once I reached the part where she and her husband are aging and there are issues with inheritance, etc. - I had to set the book aside for a week or so. Not because it'd become boring, but because I'm still happy with my idea of Margaret and don't want to have to imagine the eventual loss of her husband (and how that will effect her life, not to mention the whole "will she have enough money to live on") and then her own death. I'll probably finish off the last few chapters this weekend - they're not long. But this is one of those "I don't want to read about the sadder parts" where I switch from one book to another.

 

    Last time I did this - or that I immediately remember - was with the biography of Charles Addams, a book I really enjoyed for all the weird anecdotes about his life. Until I got to the part about his ex-wife constantly trying to wheedle away his copyrights and money from him. And Addams kept giving in to because he didn't like conflict. That annoyed me to the point where that book sat on a shelf multiple weeks. (Ever want to reach into a book and grab a person, shake them and say "stop doing that!!!" - ?! I wanted to do that to both Addams and the ex.) I only went back to the book after I'd looked up in the index to the last entry for the ex-wife in hope that'd she'd die off. Oh and a gossipy aside - this is the ex-wife who had outrageous/ridiculous demands for the production of the Addams Family movie - and dealing with her made multiple people in Hollywood very crazy. She (and her demands) was why production took longer than expected. Because yes, Addams had signed all the Addams Family rights over to the ex-wife.

 

On a happier note I'm going to quote a lot about Margaret and her husband when I get to the review, because they're an extremely loving couple. That we still have some of the love poems her husband wrote to her is kind of amazing, considering that they're over 360 years old.