Mark Lynch
George: A Magpie Memoir. Frieda Hughes. 2023. Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster. New York, New York.
“…I had the idea that they were the jokers and we humans were their fools.” (p. 14)
To be honest, when I first read the title George: A Magpie Memoir, I immediately flashed upon one of those heartwarming stories of a person or family who adopts a wild animal or bird and the antics that ensue. Something along the line of Arnie, the Darling Starling, one of those books you always see in the natural history section of your bookstore, but you never buy. To be honest, I have never read Arnie, the Darling Starling.
George: A Magpie Memoir is something else entirely. Yes, it is a story of the labor-intensive rehabbing of a wild bird. Yes, there are plenty of bird antics recounted. But this story is set amid a larger, more complicated memoir of the author trying to construct a new life for herself while dealing with serious health issues and a slowly disintegrating marriage. The author, Frieda Hughes, is a professional writer, poet, and visual artist. She is the product of a unique childhood during which she was constantly on the move.
I felt as if the ground on which I stood was constantly changing and shifting, and that if I looked away for just a minute, then looked back, the landscape would have altered, and I’d have a whole other universe to acclimatize to because, following the suicide of my mother Sylvia Plath, on 11 February 1963, my father, Ted Hughes, found it difficult to settle. His peripatetic lifestyle meant that I never had my few clothes all in one place, or my books (I did not have toys), or make friends (I did not have any real friends). Wherever he went my younger brother, Nick, and I followed like two trailing limbs. (p. 4)
Yes, Frieda Hughes is the daughter of two of the most famous poets of the twentieth century, subjects of many books, histories, and even a biopic, Sylvia (2003), with Gwyneth Paltrow playing Sylvia Plath and Daniel Craig playing Ted Hughes. Frieda Hughes did not like the film, as you can imagine.
Her feelings about the fame of her family are decidedly complex. Speaking as a published poet, Frieda dearly wishes that people would stop feeling the compulsion to introduce her as first and foremost a subset of her parents.
When introduced, my name is all-too-often FRIEDAHUGHES-DAUGHTER-OF-TEDHUGHES-AND-SYLVIAPLATH. It’s a mouthful, but somehow people manage to get it all out in one breath. (p. 236)
For readers who are looking for some insight about how Frieda Hughes feels about all that occurred with her parents, I recommend reading some of her books of poetry. George is a very personal memoir by Frieda Hughes of events that occurred after the death of her father. The text of George is based on diary entries between May 2007 and January 2009. As the book begins, Hughes is returning to Britain after a long time abroad living in a sparsely settled area of Western Australia. She is accompanied by her Australian husband, who for the entirety of the book she only refers to as “The Ex,” thus giving the reader advanced notice about one of the endings of George. Hughes is returning to the country of her childhood with a definite agenda.
The things I longed for, other than health, happiness and wealth, probably in that order, were plants, pets and a house of my own that I would never have to move from. (p. 2)
In other words, everything she missed out on after the death of her mother. She is certain she will know the perfect house when she sees it.
As my late father always said, if you truly want something you should visualize it and make a space for it in your life. (p. 1)
She finds the perfect place in mid Wales, a rundown house that can be fixed up with some effort and just enough room for a good-sized English garden. Hughes is ecstatic, but The Ex is decidedly less so. He had envisioned a stay of just a few years in Britain, ending with a return for both of them to Australia. But Hughes is ready to start working the earth and nestle into her dream home with her three dogs for the rest of her life.
Next to one of her gardens is a large “copper-leafed prunus tree.” (p. 14) A pair of magpies (Pica pica) nest here and Hughes becomes fascinated by their raucous behavior.
They screeched and made strange chugging noises; king and queen of the garden, they challenged the wood pigeons and doves and teased the jackdaws and crows without shame. They skipped and flounced and appeared hideously happy as they performed their quick little dance steps. Wearing their black-and-white shiny suits with that tinge of oil-slick blue-green like a stain on their inky feathers. Where crows possessed gravitas, jackdaws possessed curiosity, and magpies possessed a tangible sense of humor. (p. 14-15)
Magpies in Europe have a complicated history with humans. Originally considered playful and even a good omen at times, magpies have appeared in many paintings from the Medieval period on. Ornithologist Sir John Lawton, in his recent book about birds on British pub signs, found magpies were among the most common birds seen on pub signs. There are a number of traditional rhymes involving magpies.
In some parts of the North they say-
Magpie, magpie, chatter and glee
Turn up thy tail and good luck befalls me
(p. 57 Inn Search of Birds, John Lawton).
There is even an opera about a magpie. La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) is an 1817 opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. A wonderful animation of this opera’s overture was created in 1964 by Giulo Gianini and Emanuele Lazzati.
By the mid-1800s until today, magpies developed another, much darker reputation that was fueled by gamekeepers and others. Magpies were considered to be hellbent on destroying other birds’ nests and devouring the eggs and nestlings. It was believed that magpies often predated gamebirds, though to date it has not been proved that they make any appreciable dent in gamebird populations. The word vermin is commonly used today to describe a magpie, and they are often shot. They are still beloved by some but reviled by others. This dichotomy is one of the underlying themes of George. Hughes may be fine with George’s antics but friends and neighbors are not as sanguine.
In May 2007 a fierce storm rips through Wales. The next morning, Frieda Hughes notices that the magpie nest has been destroyed. Under some debris beneath the nesting tree she finds three nestling magpies: one that is dead and mangled, one that soon dies, and the tough little bird that she takes inside and dubs “George.” I will not recount Hughes’s trials and tribulations learning to care for her magpie charge because that would give away too much of the book. Hughes has never done anything like this before, and she dives into this labor-intensive chore with a fierce intensity.
He was also, I must be honest, a little eating-shitting machine. “Don’t write the grotty stuff,” said a friend who was visiting during George’s adolescence when I mentioned my desire to record his existence. But why not? Birds crap, and baby birds crap enormous amounts because they eat vast quantities to fuel their prodigious growth rate, in some cases doubling in size every three days. My friend, I think, was quietly repelled by the proximity to a real live wild bird and its effluent, whereas all I saw was the most miraculous little creature doing what every creature does. (p. 27)
As George slowly matures, it becomes obvious that he embodies the impish essence of a young magpie. George gets into everything. He chases the dogs all over the house and the dogs chase George. He steals food off the plate and generally becomes the embodiment of noisy chaos. But this does not bother Hughes because she has developed a strong bond with the magpie. “Everything I did, be it cooking a meal, or gardening, or working at the computer, or painting, I did with one eye on George.” (p. 34)
The reader may be left feeling that maybe Hughes’s love of George is veering into the realm of obsession. To be fair to Hughes, as most people who have rehabbed a young animal know, you have to have intense dedication because caring for a wild animal is unpredictable and monumentally time consuming. I have interviewed a number of people who have dedicated their lives to caring for orphaned birds, and I am always in awe of how they put the rest of their life on hold while doing so. I am glad they do it, but I know I could not.
As much as possible, I lived with George on my shoulder, his little claws digging in as he perched. For some reason he liked to face backwards when I walked. He’d crap on the arm of the work shirt I was wearing for the purpose, because he couldn’t lever his bum far enough over the edge of my shoulder. I cleaned it up. He was quite happy as I moved around the house, as long as I didn’t hurry; it unsettled his balance. (p. 44)
I was now having dreams of a magpie on my shoulder as I painted or wrote every day; Frieda Hughes, painter-and-poet-with-magpie. A magpie has this advantage over man’s best friend: it can nuzzle your cheek and nibble your ear as you work at a computer, as long as you don’t mind the bird shit running down your back. A dog just paws your knee, looks pleadingly at you, then goes off to pee on a rug when it realizes the magpie is getting more attention. (p. 52)
But it is not just the dogs that are reacting to the attention that is showered on George. The Ex never warmed up to the idea of a magpie in the house from the beginning. His resentment begins to show in petty behaviors that Hughes notes in her diary.
Thinking I might never raise another magpie, I tried to keep a photographic record of me with this fascinating little bird, but it was hard to get a picture of us together, because I had to rely on the good nature of The Ex, who wasn’t the least bit interested. George, it seemed, was the competition. (p. 41)
George: A Magpie Memoir becomes not only a documentation of the raising of a wild bird but also the story of a disintegrating marriage. The Ex, an unemployed artist, longs to return to Australia. Hughes tries to introduce him to some contacts in the art world in Britain, but it just doesn’t seem to quell The Ex’s growing resentment of the magpie.
As George matures and learns to fly, Hughes starts letting the magpie out for the day, leaving a window open for the bird to return at night. It is something that Hughes does with some fear because she knows that many Brits view a magpie as vermin. She worries that George will get shot. One night The Ex insists on closing the window.
The bird was fine, but I suffered terrible separation anxiety, and resented The Ex for keeping him out. Seeing George’s desperation to come back indoors made me realise that I could refuse him nothing. But I was making an effort in trying to accommodate the fact that two of us lived in this house and one of us only tolerated the magpie under sufferance. (p. 131)
Hughes’s relationship with The Ex is in serious trouble. The Ex takes a solo trip back to Australia. Hughes still hopes that when he returns, they can patch things up.
When The Ex returned from his trip to Australia in March, I collected him from the nearby station and we had a happy reunion that made me hope he’d realized how good it was to be here, with me, not there. Then I drove him into the front yard and he saw the motorbike. He immediately thought it was for him. (p. 234)
As Hughes and The Ex wrestle with their feelings for each other as Hughes’s health issues get worse, things suddenly get more complicated for Hughes and George.
Everything is fine of course, until it isn’t, and sometimes we don’t know it isn’t until someone tells us, and today one of my neighbours told me that she would open a bottle of wine to celebrate the day George left home for good. George’s presence was making itself felt among the neighbours; he had no fear of them, so teased and bounced and played around, stealing small things and making people nervous.
It was explained to me that my elderly next-door neighbour, Jean, for whom I have great respect and affection, was apparently terrified of George—and I had no idea. She was too polite to tell me herself, but her fear had been noted by others. (p. 145)
There is much more that comes after this in George, but you will have to read the book to find out what that is. It would be unfair to the author to give too much away. Included with the text are a number of the line drawings that Frieda Hughes did of George as he grew up. These wonderfully capture the bird’s antic energy. She also includes several poems she wrote at the time. I strongly recommend reading one of Hughes’ books of poetry to gain further insight into her life. George: A Magpie Memoir is an unusual book about a unique and dysfunctional emotional triangle: a woman, a man, and a foundling bird.
LITERATURE CITED
- Corbo, Margarete Corbo. Arnie, the Darling Starling. 1983. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Boston, Massachusetts.
- Lawton, Sir John. Inn Search of Birds: Pubs, People and Places. 2023. Whittles Publishing. Caithness, Scotland.
To listen to my interview with Frieda Hughes talking about George: A Magpie Memoir, here is the link from the WICN website: https://wicn.org/podcast/frieda-hughes-george/
I did a second interview with Frieda Hughes just to talk about her poetry, her artwork, and living in the outback of western Australia. She recites two of her poems too: https://wicn.org/podcast/frieda-hughes/