Poldark Saga - Winston Graham discussion

Chapter 28 [The pilchard harvest]

"In a few minutes they were turning into Nampara Cove. The boat slipped through the ripples at the edge and grounded in the sand. He got out and, as she made to follow, caught her about the waist and carried her to dry land. He kissed her before he put her down.
...
She was quite silent. He had never done what he had done that night. He had never kissed her before except in passion. It was something different. She knew him to be closer to her then than he had ever been before. For the very first time they were on a level. It was not Ross Poldark, gentleman farmer, of Nampara, and his maid, whom he had married because it was better than being alone. They were a man and a woman, with no inequality between them. She was older than her years and he younger, and they walked home hand in hand through the slanting shadows of the new darkness.
I am happy, he thought again. Something is happening to me, to us, transmuting our shabby little love affair. Keep this mood, hold on to it. No slipping back.
...
'I love you,' he said, 'and am your servant. Demelza, look at me. If I've done wrong in the past, give me leave to make amends.'"

Ross Poldark Book 3. Chapter 9. Page 435. Christmas at Francis and Elizabeth's.

'So this is your wife, Ross,' said Ruth sweetly. 'Come and sit by me dear. Tell me about yourself. All the county was talking of you in June.'
'Yes,' said Demelza. 'People dearly love to gossip, don't they ma'am?'
John roared and slapped his thigh.
'Quite right, mistress. Let's drink a toast: a merry Christmas to us all round and damnation to the gossips!'

Tanya wrote: "Chapter 28 [The pilchard harvest]

"In a few minutes they were turning into Nampara Cove. The boat slipped through the ripples at the edge and grounded in the sand. He got out and, as she made to..."

TANYA....you picked one of my very favorite chapters...Ross Poldark : Book 3 : Chapter 3 to Book 3: Chapter 11 (end)
I have read and reread Book Three so many times, it is one of my favorites of all the books. I think that WG carefully gives us an insight into Ross’s personality coming from a childhood, with a mother who died so young and a father, who was undemonstrative and cold, and later a fierce womanizer; Ross actually did not believe that Joshua cared about him. He was highly introspective and singular, he lived his conscience and beliefs but “happiness” was not something he was familiar with. Beginning with their visit to watch the Pilchard catch, Ross is aware of a difference in his whole outlook. Not merely happy in Demelza’s happiness, but something is happening to him. “I am happy, he thought again. Something is happening to me, to us, transmuting our shabby little love affair. Keep the mood, hold on to it. No slipping back.” The paragraphs, where he struggles to understand what is happening are so tender and telling.e

Hands down the best moment in Book 1 for me was Winston Graham's amazing foreshadowing....or is it imagery? The scene of Demelza, for instance, cherishing her first intimate evening with Captain Ross the next morning early in the garden....the birds are like lovers enjoying themselves.... The imagery went on and on..... Delightful!

My favorite moment is the end when Winston Graham wrote one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever read:

"And Ross again knew himself to be happy - in a new and less ephemeral way than before. He was filled with a queer sense of enlightenment. It seemed to him that all his life had moved to this pinpoint of time down the scattered threads of twenty years; from his old childhood running thoughtless and barefoot in the sun on Hendrawna sands, from Demelza's birth in the squalor of a mining cottage, from the plains of Virginia and the trampled fairgrounds of Redruth, from the complex impulses which had governed Elizabeth's choice of Francis and from the simple philosophies of Demelza's own faith, all had been animated to a common end - and that end a moment of enlightenment and understanding and completion. Someone -- a Latin poet -- had defined eternity as no more than this: to hold and possess the whole fullness of life in one moment, here and now, past and present and to come. He thought: if we could only stop here. Not when we get home, not leaving Trenwith, but here, here reaching the top of the hill out of Sawle, dusk wiping out the edges of the land and Demelza walking and humming at my side."

They were so happy together in that time. I've just finished book 4 and I miss those golden times of the early years of marriage.

Oh yes, I love that passage too. It's so beautiful.

As Ross said he found his star in a dog fight, my favourite saying or one of them. Ross and Demelza were meant for each other, if Ross had married Elizabeth there would be no Demelza. Winston Graham new that.

Enza wrote: "My favorite moment is the end when Winston Graham wrote one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever read:

"And Ross again knew himself to be happy - in a new and less ephemeral way than before. He ..."
Oh my gosh, that IS beautiful. The experience is intensified when it's excerpted as above.

In the following phrase he seems to have figured out that he and Demelza were meant to be, not he and Elizabeth.

"from the complex impulses which had governed Elizabeth's choice of Francis and from the simple philosophies of Demelza's own faith, all had been animated to a common end - and that end a moment of enlightenment"

If only he could hold on to that knowledge.

I love the part when Ross catches Demelza in the dress. I have even modeled a dress in one of my own works after it. That scene leads to the love scene and the morning after scene. The TV series captured it very well.