C2 Cambridge exam practice

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I’m probably applying for the C2 Cambridge Exam this July, amidst all the unrelenting chaos going on in the world in 2020. In the interest of improving my lack of practice with writing walls of text, I had the idea of writing on the forums about any topic that comes to mind, in the hopes that the community will help me correcting any grammatical mistake, and/or suggesting better ways of expressing myself. No schedule planned, texts will be uploaded when I feel they are more or less ready.
I would like to apologize for the length of the first text, its subject and my treatment of it, which some may consider uninteresting. These kind of things always turn to be something different to what I at first imagined them to be.

Grammar nazis are welcome. Send me to a concentration camp if need be.




I would like to introduce this thread with the account of a favourite case of mine: that of the Cottingley Fairies.

Cottingley is a village located in West Yorkshire, which is in the middle of the United Kingdom. But surely that’s not what catched your eye, is it? About the fairies... it all started in 1917, with the end of the war finally on sight, when people had more pressing matters to attend to. Our heroines go by the names of 16 years old Elsie Wright and 10 years old Frances Griffith. The older one had always lived there, and had a knack for drawing; the younger and her cousin, had recently moved there from Africa to live some time in England.

They usually hung out together in the vicinity of their home, close to the forest and next to a beck, much to the annoyance of their parents. In response to her mother’s (in Elsie’s case) and her aunt’s (in Frances’) pleads, they both answered they were “watching the fairies”. It is not such a hard thing to believe, if you’ve wandered through a forest yourself, and heard the wind laughing like children at your back.

Nevertheless, they were positive on proving the claim, and one day they took the camera from Elsie’s father, Arthur. They came back, exultant, about 30 minutes later and sure enough when the picture got revealed, it showed Frances looking directly to the photographer, with a flower crown in her head, and four lively “little folk” dancing in front of her (you can see a cascade of the unfamous beck on the left).


cottingley_fairies.jpg

To further prove their argument, a few months later they repeated the process, and this time it was Elsie who extended her hand to a gnome, further convincing her mother, while the actual owner of the device didn’t doubt the kids had devised a farce. A more down-to-earth kind of man.

His stance didn’t stop the grown woman of bringing the photos to a Teosophical congress held around that period, where it inevitably caused quite the fuss. Those people were more my type, which explains their will to believe the veracity of Polly Wright’s words and thus, the girls’.

Steadily, as things back then when there wasn’t a world changing event happening every week (sounds familiar?), things spiralled out of control. It was not the first time anybody had claimed having seen fairies, but certainly few times before had photos been taken, and with such clarity of their content. Then again, spiritualism and the likes rose out of the dead in the 20th century. Then again, the photos are pure magic.

532px-Illus-the-coming-of-the-fairies-1922-hodder-p113.jpg
(This Canada photo may have been prior to the Cottingley ones, and does not stand out for clarity of the content. You are supposed to see a fairy somewhere around there.)

So the whole matter came to the attention of Edward Gardner, a prolific writer and member of the Teosophic society, and then... Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got involved too. I know about this because one of my relatives probably qualifies for one of the world’s authorities in anything related to the author (by the way, he got commisioned to write a book “hardly anybody will read”, “only for the intellectual challenge” in his own words, wish him luck if you want): the creator of the Sherlock Holmes books, didn’t hide his belief in the occult, all the contrary: his writings and investigations in this field are perhaps the lesser known part of him. He even tried to communicate with his mother’s spirit.

When these monochrome fantasy creature crashed into his mailbox, Sir Arthur saw it as one more proof for this other half of reality. He had actually been commisioned by The Strand to write a piece on fairies, so this was a godsend, but of course the “pieces of evidence” couldn’t be included with peace of mind from Sherlock Holmes’ author without reassuring its authenticity.

That is how the matter arose. From then on, Conan Doyle got acquainted with Edward Gardner via written correspondence, and both carried on various tests to confirm what they already knew: that the photos were all real. The latter took it to a psychic, who “desencrypted” the photos just by looking at them, to a certain photographer called Mr Snelling, and to the very Kodak company. In case you want to know, the psychic deemed them a fabrication of Elsie’s father, "to please her daughter", and both the photographer and the company concluded that the takes showed “what was there at the time”, nothing more and nothing less, although Kodak’s employees were unwilling to give in to what they believed was a children’s prank.

Convinced of the success of their inquiries, hardly hiding his enthusiasm, the writer published the article in 1920 in the Strand newspaper on the subject of fairies, now dedicated on its entirety to the now so called ”Cottingley fairies”. Its reception was mixed, as it was fated to be, but in Conan Doyle’s words the “old cry of “Fake!” was less conspicuous than I had expected”, and only a few journalists published articles calling for reason.

The girls were not to be left alone, however. Both Edward Garner and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wanted more evidence, more photographies, a final proof of Ellie and Frances’ account. To that end, the teosophist made a trip to the village, to meet the whole family and hopefully, retrieve new fairy related evidence. After leaving two W. Butcher & Sons cameras to the girls, and lightly instructing them in their use, he parted, and to the delight of both spiritualists, some two weeks after, three new prints arrived to the visitor’s mailbox, which he sent along with a new letter to Sir Arthur.

After these three last pictures, and a visit of a “clairvoyant” who sat along with the two now full-grown women, seeing fairies everywhere, and asking the girls for the description of his supposed visions, “which he always obtained correctly, to the extent of their skill”, the matter was settled. And for decades, it stood that way, as one of the most inexplicable events of the 20th century, the “dawn of a new epoch in human thought” left unattended. Some, like editor chief of British Journal of Photography George Crawley, claimed all the photos to be faked, but it did not affect the general view of the public.

It was both Elsie Wright and Frances Griffith themselves who confessed to the hoax in 1983.

Up until then, they had lived almost in anonimity, and only rarely commented on the pictures. In an article of The Unexplainable written by Joe Cooper, however, they exposed at long last the fairly simple method devised: taking advantage of her precocious talent in drawing, Elsie copied some illustrations of a book with fairies, then drew them some wings, and got help from Frances to sustain them to the foliage with hatpins (however, just now, looking at “Frances and the leaping fairy” I see a thread that might be hanging from the figure, but I might be totally wrong), disposing said hatpins in the unfamous beck once the photo had been taken.

One might say that was the end of it all. However, while Elsie insisted they were all false, Frances took her belief that the last image, Fairies and their Sun-Bath (Conan Doyle describes it in fairy lovers and observers’ words, as a “magnetic bath, woven very quickly by the fairies, and used after dull weather and in the autumn especially”) was real to the grave. Furthermore, while the word “hoax” could now be applied to the photos, and notwithstanding the wounded credibility of any of their words, the two cousins did say they in fact saw fairies as children, and only elaborated the pictures with playful intention.

I encourage you all to look the photos up, whatever your opinion of them may be. Perhaps they will fascinate you as they all fascinated me when I first discovered them in a travel to London, and my uncle lent me the book “The Coming of the Fairies” by the very Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1922 (said relative has since amusedly commented on my interest on what “is surely a peripherical subject”, but very kindly let me keep it). You may even go to the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford and study them first-hand.

With such straight blows to the heart as these photos inflicted on me, their authenticity hardly matters. Indeed it is not the affair that arose subsequently, but the very images that hold my attention after the years. Neither a proof of their existence, nor the account of the lie, but the possibility, the combination of reality and imagination, are the qualities of these plates.

I wonder sometimes why are we so inclined to try to unveil these mysteries, when their true power lies in the grey limbo between fact and myth. Once the magic trick has been explained, the magic is gone. The problem does not lie in proving it a fabrication, as some will do, nor in the desperate search for evidence others resort to. Magic only exists while it is bigger than ourselves, an indescriptible encounter we cannot fathom. Providing a sistem to it is in our nature, and so our history is one of disenchantments, whose insufficient claim for sincerity we hang on to.

Going further, both Arthur Conan Doyle and Edward Gardner decided on their own account to turn both girls’ lives upside down, without their ever asking for it, in a desperate attempt to prove their convictions. Frances said she “hated the photos since the age of 16”, when she understood just how much of a havoc they had caused, and would cause if she let herself into public life. Joe Cooper, the writer of the article in The Unexplained, ruined his own life and marriage, after retirement, in a mad search for both girls and the study of the Cottingley Fairies.

In the end, the case tells an ever present tragedy of men resented with the lacking of the factual, who abandon themselves to a cycle of search for always the hidden, whatever, once revealed, those secrets may hold.

[I used the Cottingley Fairies Wikipedia Article, my memory and the copy of “The coming of the fairies” still in my possession. You can look for the second image, and read the whole book here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Coming_of_the_Fairies .

When it comes to Joe Cooper: https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/life/754164/Cottingley-Fairies-Joe-Cooper-Sir-Arthur-Conan-Doyle

https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/15000794.dark-side-of-cottingley-fairy-hoax-by-family-of-the-man-who-exposed-it/

For those interested in fairies:

britishfairies.wordpress.com

http://www.danbaines.com/the-fairy-podcast ]
I hope it was not the most boring read you’ve ever had. Feel free to write your thoughts in case there is anything you wanted to comment.
I appreciate your help in advance.
 
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But surely that’s not what catched your eye, is it?
But surely that’s not what caught your eye, is it?

Providing a sistem to it is in our nature
Providing a system to it is in our nature

Will provide more feedback when I'm more awake. I've read about this hoax before, but it seems people are still as gullible as ever, one century later.
 
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@Alraisen
I think you can excise some of the more personal commentary at the beginning. ("Those people were more my type") and ("I know about this because one of my relatives probably qualifies for one of the world’s authorities in anything related to the author (by the way, he got commissioned to write a book “hardly anybody will read”, “only for the intellectual challenge” in his own words, wish him luck if you want).")
Leave your thoughts on the matter until the end so as to not disrupt the storytelling flow.

Our heroines go by the names of 16 years old Elsie Wright and 10 years old Frances Griffith.
The older one had always lived there, and had a knack for drawing; the younger and her cousin, had recently moved there from Africa to live some time in England.
--->
Our heroines of this particular tale are two cousins, Elsie Wright, 16 years old, and Frances Griffith, 10 years old. (put their names first, then their ages)
The older one had always lived in England and had a knack for drawing, while the younger one had only recently moved there from Africa.

"To further prove their argument" ---> "To further bolster their claim" (It's not quite a debate going on, so 'claim' works better here.)
"all the contrary" ---> "on the contrary"
"unfamous" ---> "infamous"

Shortening "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" to "Sir Arthur" just seems wrong somehow; use "Sir Doyle" or just "Doyle" instead.
 
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@Morluginn I fell for you for a few moments, motherfucker.

By the way, I got the chance to talk with my uncle about his book, and his explanation was interesting enough to move me to write it down here.
He speaks of it as "the game". To plunge into this endeavour, he has been researching Sherlock Holmes' books for about 6 or 7 years, way more than he had planned at first. You have to be extremely savvy on an author's body of work to attempt this, it seems. The thing is, every author makes some mistakes in his works, or so the story goes. Well, as a sort of "intellectual exercise", the idea is to take all of these "flaws" as proof of an explanation of the events different to that which the author provides in the end, and write by yourself the alternative ending! Furthermore, there actually are publishers interested in this kind of work, and he has been commissioned by one of them.
Now I think about it, it is not so much different from a fanfiction. I guess the part of studying a work for years is.
 

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