And that’s what you are, the three of you. Parasites. The whole bunch. You always have been and you always will be. Nothing can change you. You are
And that’s what you are, the three of you. Parasites. The whole bunch. You always have been and you always will be. Nothing can change you. You are doubly, triply parasitic; first, because you've traded ever since childhood on that seed of talent you had the luck to inherit from your fantastic forebears; secondly, because you’ve none of you done a stroke of ordinary honest work in your lives, but batten upon us, the fool public who allow you to exist; and thirdly, because you prey upon each other, the three of you, living in a world of fantasy which you have created for yourselves and which bears no relation to anything in heaven or earth.
This book lacks the dramatic tension of du Maurier’s best-known (and loved) works, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone who’s fascinated by du Maurier’s own life story. In Julia Myerson’s Introduction to my Virago edition, she says that du Maurier “apparently admitted that all three Delaneys were probably facets of her own personality” - and as a reader who has read a handful of du Maurier biographies, the parallels are obvious. Daphne seems to be most obviously the character of Maria Delaney, but perhaps other more internal dimensions of her character or her family dynamics reminded her of the other two siblings, Niall and Celia. Then there are the plot points: the famous father, who has a strong streak of emotional tyranny and neediness; the early exposure to the dubious glamour of the theatrical world; the three siblings, who are exceptionally close; the insecurity of imposter syndrome and nepotism, and the selfishness of the artistic life. Perhaps most obviously, the marriage of Maria Delaney and Charles has obvious parallels to Daphne’s own to Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning.
Daphne du Maurier devotees will also know of her fascination with the Bronte family, and perhaps will have read her biography The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte. The emotional connection between Maria and Niall - who are raised as siblings, but have no genetic ties - reminds one of Heathcliff and Cathy. Both characters are selfish to the core, and somehow only vulnerable and truly known to each other. Like Cathy, Maria marries an Edgar Linton character - but then doesn’t let that get in the way of her attachment to Niall. And the “world of fantasy” shared by the three Delaneys: one cannot help but think of the Bronte siblings.
But here’s the thing: it’s really a character study more than anything else. And if you aren’t interested in those characters - who aren’t particularly likeable - you may find the plot hard-going. Like Rebecca, it starts in the present and then reverts to the past, but there is never that same sense of mystery and drama. Yes, the reader will becomes more intimately acquainted with the three Delaney siblings, but I’m not sure they will ever become knowable. Perhaps du Maurier wrote this book as an attempt to work out something about her own character, but ultimately it struck me as a book about the disappointments of middle age. ...more
When you step into that balmy ocean of time in mid-July, released from lessons and uniform, you feel as if you're stepping into infinit
3.75 stars
When you step into that balmy ocean of time in mid-July, released from lessons and uniform, you feel as if you're stepping into infinity. You can't even imagine September; It doesn't occur to you that such a brown, lugubrious month will ever arrive. All you can see before you in your imagination is sunlight shimmering on grass and water.
It's this stretch of time that I'm aiming to capture through the recollections of men and women I've spoken to, who were actually there, being children, in the fifty years from 1930 to 1980.
I was a child at the latter-end of what has been described as the "free-range" era of childhood. A lost age now; a golden age. In other words, I was a child during a time when children were expected to be out of doors - and out of their parent's hair - from breakfast to supper time. There were few activities, camps or special summer treats. The family holiday, such as it was, was rarely glamorous - and nor did it last more than a week or two. Summer meant vast swathes of time in which one could amuse one's self, trifle away the hours, and actually suffer unrelieved boredom.
Although I had an American childhood - and not the British one described in this book - I could relate to much of what it described. It's all a lost era now, forever changed by streaming, smart phones, play stations and inexpensive foreign travel.
This book is an historical study of sorts, and it will be a pure exercise in nostalgia for the readers whose lifetimes and experiences correspond to those bracketed decades of the mid-2oth century. A pleasure to read - as all of Graham's works are for me. Who else would describe September, so aptly, as "brown" and "lugubrious"?
Thanks to Amy @pigeonpostbooks for sharing! ...more
A happy childhood is always a paradise lost. The English children of the Indian Empire knew a special paradise, and most of them never forgot it an
A happy childhood is always a paradise lost. The English children of the Indian Empire knew a special paradise, and most of them never forgot it and always missed it. Over and over again in the memories of people who grew up in India the same longings and vivid recollections recur: they remember the warmth, the sun, the colours, the light, the space, the sound; above all, perhaps, the smell of India.
Although Rumer Godden spent much of her life in England, many readers associate her with India - and the books she wrote which were inspired by her experiences there. (My own Godden bibliography has been heavily weighted towards the Indian books: The Lady and the Unicorn, Black Narcissus, The River and the memoir Two Under the Indian Sun.) I read this biography immediately after finishing Rumer and Jon Godden's memoir of their childhood in Narayanganj (then British India, now Bangladesh), and as the biographer borrowed heavily from that book, this book didn't get off to a particularly promising start for me. However, there was far more to this complicated woman's life than those childhood experiences, and soon enough I found myself in fresh and uncharted territory.
Although it's not the most exhaustive of biographies, Chisholm does a solid job of covering the complicated time-line of Godden's life, and fitting in the books as well - but without giving too much of their plots away. India provides a book-end for Godden's life, and a personal connection for the biographer, as very late in Godden's life, Anne Chisholm accompanies her and a BBC film crew to the places in India which had impacted Godden's childhood and young married years.
Godden had a terrific work ethic, and it was her habit and ritual to begin a new book every New Year's Eve. She wrote obsessively as a child, and published her first novel Chinese Puzzle when she was only 28. One of the novels she is best known for, Black Narcissus, was only her third novel, but after this first taste of writing fame - it was later adapted into both a stage play and film - she not only became a professional writer, but also the main financial support of both of her marriages. Although she had two daughters by her first husband, and took care of other family children during the years - especially during World War II, which she spent in India - she was always first and foremost a writer. Nevertheless, she didn't spend her life locked away in a study. She had a life full of a great many things and experiences.
Chisholm takes care to point out that Godden was prone to dramatising her own life - to shaping it into a story, and thus losing or blurring the factual aspects of what had happened. Throughout the book, she relies on other a variety of other testimonies - and not just Godden's point of view. I felt this book benefitted from the author's first-hand knowledge of her subject, without being slavish to it. Chisholm has fondness and respect for Godden, but she maintains distance, too.
I love the smaller or more personal details, and these are a few that I will remember from this biography. Rumer Godden loved pugs, Famous Grouse whisky, and furnishing houses. Despite the love of houses, (or perhaps because of it), she moved many times over the years. She lived in Lamb House, in Rye, a house associated with many writers - including Henry James. She converted to Catholicism later in life and wrote several books about nuns and the spiritual life. She was a hardy traveller. She wrote many children's books, and more than a dozen nonfiction books as well. She lived in Jean Renoir's house in California when they were working together on a screenplay for her novel The River.
Godden wrote three memoirs about her own life, and I intend on reading all of them. Perhaps this biography will seem more like an outline in comparison, but it's certainly a good jumping-off point for a British writer whose writing definitely deserves a revival....more
Set in 1930s Essex, Nightingale Wood is a comic retelling of the Cinderella story. In a sense, it is a story of wish-fulfilment and romantic pairings,Set in 1930s Essex, Nightingale Wood is a comic retelling of the Cinderella story. In a sense, it is a story of wish-fulfilment and romantic pairings, but it's also a comedy of manners which does not in any sense romanticise its characters. The 'Cinderella' of the story is 19 year old Viola whose father-in-law describes her as 'silly, common little girl.' She's a former shop-girl and a widow, quite pretty, and sweet enough, but without much else to recommend her. She married for the first time because someone asked her, and newly orphaned, she was afraid that she couldn't do much better. She doesn't really have much to recommend her, and after her husband dies, she is compelled to come live with the Withers, her in-laws.
Mr. Withers is a fairly odious character, but Gibbons is at her comic best when describing him. He likes his household at The Eagles to be dull, predictable and organised on comfortable but economical lines. Even though he is comfortably well-off, money - the safe husbandry of it - is his obsession. Mr. Withers liked to feel money on all sides of him, like a street fence; he liked to feel that his remotest cousin four times removed had a bit put by (as, indeed, all the Wither cousins had).
The reader notices, immediately, how often the subject of money appears in the narrative. The ebb and flow of money lifts up the characters and casts them down. Gibbons is Jane Austen squared; every bit as aware of the financial bottom line, but across a far broader social spectrum. In one funny scene, three different female characters are described as creaming their face during bedtime preparation, and the price of the cream is inverse to each woman's age and social status. Although Gibbons keeps her tone light, at all times, one also notices moments of critique. She is also writing, in a very barbed and perspicacious way, about this time period, with all of its between-the-wars upheavel: there are references to the destruction of the countryside, the breakdown of the old class system, and the post-suffragette battle of the sexes. She makes her point with little darts, though; for the most part, this book is a delightful and somewhat silly romp.
Victor Spring, the 'prince' of the story is a 'new money' property developer. His father had made a tidy fortune in soft fruit, the canning of it, and Victor has expanded the family interests. Victor and his widowed mother live on the other side of the wood from The Eagles, but Grassmere is an entirely different residence - one that only employs pretty maids, and one which is always ready for a party. Victor treated money, not like a tyrant that must be alternately fawned upon and bullied, but as an old pal; he stood it drinks, so to speak, and it stood him more drinks in return. He had a way with it; it came to his whistle.
Although he is handsome, well-dressed and drives a Bentley, Victor is a highly flawed romantic hero, just as Viola is a wilted ingenue. First of all, he is engaged to Phyllis - a very stylish and hard young woman who is very good at games. Secondly, although he is physically attracted to Viola from the moment they meet at a local dance - a definite nod to Pride and Prejudice - he doesn't even remotely think of her as a romantic prospect. For at least half of the novel, he can't get her name right.
He had stupid, old-fashioned, ultra-masculine views on women. He never lost the feeling (though of course he had to suppress it in front of Phyllis and her friends) that women ought to be kept busy with some entirely feminine occupation like sewing or arranging flowers or nursing children until a man wanted their attention. He had not a shred of admiration (although he had to suppress this, too) for women who flew the larger expanses of sea, won motor-racing trophies, wrote brilliant novels, or managed big businesses.
Victor and Viola's star-crossed romance is by no means the only romance in this book, and Gibbons does a really admirable job of weaving together all of the brightly coloured ribbons of her storyline. There are a number of other important characters, including Viola's sister-in-laws (Madge and Tina), Victor's cousin Hetty and the Withers' chauffeur Saxon. There are also numerous references to Shakespeare and some of his stock characters and plot devices appear in the narrative, but always with a Gibbonesque twist. Even though Cold Comfort Farm is the acknowledged comic masterpiece from Gibbons' oeuvre, this book was far more enjoyable and accessible (for my money's worth). It's the sort of book, like The Pursuit of Love, that I would happily 'comfort read' again. ...more
In short, like all interesting people she was a mass of contradictions.
To many people who knew her in the last years of her life the overwhelming i
In short, like all interesting people she was a mass of contradictions.
To many people who knew her in the last years of her life the overwhelming impression she gave was one of serenity and gentleness, but her serenity has hard won and her gentleness was tempered in private by a pleasing acerbity. She never lost the astringent quality which informs and inspires 'that book'.
That book was Cold Comfort Farm: a 20th century British classic, described by Reggie Oliver as a book which "will be read and enjoyed for as long as the English language and the English sense of humour last.". Reggie Oliver is Stella Gibbons' nephew, and when he wrote this biography (1998), nearly all of Gibbons' 32 books were out of print - the exception being Cold Comfort Farm. I believe that Oliver worried that his aunt would be remembered as a sort of literary "one hit wonder", but the case is quite different as I am writing in 2022. In 2011, Vintage Classics brought 14 of her novels back into print - and since then, there have been more - including her two last books, which weren't published in her lifetime. When I visited the Waterstones at Gower Street this week there were no less than 7 of her books available on the shelf. (I bought Nightingale Wood.) This October, the Daunt Books in Belsize Park (London) devoted an entire window to her highly autobiographical novel Enbury Heath - a story set in the Vale of Health and chronicling the year that a sister and her two brothers set up house together following their parents' deaths. It was that book, purchased chiefly because I was attracted to the Hampstead setting, which set me down the path of my Stella Gibbons reading binge.
Although she ended up writing two sequels to her great bestseller, in many respects Cold Comfort Farm is quite different from her other books. The literary qualities which unite all of her books, though, are the vivid characterisation and strong sense of the absurd. Also, there is a consistently strong sense of place - and many of the books are set in the Hampstead/Highgate area of north London where she lived for all of her long life. Much of my fascination with her writing has to do with that setting. I fell in love with Hampstead when I was 21 and have lived in this part of north London for the past 4 years. It's an ongoing pleasure to compare the 21st Hampstead I know with the 1930s-50s version that Gibbons so ably describes.
No writer has ever evoked this part of London better or more comprehensively than Stella in some of her finest novels, ranging from Enbury Heath in 1935 to her last published novel, The Woods in Winter, of 1970. She covered its wide social spectrum, its grand houses and mean streets, and she captured the melancholy charm of the Heath where she loved to walk.
Being related to one's subject is a mixed blessing, I think. On one hand, Reggie Oliver had a first-hand knowledge of his aunt and can give the sort of specific details which bring a person to life. For instance, late in life she started smoking Gauloise cigarettes again after many years of being a nonsmoker. He also recalls her describing herself as "not shy, but unsociable", although he goes into some detail about the 'at home' parties she gave for many years on the first Saturday of the month. A detail which I particularly relished was his mention that she was particularly prone to odd cleaners, and then he goes on to describe several of them, including a Buddhist, pulse-eating, would be novelist male cleaner. As I have read several of her books which contained decidedly 'odd cleaners', it made me wonder which inclination came first.
The downside to Reggie Oliver's relationship with his aunt is that he really only knew her as an old woman. Even when late middle-aged, she seemed to have adopted some of the habits and mental tendencies of an older person. I felt like the younger Stella was not so real to him, and thus to me as the reader of this biography. Also, I think there is a naturally protective constraint when delving into the life of a fellow member. The most glaringly obvious example of this, for me, has to do with Stella's relationship with her husband. Although Oliver touches on the fact that Alan had lots of affairs and flirtations - he was an actor from about 22 until his early 40s, and later ran a secondhand bookshop - there is little mention (and no analysis, really) of how this affected Stella. She is described throughout as a devoted and loving wife.
Although I am primarily interested in Stella Gibbons as a novelist, Reggie Oliver also goes into some detail about her work as a journalist and even more so as a poet. Several of Stella's altar egos in the novels write poetry - or read lots of it - and she also gave her characters her own preferences in poets (Keats and Shelley, for example). I found it difficult to judge her poetry from the excerpts provided, but it didn't appeal to me very much and I found myself skimming over it.
Another feature of the biography is that it gives summaries of many of her novels and also includes the biographer's opinion of each novel's strong points and literary merits. Many Gibbons enthusiasts (like me) will enjoy his insights into which bits of the novels borrowed from life. Some of his observations are really incisive, but he can be quite unnecessarily opinionated. An observation which did amuse me was his description of The Swiss Summer, which has been reissued by the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint of Dean Street Press. A friend of mine has recently ranked it in the 'top ten' novels of the year for 2021. Oliver describes it thus:
One might recommend it to a convalescent, much as doctors used to recommend milk puddings and other bland but nourishing forms of sustenance.
I don't think this is a great biography, by any means, but I would certainly recommend it to anyone especially interested in its subject or in 20th century British female writers. I don't think there has been any other biography of her life, although Rachel Cooke wrote an excellent article about her for The Guardian on Sunday 7 August 2011. On the other hand, this study of her life did confirm how much of Stella Gibbons you can find within the pages of her own novels....more
But she'd been going to end up thinking about May: May stuck here for the rest of her life, in this awful red-brick fumed-oak stained-glass barrack
But she'd been going to end up thinking about May: May stuck here for the rest of her life, in this awful red-brick fumed-oak stained-glass barracks - every room looking like a Hall on Speech Day - even the garden filled with the worst things . . .
Aloud, she said, 'It's not just the house: it's him. 'Daddo?' She nodded. 'He gives me the creeps. He ought just to be poor and funny, but he isn't.' 'Well he is funny: he's a pompous old fool.' You're not a woman: you wouldn't understand.' There was enough mayonnaise; she seasoned it and began spreading it over the fish with a palette knife. 'If she's lonely enough, she might leave him. If you stay here, she never will.'
This novel begins with a wedding and a decidedly comic-grotesque tone. There are hideous pink bridesmaid dresses, a cat called Claude who grazes on the wedding salmon, a mean (both unkind and cheap) father of the bride, and worst of all, a deeply uneasy bride. It doesn't take a particularly perspicacious reader to pick up on the signs that this wedding is not exactly a love match - and nor is it going to lead to any version of married bliss.
Alice, inserting her arms into the tight, satin sleeves (it was rather like trying to put champagne bottles into their straw casings), mumbled something defensive about Claude and at once, without warning, her eyes filled with tears.
The themes of love and marriage feature prominently in this novel, and not just one - but three - marriages are under the author's gimlet-eyed inspection. You could hardly describe this as a romance novel, though; indeed, it's quite the opposite. If anything, it's a horror novel. Most of the men in the novel are monsters of selfishness (and even worse), and some of the secondary female characters are nearly as bad. Set in the early 1960s (and published in 1969), the entire book is incredibly uneasy about relations between the sexes. Even when it's the women who possess the money, the women are expected to cater to men - no matter how pompous, boring or completely useless those men happen to be.
The tone/atmosphere/setting - mostly middle-class London and the Home Counties - has little cosiness about it, and this is definitely not a 'cosy' read. It's the opposite: cold and chilling. Even the descriptions of food - something which EJH excels at - are mostly unappetising, artificial, frightening and even dangerous.
I could hardly put this book down, and I would definitely recommend it - but it might be a shock to readers who are only familiar with the author's Cazalet chronicles. This is definitely more in the Shirley Jackson or Daphne du Maurier territory and it's full of flesh-creeping surprises....more
It was a double row of brown-brick houses, half of them bombed and boarded up, and not a whole window in one. At the end stood these two small stou
It was a double row of brown-brick houses, half of them bombed and boarded up, and not a whole window in one. At the end stood these two small stout cottages, painted white; thick little places, solid and secretive, with a bearded, coarsely-moulded face looking mockingly down the wall exactly where the two were joined. The Barnes sisters lived in the far one of the two. Surprisingly, it had a name; it was called Rose Cottage. The other, equally surprisingly, was Lily Cottage, and had been unoccupied for years; even in these times, it was in such bad repair as to be uninhabitable, and this street was not on the Camden Council's priority list for demolition.
Starlight was the third Gibbons book in a row I've read in as many weeks, and it's not entirely successful as a story - although it has some interesting elements to it. It takes place in an unspecified time after World War II - when London is shrouded in poisonous fog, and refugee German girls are household help. It's a ghost story, of sorts - but I don't know if the 'ghosts' are some of the elderly characters (who seem to belong to another time), or what is presented as a spectral possession. (A few of the characters seem to belong in another novel entirely.)
Gibbons is strong on characterisation but this book suffers from not having much of a central focus. The main character (it could be argued) is a garrulous cleaning lady by the name of Gladys Barnes, but she acts more as a witness to the story's events than anything else. Somehow it doesn't all hang together, although it's full of atmosphere and sense of place. Like the other two Gibbons books I've recently read - Enbury Heath and Westwood - it's set in the north London villages of Highgate and Hampstead. Stella Gibbons lived in this area nearly all of her life, and that aspect of the novel rings with authenticity. I'm just not sure what story she was trying to tell.
I would only recommend this one to the Gibbons enthusiast. ...more
The Slightly Foxed publishers specialise in memoirs from distinguished writers, mostly British and mostly 20th century, although there are some exceptThe Slightly Foxed publishers specialise in memoirs from distinguished writers, mostly British and mostly 20th century, although there are some exceptions. Some of their books have also featured pen and ink illustrations, but this charming new offering for November 2021 is an entirely new format for them. The ‘Letters to Michael’ could certainly be described as memoir-ish, as it reveals much about a family’s life in the suburbs of Manchester in the years 1945-47. It’s also a fascinating historical document, a reading, writing and drawing primer, and most of all, a series of playful and informative love letters from a father to his young son. You could read it like a picture book to your children or grandchildren. You could read it in the spirit of nostalgia. You could read it just for the pure pleasure of admiring pictures which have personality in the same way that good writing has ‘voice’.
Each letter is neatly divided between text and illustration and the early letters also feature a ‘stamp’ - a bonus illustration usually related to the bigger picture. They start off in a prose style suited to a beginning reader, and then the subject matter and illustrations gradually become more sophisticated and detailed. Although there is a great deal of variety in the illustrations, together they form a fairly comprehensive picture of life in England during those years. There are historical events - like the VJ celebrations and the harsh winter of 1947 - but there are also all of the prosaic events which make up the world of work, family and leisure. Phillipson shares a lot of his own work routine with his son, and there are letters which feature his daily commute, the people he meets in his office, and really specific details of office life during these years. The range of subject matter also touches on sports and hobbies, musical concerts and childhood games, fantasy, whimsy and self-portraits. And of course, because this is England: plenty of weather and many cups of tea!
It’s a darling book - such a treat, both to look at and to read. ...more
While the summer lasted, the beauty was stronger than the sadness, because the sun blessed everything - the ruins, the tired faces of the people, t
While the summer lasted, the beauty was stronger than the sadness, because the sun blessed everything - the ruins, the tired faces of the people, the tall wild flowers and the dark stagnant water - and, during those months of calm, London in ruin was beautiful as a city in a dream.
"I've just an unhappy nature, I think. I take everything so seriously, and I mind it so much when things are ugly, and I worry about the mess the world's in, and the war."
Westwood is the coming-of-age story of 23 year old Margaret Steggles - rather too appropriately called 'Struggles' by one of the other characters - during the last year of World War II. When the story begins, Margaret is exploring Hampstead Heath and the village of Highgate on a romantically atmospheric summer evening before segueing to her torch-lit inspection of a small house with falling-down bits of plaster. Margaret's family is preparing to move to London after some years in a dull and provincial Bedfordshire town, and Margaret is beginning her first job as a teacher at the Anna Bonner School for Girls.
Margaret's sensitivity to natural beauty immediately impresses itself on the reader; and in a conversation with Hilda, an old school friend, we learn that Margaret is also passionately fond of poetry and music. Despite being plain, and having a rather stolid, serious nature, Margaret is seriously susceptible to beauty and this tendency towards romanticism will clash with the more sensible and pragmatic side of her nature throughout this book. Hilda proves to be an excellent foil for Margaret, both in looks and temperament. Although Hilda has the delicate and pretty blondness that makes her a favourite with men, she is remarkably down-to-earth and completely dismissive of any excess of emotion or poetic sensibility. Hilda gets nearly all of the comic lines in the book, and although I suspect that Stella Gibbons may have slightly more of the 'Margaret' in her, she is well aware that there is a fine line between being alive to the beauties of the world and a necessary pragmatism and stringent honesty about the true nature of things. The entirely unsentimental accuracy of Gibbon's characterisations makes it clear that she reserves her romanticism for the landscape.
Early in the story, through the device of a lost ration card, Margaret is drawn into the lives of an alluring and artistic family. The elder branch of the family - Gerald Challis, a distinguished playwright, and his wife Seraphina - live in a rather grand house called Westwood in the village of Highgate, very near to Margaret's new home. The younger branch - artist Alex Niland, his wife Hebe (daughter to the Challises) and their three children - are the means through which Margaret becomes attached to her fantasy crush on Gerald Challis. Margaret's own home life is unhappy, and when she falls in love with Mr. Challis she has really fallen for the whole set-up: not least, the gracious house itself.
It was interesting to read a book in which World War II is the backdrop but not really the 'story' itself. Although many aspects of the war colour the plot, and nearly all of the male characters are involved in the war in some way - whether by working in the Ministry, or being engaged in active duty, or having been invalided out - the story is really about how ordinary people are living their lives despite the war. There are many references to blackout curtains, sweet rations, and even the occasional bomb, and yet the war - after more than 5 years - has become a commonplace to the characters. Even the character of Zita - a German Jewish refugee who works in the Challis home and becomes friends with Margaret - has a life made up of concert going and boyfriends, not to mention domestic work, despite occasional hints of the tragedy she has left behind in Germany.
In many ways, this is a story of innocence and experience - a theme which always resonates with me. One of my favourite scenes in the novel takes place when Margaret and Mr. Challis are thrown together in a journey through the countryside. She admires the simple beauty of the meadows, awash in buttercups, while he has nothing but a dismissive contempt for the view. Finally, she is bold enough to challenge his beliefs and values:
'No one should accept a second-best in beauty.' "But some people have to, Mr Challis!' He only shook his head, studying her flushed cheeks and over-bright eyes. 'Never, my child.' 'Then if one cannot have the very best, shouldn't one have anything at all? she asked, in a tone so despairing that it amused him and he gave a quite good-natured laugh, but all the same he answered firmly: 'No - nothing. In beauty, in art, in love, in spiritual integrity - the highest and best - or nothing!' 'That makes it very hard for some people,' she said at last in a low tone.'
Love and romance are leitmotifs throughout the book, but if anything this story has a highly unromantic view of love - and particularly of marriage. One of my favourite descriptions of the disappointment of marriage is this sketch of the Challis union:
Mr Challis, who had been married for twenty-five years, was again silent. He was fond of his wife, though he had long ago decided that her nymph's face had led him up a garden path where the flowers were not spiritual enough for his taste, and he deplored her frivolity.
Being the 'high-minded' sort, Mr Challis creates the perfect tragic heroines for his plays and has a series of affairs with much younger women. Happily for them, the women in his life are under no illusion about the defects in his nature and only the innocent Margaret really idolises him in any way.
In a sense, there is some pressure on Margaret to think about marriage; women like Margaret's mother can see no alternative for women, even though her own marriage is lonely and disappointing. At several points in the book, Margaret thinks a man might be interested in her but it all comes to nothing. Yet even in her keenest disappointments, Margaret is self-aware enough to realise that her heart has not been truly touched.
It was only when I finished the book that I noticed it had a subtitle: The Gentle Powers. At the very end of the book, a wise older woman advises Margaret that she has a character which will always crave "the gentle powers" (defined as Beauty, and Time, and the Past and Pity. Laughter, too). So many of the incidents in the book, taken from a year in Margaret's life, emphasise one of those powers. It's a wonderful summing-up, and it also explains why I felt a particular kinship with this book. Like Margaret, and author Stella Gibbons, I am also extremely susceptible to the beauties of Hampstead and Highgate.
Each village upon its hill is marked by a church spire, and both are landmarks for miles. Both villages are romantic and charming, with narrow hilly streets and little two-hundred-year-old houses, and here and there a great mansion of William and Mary's or James the First's reign, such as Fenton House in Hampstead and Cromwell House in Highgate; but their chief charm dwells in their cold air, which seems perpetually scented with April, and in the glimpses at the end of their steep alleys of some massive elm or oak, with beyond its branches that abrupt drop into the complex smoky pattern (formed by a thousand shades of grey in winter and of delicate cream and smoke-blue in summer) of London.
It was at times like this, when they were all together and relatively peaceful, that she almost felt that they might make a success of i
3.75 stars
It was at times like this, when they were all together and relatively peaceful, that she almost felt that they might make a success of it.
There is a dark seam, a crack, running through all of the stories. The author describes conventional mid-century British people in conventional settings (mostly home), but there is always a lurking instability, a rising hysteria, the threat of total breakdown. She hedges her bets when it comes to belief in the enduring structure of the 'happy family'; it is the centre that cannot hold, it is the 'almost' and the 'might' in the sentence. These are stories about unhappy families.
Although I would never suggest that fiction is anything but, anyone who knows a bit about Mortimer's personal/domestic life will see shades of her own experience in these stories. Several of them - particularly 'The Skylight', the titular story and 'Such a Super Evening' - have a hell of an impact.
Mortimer's prose is very much to my taste, but her stories are full of melancholy, betrayal, nervous dissatisfaction and flashes of violence. I admire her work, but it does leave a sour and lingering aftertaste. ...more
This is a rather informal sort of biography - written by a knowledgable enthusiast primarily for other enthusiasts of Elizabeth Goudge’s work. The tonThis is a rather informal sort of biography - written by a knowledgable enthusiast primarily for other enthusiasts of Elizabeth Goudge’s work. The tone is warm, curious and respectful rather than academic. The author Sylvia Gower does not attempt to psychoanalyse Goudge nor to offer literary criticism of her writings. What she does, instead, is attempt to retrace Elizabeth Goudge’s life by visiting the houses/places which left a deep impression on her and became the inspiration for her writing. Gower includes biographical details as well, although those are somewhat sketchy as she has not been given access to diaries or letters or the first-hand sources of the biographer’s art. She does glean some first-hand information from some of the people who knew Goudge but they mostly consist of neighbours or locals - not close family members. Rather poor quality black and white photos of book covers and the featured locations round out the offering, but they will undoubtedly be of interest to the intended audience.
Gower takes a chronological approach to both the houses and the work and that suits her purpose well. For instance, Goudge’s first published book was titled ‘Island Magic’ and it was set on Guernsey- the ancestral home of the maternal side of Goudge’s family. As a child, Goudge was a frequent visitor there and absorbed both the landscape and the stories of its inhabitants. Other key places in Goudge’s life were the cathedral cities of Wells and Ely, Oxford, Hampshire, Devon and her last home in Peppard Common, Oxfordshire. Gower gives a good sense of how these different places inspired Goudge’s writing and as far as possible she separates out what (or who) was real (to Goudge), what was based on historical research, and what aspects of the novels were the product of the author’s imagination. Goudge’s work was far more rooted in experience than I would have guessed.
Indeed, I suspect that many contemporary readers may be surprised by just how much of Goudge’s fictional output was so directly inspired by the people and places of her life. Reading this book is rather like taking a tour of an author’s house: it provides atmosphere and context, but not a complex analysis. It helps the reader connect the dots. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone not well-acquainted with Goudge’s work - but it’s definitely a satisfying and enjoyable read for anyone who is already a committed fan.
*My edition is a reprint from the ‘Girls Gone By’ publishers and was given to me by Gina House....more
Papa is wed, and I am free, O blessed state of liberty!
And now here was Jen singing, and audaciously singing, like some exultant thrush on a fine sp
Papa is wed, and I am free, O blessed state of liberty!
And now here was Jen singing, and audaciously singing, like some exultant thrush on a fine spring morning, as she hurried into the back dining room to tidy up her day's work, and for the first time saw that dull spot not as a prison, not as a gloomy frame within which sat an ageing girl doggedly performing duties that would never end, but as a jumping-off place from which one flung oneself into glory.
This is my fourth Elizabeth von Arnim novel, and in many ways it is characteristic of the others. The narrative style has a lightness of tone - the word 'breathiness' comes to mind - even when the subject matter has a dark edge. All of the characters are gently mocked and it's essentially a comic novel about a serious subject: the subjugation and dependence of women.
In the Afterword to the novel, Simon Thomas refers to the problem of the 'surplus women' - both a real and a perceptual problem caused by the deaths of too many men in World War I. The heroine of this story, Jennifer Dodge, is a 33rd year old spinster who is still living with her father at the beginning of the novel. She serves as his secretary, his housekeeper and a sort of whetstone for him to sharpen his temper on. When Jennifer's father suddenly decides to marry - to a young woman, Netta, much younger than his own daughter - Jennifer realises that this is her opportunity to clear out of the Gower Street home which has imprisoned her for so many years. She takes the opportunity to flee to the countryside, where she has hatched a plan to rent a tiny cottage for herself. Her plan is to take up gardening and freedom.
With father, she had never once, in her whole life, been natural. Probably no obedient creature, she thought, could be so, no creature whose time was spent carrying out orders, and dodging round as the shadow and echo of another human being; no person, that is, who was in any way a slave.
In the tiny village of Cherry Lidgate, Jennifer finds that the cottage advertised in the Churchgoer is ostensibly managed by a young vicar named James Ollier. In reality, its management belongs to the estate of his bossy older sister Alice. A quarrel between the two siblings provides a sort of loophole through which Jennifer slides and finds herself - for the first time - in command of her own home.
One of the clever dichotomies of the novel is the way that von Arnim contrasts the plight of two women - Jennifer (a daughter) and Alice (a sister) - who are wholly unlike in nature, and yet both dependents of men. Although they each have techniques for asserting themselves, and even getting their own way, one of the dark edges of the novel is the knowledge that neither woman really has the sufficient funds to go it alone.
Another theme of the novel is emotional subjugation, and in this particular circumstance, Jennifer finds her familiar not with Alice - but with James. On a dark summer's night, they discover that they are kindred spirits in many ways, but they will not be able to form a proper attachment to each other until they can separate themselves from the emotional tyranny of father (for Jennifer) and sister (for James).
You can't really describe this book as a romantic love story, although it does provide the traditional romantic closure, albeit in a darkly absurd form. The truer romance in the book is for the beauty of countryside, and in this case James and Jennifer discover that they are both lovers, appreciators and 'fellow gloaters'. But the author spares a kind thought for the spinster sister Alice, too, and she has her own - if not happy - then at least fitting ending.
As far as Alice was concerned, and she was the person he saw most closely, God needn't have bothered to fill the year with magnificence, or invent a single sunset. For her the hedges in May foamed with white sweetness, and the buttercups turned the fields to glory, in vain. On her the wonder of the first real spring morning was lost. While as for when the daffodils dropped out in March and took possession of the world, she saw in this recurring miracle merely a sign that lamb would not be in season, and hastened to order it, roast, for their Sunday dinner.
'Mopu had run away with me, I was obsessed with it and the mountain and my work in the garden. Yes, I think I was really obsessed. There'
3.75 stars
'Mopu had run away with me, I was obsessed with it and the mountain and my work in the garden. Yes, I think I was really obsessed. There's something in this place, I don't trust myself here. I mean it when I say I daren't stay.'
'I think there are only two ways to live in this place,' said Sister Philippa, 'you must either live like Mr Dean or like the Sunnyasi; either ignore it completely or give yourself up to it.'
This is a story of outsiders who try to conquer - or at the very least, coexist - in a wilderness, in a vastness foreign to them. Instead, the wild place overwhelms them; it makes them forget themselves, or at least forget their mission.
The book begins with a splinter-group of Catholic nuns travelling from their Order in Darjeeling to the General's Palace at Mopu - high up in the Himalaya mountains, on the border of Nepal. On the first page it is mentioned that in the previous year a Brotherhood had attempted to establish St Saviour's School for the local 'native' children, but had withdrawn from their mission after only 5 months. Thus, from the very beginning, there is a sense of mystery and challenge about this Mopu. The landscape is magnificent and daunting. The local people, the Nepalese, are poor but they are not officially citizens of the British Raj. They have a marginal but independent status.
We learn, early on, that the Palace of Mopu has a tragic history, and has always been quite separate from its remote surroundings. It has formerly been a house of women - all of them belonging, in a sense, to the General who was the father of the current General Toda. General Toda - an honorific title - thinks of the Palace at Mopu as a 'bad house' and he hopes that the nuns might improve and purify it.
The presiding nun is Sister Clodagh - the youngest Sister Superior in the order. She is intelligent and competent, but accused of having too much pride. The other nuns with her are Sister Briony (in charge of housekeeping and health), Sister Philippa (in charge of the garden), Sister Honey and Sister Ruth. Sister Honey has a sweet and smiling disposition and quickly becomes enamoured with the young children under her care. Sister Ruth, though, has a prickly and difficult disposition. The local people refer to her as the 'Snake-Faced Lemini'.
The rest of the community includes Ayah, the local overseer/housekeeper of the Palace, and Mr Dean, an Englishman who is in charge of running the General's business and estates. He performs a role similar to a factor or property manager, and his practical and linguistic skills are necessary to the nuns. They are unsettled by Mr Dean in various ways, but they soon realise that his help is indispensable. Allowing his presence in their 'nunnery' is just the first of many compromises they have to make at Mopu. When they are pressured into teaching the General's heir, the young General Dilip Rai, it is another unavoidable step on their inexorable slippery slope.
I read this book after seeing the recent BBC adaptation, written and produced by Amanda Coe. (She also wrote the Introduction to my Virago Modern Classics clothbound edition.) Coe compares this book to Rebecca, as a "gothic sister text", but in her adaptation she strengthens and exaggerates many of the elements of Godden's plot - including the sexual undertow. There are a few melodramatic moments - one in particular - but for the most part, Godden's book is far more subtle than du Maurier's famous novel.
It's strong on atmosphere, but I didn't feel as attached to the characters or as 'moved' by the events of the book as I have done in other Godden novels. I know that many readers consider it one of Godden's best books, but I will not remember it as special favourite. ...more
She would learn that out in the world justice and mercy and pity are not easy, natural things. They must be found - fought for, insisted on. 'Mothe
She would learn that out in the world justice and mercy and pity are not easy, natural things. They must be found - fought for, insisted on. 'Mother,' she finished, 'has never fought for anything in her life.'
In an important sense, this book is about an emotional and intellectual awakening in the life of Mary Heyham: a middle-aged Edwardian woman, the mother of three grown children, and the wife of a successful business man. Published in 1914 - the very height of the Women's Suffrage movement, which was both put on hold and also advanced by World War I - the novel is also very much a 'state of play' about the changing relations between women and men. Although the storyline does focus chiefly on Mary and her marriage to her husband James, it does also address structural class differences and how they impact on women's choices and opportunities.
When the book begins, Mary's youngest daughter Rosemary is informing her mother that she has fallen in love with a suitable young man named Anthony. Mary's ambivalent reaction to this news is mostly one of dismay - both because of her daughter's young age (18), and also because of her own change of status. "What do other women do when the children go? How do they fill their days?" Her daughters, Rosemary and Laura (already married) and her husband James become aware of Mary's lassitude and low spirits, and Rosemary - who thinks of herself as a 'socialist' - comes up with a plan to address her mother's lack of purpose. Rosemary, in her youthful arrogance, decides that her mother's problem is that she has been too sheltered. Money, and her husband's protection, has insulated her too much from the hard realities and bracing challenges of life. Rosemary decides that her mother should "take up some sort of work among her father's employers" and commit herself to a new path, one that will be "revolutionary and high-minded". James, who owns a group of Imperial tea shops, takes up the idea as well. He is complacently proud of his role as an enlightened business owner, but he is willing that his wife should take notice of his waitresses and see if she can find some small means of improving their working conditions. To this end, a secretary named Miss Percival is hired and Mary makes her first tentative steps into the world of business.
Men, for her, had been creatures to be pleased and to be cared for, and men had loved her and been good to her precisely because of this attitude of hers.
When the novel begins, Mary and James are a harmonious, loving couple, but it doesn't take long for the reader to discern that this is partly because they have not previously had any grounds for disagreement or contentiousness. Mary has been the sort of soft, dutiful and compliant woman that James has found it easy to admire and feel protective of. For a modern reader, his attitude towards his wife is terribly grating. She speaks to her with jocular condescension, although he means to be affectionate:
'Tyrannous young bluestocking!' he said. "I don't think we need bother our old lady with books. It's just where books fail that we want her to come in. (. . .) I don't she's as happy as she ought to be. She's an active old thing, and it's no use her pretending that she can settle down to knitting. (...) So we thought that if she were to give some of her time to combating the firm's ruthless oppression it would be a new interest for her, besides putting an end to one of the worst excess of of the capitalistic regime!'
When Mary discovers that James's employees - the young waitresses that make up a large portion of his workforce - are not so happy and comfortably situated as he believes them to be, she suggests certain reforms. These reforms will cost money and affect the profits of the business. At this point, the trouble begins.
Miss Percival, at first a quiet, shadowy figure, is instrumental in opening Mary's eyes to the harsh reality of women's lives when they are unprotected, and distinctly not cosseted, by men. Although Miss Percival is a minor character in the story, she serves an important role. As the novel reaches its climax, Miss Percival gives an impassioned diatribe against men and their dominance over women.
I meant to open your eyes, to make you understand the connection between your luxury and the sweating of those underpaid, exhausted girls.
I hate all men when they're powerful and using their power to be cruel to women. And that's most of them - nearly always, whether they mean to or not.
I hate them most for what they've made of us. We love them and their children, so we are at their mercy.
At first, Mary seems like a frail and rather spineless woman, but she has a strong moral compass that guides her in both her reforming work and her relationship with her husband. The novel touches on all sorts of feminist and socialist issues - including the conflict between management and labour, profits and people - but it never strays too far from its central project: the enlightenment of a middle-class wife.
Although the book is more than 100 years old now, I wouldn't describe it entirely as a 'period piece'. It's actually a decent yardstick of what women have achieved in 100 years since first being granted a limited right to vote (1918), and what work still needs to be done. I read this novel as women gathered to protest Sarah Everard's murder by a policeman, a rather brutal reminder that there are still important inequalities between men and women. As a final note, current outrage at the way the Sarah Everard vigil was 'policed' has some striking parallels with the women's protests of 1910-14....more
Silence, almost, in the dining-room. They lowered themselves into their chairs. As they aged, the women seemed to become more like old men, and Mr
Silence, almost, in the dining-room. They lowered themselves into their chairs. As they aged, the women seemed to become more like old men, and Mr Osmond became more like an old woman.
In Hereford square, some of the trees bore tiny buds. She realised that she had never desired the spring as she desired the one ahead. It would bring, she believed the end of her aches and pains, renew her freedom, lift her spirits. She was talking to herself again. She kept these thoughts going, and her feet moving, and the young hastened past her with Saturday night ahead of them, and all that that entailed. It was in their eyes, their walk, the swing of their hair.
The subject of this novel is pretty dreary, and yet it's (weirdly) a joy to read because it's just so beautifully written. It's definitely a small masterpiece of its kind, and it may even be the best of Taylor's novels. Taylor writes so precisely about her subject matter that it makes me think of Jane Austen's description of her own writing: "the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush." Taylor writes about a very specific British class and culture, but with such sharp darts of accuracy that the reader doesn't think in terms of smallness as much as completeness. Profoundness, even. The reader doesn't have to 'know' these people or this world to enter into they story because it's all described so perfectly by the author.
The protagonist of the novel is Laura Palfrey: "a tall woman with big bones and a noble face, dark eyebrows and a neatly folded jowl." Mrs Palfrey - widowed, and past the rigours of house-keeping - has come to the Claremont Hotel in the Cromwell Rd for the next posting stage in her old age. It's not the last stage, mind you - that would be the nursing home, the hospital or death. The Claremont is a stage for a small group of old people who have just enough means to live in adequate comfort and dignity. All of these regular residents are short on friends and family. They have come to London because it seems like it has something to offer them, but the truth is that none of them really have the energy to take advantage of the city's cultural delights. In fact, their days are pretty lonely and dreary, so that even the terribly mediocre food at the Claremont is something of a highlight. At any rate, it helps make up the day.
'I should have thought there was always something going on in London,' Mrs Palfrey said. 'It's true there is, but one just doesn't seem to go to it.'
None wished to appear greedy, or obsessed by food: but food made the breaks in the day, and menus offered a little choosing, and satisfactions and disappointments, as once life had.
Mrs Palrey has a daughter, who lives in Scotland, and a grandson who works at the British Museum and lives in Hampstead. Neither has much interest in her. Her daughter is the sort of person who, when her mother breaks her hip and lands in the hospital, puts off coming down to London because she has a weekend shooting party. The grandson Desmond also lacks, shall we say keenness to have his life disrupted by a grandmother's needs or loneliness. Although all of the Claremont's elderly residents seem to be in similar straits - not particularly wanted anywhere - none of them will allow themselves even the comfort of commiseration.
The novel is set at some point during the 1960s, when London is still a bit post-war dreary and littered with shabby bedsits. There is the beginning of younger energy in the city, but it doesn't really touch these old stalwarts of the British Empire. The need for 'stiff upper-lips' and keeping up appearances means that everyone is putting on a front, and yet they can all read each other perfectly. Thus, when there have been a few too many questions about why her grandson has not come to visit her, Mrs Palfrey gets tempted into a seemingly harmless ruse. She passes off a charming young man named Ludo - a struggling writer who has helped her when she fell in the street - as her grandson Desmond. It's meant to be only for one dinner, but their unexpected rapport affects her powerfully. Ludo is lonely, too, and his life is nearly as arid as Mrs Palfrey's. Although he is never more than kind, that kindness is enough to set off a little flutter in her life.
Loneliness, old age, the disappointment of expectations: it sounds like a tragedy, and I guess that it is. And yet, this book is absolutely a pleasure to read. Although this book is unutterably sad, it's not without dignity and an enduring kind of bravery.
'I shan't live here very long.' Belle stretched her arms and yawned. "And get this in your head, Rosa; it doesn't matter what we do because we have
'I shan't live here very long.' Belle stretched her arms and yawned. "And get this in your head, Rosa; it doesn't matter what we do because we have nothing to lose. If you are wise you'll do anything to get you on, anything for money, anything to get you away from here. If you don't help yourself no one will help you. I tell you this, and you know it's true. We come from nowhere . . . 'Father says that we are an old family.' 'And auntie says we have bad blood. Perhaps they're both right. We shall never know, and still we are nothing and nobodies.' 'You say that because we're Anglo-Indians," said Rosa bitterly.
Belle and Rosa are twins, the oldest daughters of the Lemarchant family. Belle, the elder by 20 minutes, is beautiful and bold. She has 'honey-coloured lashes', skin like 'rich cream' and and hair like 'flame silk' or the 'colour of sacred marigolds'. Rosa is attractive, too, but dark-haired, quieter, slimmer and less self-assured. The head of the Lemarchant family is their father, who was once handsome and proud, but has now gone to seed. He tinkers ineffectually with mending projects and rarely has the money to pay the rent. The girls have been raised by their Auntie after their mother's early death. Auntie was married at 16 to a European man called Kempf and abandoned by the age of 20. There is a younger sister, too; Blanche, who is the 'family shame' because her skin is so dark.
The Lemarchant family lives in an annexe of an old 18 century house that has been eroded to the very bones of its former grandeur. It is neglected and decaying, but still possesses a romantic beauty. It also houses secrets and ghosts. The DeSouza family - also Anglo-Indian - own the house, and the children of that family are friends with the Lemarchants, despite the embarrassment of their poverty. Rosa has a rather innocent 'childhood sweetheart' type romance with the oldest DeSouza son, Robert, but neither of them has the financial resources to consider marriage.
The house plays a huge role in the novel; in some senses it is more important that the actual characters, but it does also mirror both the past and the future for the Lemarchant sisters. There are hints of a French lineage: the house has been constructed in the 'Provencal style', 'yellow plastered with blue painted shutters scrolled iron balconies. The house is set in the backstreets of old Calcutta, an area associated with the poor Anglo-Indian community.
At the very beginning of the novel, Belle and Rosa are asked to leave their Catholic school. Only 17, they are not children, but not quite adults either. There is a huge question mark over their future and they have little to offer the world but their beauty - but even that is tainted in the caste system in which they live. Nevertheless, Belle is determined to leverage her own beauty even if it means she is exploited in the process. As a means to this end, she takes Rosa with her to a party hosted by an English businessman named William Harman. Harman's cousin Stephen Bright is visiting from England, and on his very first evening in Calcutta he meets Rosa. William is interested in Belle, but he makes no bones about the fact that she and her sister are 'B' girls. These beautiful Anglo-Indian girls are seen as 'alluring and dangerous', but especially in the case of Rosa - who is both innocent and honourable - the reader is not fooled about who is dangerous to whom.
I found it hard to enter the world of this novel at first, but when I reread the first 50 pages I truly appreciated how the author builds up the detailed atmosphere of her story. Godden is a wonderfully atmospheric storyteller, and just as Stephen is fascinated by the old house and all of its secrets, so does the reader get seduced and sucked in. Stephen leads an excavation of the house, and his discoveries also yield information about the Lemarchant family's past. The novel's title refers to the 'La Dame a la Licorne' medieval tapestries which also play a role in the storyline. The motifs of the unicorn (associated with virginity) and sexual desire (à mon seul désir) also come into play in the relationship between Rosa and Stephen.
It's a strange, rather sad book, but I found it really evocative. Although the culture is entirely different, it reminded me of the faded South plays of Tennessee Williams. So many of the characters are still yearning for the lost riches of the past, but only the few who can grasp the realities of the present have any real future. ...more
The three new children, who had entered so timorously on that far September morning, were now part and parcel of Fairacre School. Each had added so
The three new children, who had entered so timorously on that far September morning, were now part and parcel of Fairacre School. Each had added something to the life of our small school; that little microcosm, working busily, within the larger one of Fairacre village.
Village School, published in 1955, is a work of fiction - but could just as easily be described as social history. I have no doubt that it is highly accurate about the daily routines and concerns of a village school in that era. It can be read nostalgically, certainly, but that does not mean that the narrator glosses over the difficulties of village life. Indeed, 'Miss Read' begins by describing the school house and its various inadequacies: no running water, no drains, a leaking skylight, damp stone walls and windows set high - so that the children aren't distracted from their work by the views.
The book is divided into the three terms that make up the school calendar: Christmas Term, Spring Term and Summer Term. Like her narrator, the author of the 'Miss Read' novels was a teacher for many years. I think that all teachers invariably think of the year in terms of the fixed rituals of the school year, but this is the novel which really lays down that calendar as it was (and still is, to a large extent) in an English school. Harvest festivals, the Christmas concert, Sports Day, the exams which determine what stream of schooling is open to each pupil - these are just a few of the events which provide fixed points for a school year, and which belong to the community as much to the school.
Miss Read doesn't whitewash life in the countryside. Although she is certainly alive to its beauties, there is an awareness of its hardships, too. Many of her students are poor and few of them are bookish. Although the book doesn't overly dwell on political points, they are certainly embedded in the storyline.
However, the main thing are the personalities: the kindly Vicar, the difficult school cleaner who is Miss Read's nemesis, the children and the parents. Miss Read's fellow teachers also play an important role in the plot, particularly since in one school year she has to accommodate several changes in personnel. Of all the characters, we actually know the least about Miss Read herself. This is my first book in the Fairacre series, though, so possibly we will learn more about her as the series develops. Or perhaps we won't; perhaps she will continue to serve as the reader's perceptive and sharp eye into the small but complete world of a village school.
Life in a village demands a guard on the tongue, and none knows this better than the vicar's wife.
. . . I returned to the schoolroom reflecting that we do indeed take our pleasures variously.
. . . how seldom one can indulge in the inflation of any sort of emotion without life's little pin-pricks bursting the balloon.
What an afternoon, I mused! When these boys and girls are old and look back to their childhood, it is the brightest hours that they will remember. This is one of those golden days to lay up as treasure for the future, I told myself, excusing our general idleness.
I'm not sure when I became obsessed with houses - reading about them, fantasising about them, and making my own nest inside of them - but in my middleI'm not sure when I became obsessed with houses - reading about them, fantasising about them, and making my own nest inside of them - but in my middle-age I realise there are few things I care about more. I'm truly a homebody and really only feel happy, relaxed and safe in my own house. I found a true kindred spirit in Margaret Forster - and this memoir, with each chapter of her life corresponding to the house she was living in - was a pleasure to read on many levels.
Forster was born in 1938 in Carlisle, and like many families in post-war UK, her childhood home was a cramped council house. By middle-age, the success of her and husband Hunter Davies' writing careers meant that they could afford a substantial Victorian home in north London, a holiday home in the Algarve and another holiday home in the Lake District. Although this book is personal to Forster's life, it is also representative of the changes that took place in the 20th century property market. In 1962, she and her husband bought their first house: a Victorian semi-detached house in Dartmouth Park, the 'less desirable side of Hampstead Heath', for only £5000. At the time, it was completely unprepossessing. It need a new roof and every other kind of modernising, it was filthy, and almost worst of all, it had a sitting tenant on the top floor. In that time, most of the houses on the street (Boscastle Road) had bedsits; by the 1980s, they were all being updated, refurbished and enlarged. By the time of Forster's death in 2016, the houses on this street are considered quite posh and worth millions. I know, because, it is on a walking route I take several times every week.
Undoubtedly, one of the reasons I enjoyed this book is my sense of fondness and familiarity with the area of London in which Forster made her permanent home. When she and her husband first moved to London, after graduating from Oxford University, they had the magical experience of living in a flat at Heath Villas, in the Vale of Health. Several years ago, when I separated from my husband and left the house in the country in which we had lived for 20 years, I also moved to Hampstead. I was entranced by the area for much the same reasons as Forster:
Twentieth-century life fell away, and I always felt that any minute one of the literary luminaries who had lived in the Vale might suddenly appear to admire the view I was admiring. Entering our house, the intense silence added to this feeling that this could not be London, that I could be living so near to its centre.
Like Forster, I'm attracted to houses with history attached to them. Aesthetically, there is nothing that appeals to me more than a Georgian or Regency house. However, house ownership does have its inevitable downsides and old houses have even more need of maintenance than new ones. As much as Forster celebrates the security and comfort a house can provide, she does not neglect to point that houses are in a constant state of decay - just like bodies. When her beloved Boscastle Road house was discovered to have subsidence, and required costly foundation work, she wrote this:
It had been a reminder that bricks and mortar are not as solid as they look. Nothing about a house remains solid. We were only just beginning to learn that maintenance work never stops, something that may be obvious but it hadn't been to us. And it needs a certain attitude of mind to cope with the loads of things to do with looking after a house which need attention, the bodily equivalent of regular hair-cutting, teeth-filling and so on. We didn't have the right attitude. We moaned and groaned every time there was a leaking pipe, or a faulty electrical connection or a tile came off the roof. A house, our beloved house, was then in danger of becoming a nuisance, something we were close to resenting because it took up too much time to look after. We had to remind ourselves that we were very, very grateful to have a house at all.
The house which needs constant attention - and sometimes more drastic 'surgery' - becomes analogous to her own health struggles with cancer - first in her 30s and then again in her 60s and 70s. The way she lives in her own house inevitably changes, too.
As a biographer, most notably of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Daphne du Maurier (another one-time resident of Hampstead), Forster was keenly aware of how important these writers' houses were in the nurturing and enabling of the writing practise. She also came to believe that it was important to visit a house in order to really understand how the writer inhabited it - or was inspired by it. Many people would love to be able to visit Menabilly, du Maurier's home in Cornwall for 25 years - and the place that the writer identified as one of the primary loves of her life.
Reading in her letters about this passion she had for Menabilly it seemed so exaggerated to identify, to the extent she did, with a house. I'd studied drawings of it, and seen lots of photographs, but nevertheless nothing made sense until I saw it and wandered about inside, the bats swooping about in the kitchen. Then, the fascination the house had for her didn't seem so hard to understand.
Forster's life and homes are not nearly so dramatic as du Maurier's; indeed, one reason that I enjoyed this book is that it had an identifiable, let's say 'homely', quality about it. She is pragmatic, too, whilst still being very attuned to the way that an attachment to houses structures many a life.
And I've come full circle: as a child, I always wanted to be in other people's houses. Now, though still fascinated by those other houses, I am only really comfortable and relaxed in my own. My house is like a garment, made to my own measurements, draped around me in the way I like. I never want to change it.
In a Preface to this novel, the author gives the reader some advice:
China Court is a novel about five generations of a family, so that, as in real
In a Preface to this novel, the author gives the reader some advice:
China Court is a novel about five generations of a family, so that, as in real life, there are many names and personalities, but I believe if the reader is a little patient - and can bear not to skip - they will soon become distinct and he will have no need to look at the family tree included at the end.
Well, I did look at the family tree 'included at the end' several times in the course of reading this story, but in the main, the author is correct. Eventually, the different personalities and generations become distinct. However, a good deal of patience is required to truly enjoy this book because it doesn't unfold as a straightforward narrative.
The first lines of the book are this:
Old Mrs Quin died in her sleep in the early hours of an August morning. The sound of the bell came into the house but did not disturb it; it was quite used to death, and birth, and life.
There is a linear narrative to the book: it begins with the matriarch Mrs. Quin's death, progresses to her funeral and the will reading, briefly devolves into an unexpected mystery involving a long ago daughter of the house, and ends in marriage and new ownership of the house. However, the bulk of the story goes back and forth in time; the previous inhabitants of the house, China Court, are not so much ghosts as part of the very fabric of the house. The narrative shows how the life of the house is made of the work of many hands, and there is repetition within that constant change. The happinesses and tragedies of the Quin family are gradually pieced together, but these revelations are by no means chronological. Some dramas and personalties imprint themselves more strongly than others.
There is another structure to the story, too: the eight canonical hours of the day. A Book of Hours is a beloved possession of Mrs Quin's, found in her hand when she dies, and it is used as a plot device in more ways than one. In the most obvious sense, though, the Book of Hours becomes a way of organising the chapters: Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline and Matins. The linear structure of the storyline unfolds against the echoes of the past.
There doesn't seem much point in getting specific about any of the characters other than Mrs. Quin, whose death precipitates a changeover in ownership of the house. This really is the story of a house - not so much a 'great' house as a substantial one. At one point, the house is part of a much larger estate: quarry, china clay works and farm. As the 20th century progresses, and the local Cornish economy changes, and male heirs die in wars (Boer, World War I and II), the house undergoes changes as well. Most of Mrs Quin's heirs see the house as hopelessly old-fashioned, a 'white elephant', too big and too expensive to keep going. In many ways, the story of China Court is the story of many great and substantial houses in the UK in the 20th century. Ultimately, though, this is a story about renewal and regeneration. China Court still has its share of hours, even though the future is only hinted at.
I think the thing to do with a book like this is to read it once and then read it again. The first time, in order to make its acquaintance; the second, to settle into a deeper friendship.
Note: this book was briefly mentioned in Novel Houses, and that's when it first came to my attention. Soon after, a friend - who knows of my fondness for 'house' stories and family sagas - recommended it to me. ...more
Mollie Panter-Downes portrays a kind of heroism defined by and for upper-middle-class English women. Stoicism, kindliness, reliability, and humour
Mollie Panter-Downes portrays a kind of heroism defined by and for upper-middle-class English women. Stoicism, kindliness, reliability, and humour prove themselves on the fields of the domestic and personal. Responding to crisis, her characters make desperate, but quiet and steady, efforts to maintain equilibrium - and to be seen doing so.
~ from the Preface to this collection of Mollie Panter-Downes short stories, originally published in The New Yorker between the years of 1939-1944.
These are Homefront stories. In every single one of them, the war (World War II) looms large, and yet it is also the backdrop to women (and they are mostly women) getting on with their lives. The stories are strung together in chronological order, just as they were written. As Gregory Lestage points out in the Preface, they ring with the authenticity of a voice who was there, but that voice is unmistabkeably upper-middle-class English.
One of the big themes is how the war affected the traditional class structure of British society. In many cases, different classes are thrown together in a way that would have been impossible before the war: for instance, in the intimacy of huddling together in the Underground during the Blitz, or from being evacuated from the cities to the countryside. In the story 'It's The Reaction' - for me, one of the most poignant in the collection - a middle-aged Miss Birch finds herself missing the intimacy she had had with her neighbours when London was being bombed every night. As the residents in her building revert to their former habits of aloof privacy, she misses that brief period of camaraderie. But in the story 'The Danger', Mrs. Dudley feels nothing but relief when she is finally able to expel the London evacuees who had lived with her for four long years. A long period of intimacy had done nothing to make the city Rudds and the country Dudleys feel kindlier to one another.
Although Panter-Downes does show English women adapting bravely and stoically to the privations and difficulties of war, she doesn't gloss over the irritations, pettiness and rather 'small' human behaviour that punctuates daily life. In a way, the one really illuminates the other. One of the funniest stories about different types having to rub up together is 'Battle of the Greeks' - when a village sewing circle meets up at Mrs. Ramsay's house. Most of the group is disgruntled when they discover that they are sewing pyjamas for Greek soldiers. Their myriad (and mostly negative) feelings about Greeks are absurdly mixed in with British winceyette and a confusion about how, exactly, they are performing patriotic and dutiful acts. Dutiful, however, is exactly what they mean to be.
Mrs Twistle coughed gently again and remarked with implacable softness that the Greeks were very marvellous, no doubt, but in her opinion it was a pity that England had to have foreign allies monkeying about with her war.
It took me a few stories to get into Panter-Downes rhythm and to appreciate her more subtle points of insight and humour. She was describing the 'Homefront' as it gradually developed, and undoubtedly many of its constituents were far more likely to be fearful and selfish than brave and virtuous. She is realistic in the same way that her contemporary Elizabeth Taylor is realistic - sharp-eyed and not overly sentimental. Some of the stories seem superficial and others were even a bit dull, but each one builds up an increasingly more comprehensive portrait of how 'ordinary people' were carrying on during the war. She shapes specific experiences in her characters' lives, but you never get the sense that she mythologises them....more
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