Lots of Stella Gibbons’ novels have come back into print in recent years – from Vintage and from Dean Street Press – but Miss Linsey and Pa (1936) has been notably missing from their lists. Having read it for the 1936 Club, I can sadly see why it wouldn’t fit into 21st-century publishing. And yet it’s my favourite of her non-Cold-Comfort-Farm novels that I’ve read so far.
Miss Bertie Linsey and her Pa move to London to be near Bertie’s uncle – Mr Petley – and his son Len, realising that they need family connections now that they are falling on harder times. They leave behind an idyllic countryside home that comes with plenty of beautiful trees and green spaces, but no source of income. They are emphatically not invited to live with Mr Petley and Len above their tobacconist’s shop, but Mr Petley goes as far as to find them accommodation at the nearby home of the Fells. Mr Petley doesn’t trust any accommodation outside of Radford Street, and thinks that Miss Linsey and Pa will manage to make do with the dingy, beetle-infested home run by Mrs Fell. Mr Fell, meanwhile, keeps birds in the upper rooms and seldom communicates with anybody at all.
Gibbons has given us a wonderful cast here, even if we got no more (and we get some great other people). Miss Linsey is resilient, managing to be both enthusiastic and rather sad. Pa is happier than she to get to know the Fells, but is also drawn to know the local pub. Mr Petley is quite hardened and wants little to do with his in-laws, and is affectionately controlling of his son – whose life, and love, was left in France in the First World War two decades earlier.
There is quite an emotional core to this novel, particularly in Len’s storyline of the woman he loves in France – I found a lot of it very moving. But there are also plenty of opportunities for Gibbons’ satirical streak, that I haven’t seen have such a delightful outing in any of the other non-Cold-Comfort-Farm novels. In Miss Linsey and Pa, she has her sights on spearing Bloomsbury – because Miss Linsey finds work first as a cook-housekeeper at the home of Dorothy Hoad and E.V. Lassiter, and later as a sort of governess for a household with very strict rules on not telling the child stories and always calling everything by its proper name. These were my favourite sections – here’s how we first meet Miss Hoad, coming into the tobacconist and meeting Miss Linsey:
She nodded and, turning her back, stared out into the street with her dark unhappy eyes. What would E.V. be doing? She looked down at her platinum watch, of so fiercely modernist a design that it suggested a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Half-past three. E.V. might be trying to write, with the wave of hair falling into her eyes.
She turned round again as the drab man came back into the shop with a smaller and even drabber woman. G*d, how awful it must be to be that kind of person and live that kind of life!
And here is one of the many very funny snapshots of Bloomsbury life:
The women friends of Dorothy and herself used frequently to announce that they must have a child.
They would plomp themselves on the sofa, fling up their feet and put their elbows behind their heads and stare at the ceiling. Then they would say abruptly ‘I must have a child.’
‘You ought to have a child,’ they would say bluntly, when one of their number complained of a headache or an inability to finish writing a novel. Sometimes they had the child (they never called it a baby), sometimes they got no further than plomping on the sofa and announcing that they ought to have one.
For quite a short novel, an awful lot goes on – perhaps because there are four central characters who get our attention and sympathy, and plenty of secondary ones who are equally interesting. The combination of satire and pathos works because we aren’t asked to combine those feelings for any particular individual – rather our laughter at Bloomsbury, say, is part of what makes Miss Linsey’s difficult life so moving. And the climactic moment of the novel succeeds in being dramatic and poignant in a way that feels honest to everything that has preceded – including layers to Mr Fell, who could easily have been a one-note character experiencing unspecified mental illness.
And why wouldn’t it be published now? Well, sadly Gibbons includes portraits of a Black character, a Jewish character, and a lesbian that are all inappropriate to differing degrees. Some in that well-intentioned ‘You won’t believe this character is from X minority and yet isn’t Y’ way that is hardly any more palatable than out and out racism. These elements are very much not the main thrust of the novel, though it would also be hard to neatly excise them.
There’s a conversation to be had about the moral responsibility of reprint publishing, and perhaps that’s a topic for another day – but no author is ‘owed’ reprinting, and any publisher is likely to decide this isn’t worth the fight. And it’s a shame that these parts pull Miss Linsey and Pa back, because it is otherwise a wonderful triumph of a novel – and, with those caveats, perhaps my favourite read of the year so far.
I’m always surprised when I read an interwar novel and there *isn’t* a racist/stereotyped portrayal of
a Jewish character…as Tablet Magazine journalist Yair Rosenberg pointed out recently, “Jews got a long head start on separating the art from the artist, because if we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have had much to read.”
Thanks for the review and the #1936club. I’m hoping to reread Ballet Shoes!
That is a very good quote!
It sounds like a novel I won’t be getting around to reading, but I was very interested to read all you wrote about it and to see the excerpts. I have only read CCF (loved) and half of Westwood, that I couldn’t get any further with. Is there anything else of hers you would recommend?
Westwood is my other favourite of the ones I’ve read, so it might just be that CCF is a class apart for you!
Very nice review–I love the quote with Hemingway! I loved Cold Comfort Farm and this sounds good in spite of the things you’ve pointed out.
I do not understand why we must agonize over the way people once were. Of course, I do not want people portrayed this way now, but times do change. We’d not have so many great books if today’s political correctness ruled the waves on what could be reprinted. I am very liberal yet I do think its ok to just reprint what they wrote and have a preface that says “This is unfortunate today, but….” and get on with it.
Thanks Lisa! If you can ever track this down, I think it would be a great follow on from CCF.
Such a shame this hasn’t been reissued, because I absolutely love the sound of it. What a brilliant start to the 1936 club.
Yes, you never know, Dean St Press might be braver than I!
So frustrating when an otherwise good book has bigotry included, it really does take away from my enjoyment of the book. The last Angela Thirkell I read had some racism in the last chapter that was just cringey. I suppose it was meant to be funny but yikes, it was not.
Nevertheless, I’m really looking forward to a whole week of books from 1936!
Ah yes, I’ve heard Thirkell can be particularly bad at that… Such a shame with books this like, cos I’d recommend it to British Library in a heartbeat of those elements weren’t there.
I read Miss Linsey and Pa after reading a comment by you about it on Twitter. I really enjoyed it, especially the range of tones — the satire of Miss Linsey’s Bloomsbury employers, the pathos of Pa’s experiences with the birds, and the sentimentality of Len’s renewed romance. (Sidenote: Is it really possible to take such an efficient day-trip to France from England?) Gibbons does squalor as well as Barbara Comyns, whose novels this one reminded me of. I agree with you that presenting a stereotypical yet sympathetic portrait of a black character doesn’t make it appropriate for re-publication, but I am so pleased that I was able to get a copy of this little-known novel from the Rhode Island interlibrary loan system!
Oo well done for finding it Susan, and well done Rhode Island ILL! So glad you enjoyed it, with our caveats.
And depending where you start from in England, and where you want to go to, yes! The boat crossing is only a couple hours or so, I believe, and people notoriously go for the day to stock up on cheap wine. Even quicker on the Channel Tunnel, of course.
I’ve been enjoying the Stella Gibbons reprints from Furrowed Middlebrow and would love to read more. It’s too bad the good and the ugly were so mixed in this one.
Yes, I think there must be a reason that FM haven’t picked this one.
I’ve just had a shock while visiting Abe Books to see if there were any copies for sale. Stella Gibbons and Bloomsbury certainly tick a couple of boxes and the quotes you shared made me laugh…but it comes with a steep price tag! Adding this title to a list of books I’m unlikely to find but will enjoy looking out for.
Yes, I was incredibly lucky to find it for £1 at a jumble sale 15 years ago. I didn’t realise how lucky at the time!
Second favorite after Cold Comfort Farm is a pretty strong recommendation! Too bad it’s marred in that way (not uncommon for 1936, alas) and will remain difficult to come by.
Yes, sadly an occupational hazard of recovering books from this period.
Such an interesting post, Simon. I’ve never found a Gibbons that measured up to Cold Comfort Farm, and so your recommendation interests me. It’s so difficult with these offensive dated elements – if only we could deal with them by discussion and teaching, so that we could acknowledge that these attitudes were wrong and have no place in modern life, but existed then. Such a complex topic…
Yes, I’ve really enjoyed others but never quite in the same league as CCF – and this one is so wonderful, but.. but….
I for one would be very interested in your thoughts on the moral responsibility of reprint publishing, should that day ever come. I can see why publishers wouldn’t leap for this today but it sounds a shame given how highly you rate it compared to her other works. Having been disappointed by everything other than Cold Comfort Farm, I’m certainly intrigued.
Thanks Claire – I think I will try to put those thoughts together, at some point.
Can I just second Claire’s comment above. I would love to hear more from you on the moral considerations of reissuing backlist books, especially from the early-mid 20th-century when societal attitudes to race, gender and sexual orientation were radically different to those we encounter today.
As for Gibbons, she feels like I writer that I ought to enjoy, but my only experience of her — albeit more than 30 years ago — was somewhat mixed, Maybe I was just to young and foolish back then to appreciate her tone of voice. It’s hard to tell!
Thanks Jacqui! Yes, it is obviously something I’ve thought about more as I’ve started suggesting books to the British Library – and how a commercial element also enters in.
Ah… I see… okay, well… I’ll just have to take your word for it, because I doubt I’ll find a way to read it myself if this type of stuff is preventing it from being re-released. Sounds good, though, despite that niggle.
Yes, a shame!
Thanks so much for presenting this book.
I’m so tired of this narrow presentism, that judges everything according to today’s social criteria, as if our current values were the total truth for everyone, everywhere, at all times.
I’m glad you featured a book that you thought extremely well written. For me, that’s ultimately what counts, not the nationality, race, color, sexual orientation of the author or of his/her characters.
Yes, it is definitely a complex issue which I hope to explore more – but this is certainly very well written.