1922

Mystery at Geneva by Rose Macaulay #ABookADayInMay No.5

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Today’s book is a curio by a relatively well-known writer. Lots of us love Rose Macaulay’s novels, whether that be her famous Towers of Trebizond or the delightfully funny, wry books she wrote in the 1920s – Crewe Train, Dangerous Ages, Keeping Up Appearances, Potterism and so forth. Not so much talked about is Mystery at Geneva (1922)

It starts with an author note that we certainly shouldn’t take at all seriously:

Note: As I have observed among readers and critics, a tendency to discern satire when none is intended, I should like to say that this book is simply a straightforward mystery story, devoid of irony, moral or meaning. It has for its setting an imaginary session of the League of Nations’ Assembly, but it is in no sense a study of, still less a skit on actual conditions at Geneva of which indeed I know little. The only connection I have ever had with the League being membership of its Union.

Let’s be clear – this is not at all true. Macaulay is at her most satirical in this novel – a satire of detective novels, to an extent, but particularly a satire of the League of Nations. The hero is Henry Beechtree, a journalist for The British Bolshevist – and he has been sent to Geneva to cover a meeting of the League (which, at the time Macaulay’s novel was published, was still very much in its infancy.)

Along the way, Macaulay has a great time poking fun at newspaper men and the rivalries between them, as well as the mutual hysteria of journalists who cling to the far-left or far-right of the political spectrum. Macaulay is always wonderful when she is at her driest, and if the characters are very exaggerated then that doesn’t stop the prose being very funny.

Similarly broadly drawn are the delegates from different nations. Macaulay mostly manages to avoid anything that would feel uncomfortably racist today – the divisions are drawn chiefly along political lines (Irish Republicans vs Loyalists, for instance) and the good-humoured rivalry of adjoining European countries.

All is going more or less dully, and Henry is sending back sarcastic reports to the Bolshevist, when the mystery kicks in. The President of the assembly goes missing.

And then, over the next few days, more and more of the delegates disappear. We often see their final moments before disappearance – coaxed away by appealing to their particular weakness, whether that be wanting to help the poor, or getting involved in a political discussion, or finding a rare copy of their own book for sale. Rumours start to circulate that the whole thing is being done to undermine the League itself.

For what would be the use of getting rid of one man only, however prominent? The Assembly, after the first shock, would proceed with its doings. But what if man after man were to disappear? What if the whole fabric of Assembly Council and Committees should be disintegrated, till no one could have thoughts for anything but the mysterious disappearances and how to solve the riddle, and how, still more, to preserve each one himself from a like fate? Could any work be continued in such circumstances, in such an atmosphere? No. The Assembly would become merely a collection of bewildered and nervous individuals turning themselves into amateur detectives and, incidentally, the laughing-stock of the world. 

It should be noted that nobody is trying very hard to preserve themselves, as they do continually wander off into places where they are likely to be abducted. And there are so many characters, many of whom disappear before we know very much about them, that it is certainly more comic than tragic when they vanish.

Henry muses about the motives and perpetrators, but there isn’t really a sense that the reader is being given clues to disentangle. There is a solution, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter. This is first and foremost a satire on political and national grounds. The teasing of detective fiction is less successful because detective fiction was routinely so outlandish in the period that it’s almost impossible to satirise the lengths to which a plot can go. Of course, with most of the satire resting at a point in time in 1922, it is hardly a novel for all the ages. Some elements are recognisable, but others feel very much of a moment.

Something that does feel quite perennial is Macaulay’s (/Henry’s) comment on the way that magazines and newspapers write about women. It’s a theme she returns to often in her fiction and non-fiction, often in near-identical phrasing – but I love it every time, particularly the frustration that seethes beneath the surface humour:

All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Take Orders? Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humour, of honour, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men. How few persons discuss superfluous bachelors, or whether the male arm or leg is an immodest sight, or whether men should vote. For men are not news.

Mystery at Geneva is an odd, slightly silly and ultimately rather enjoyable book. I should think it would entertain anybody with an interest in 20th-century political history, particularly the way the League of Nations was considered by the everyman/woman. It’s not up there with Macaulay’s most accomplished and satisfying novels, but it does feel intended to be a jeu d’esprit rather than a substantial work. On its own terms, it’s a lot of fun.

The Optimist by E.M. Delafield

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E.M. Delafield is right up there with my favourite authors, but there are still some of her books on my shelves that I’ve had for the best part of 20 years. I recently took down The Optimist (1922), one of Delafield’s earlier novels and one I haven’t seen an awful lot of discussion about.

Owen Quintillian is a boy when he first spends time with the Morchard family – led by the calm dictator Canon Morchard, and accompanied by three of his young daughters (Lucilla, Flora, Valeria) and and one young son (Adrian), with another son David away at school. Canon Morchard acts as a tutor for Owen, but really this is a substitute family. Adrian is naughty and wilful, Valeria and Flora are romantic and emotional, and Lucilla is sternly obedient. Owen is perhaps the least categorisable; he is the onlooker, and almost takes the role of the reader.

I was reminded a lot of May Sinclair’s Anne Severn and the Fieldings, both in this section and in the rest of the novel – Owen, like Anne, is the only child who is both insider and outsider in the new community. He is expected to live by the rules of the household and understand its different mores and characters, but there is also a tacit understanding that he is a temporary participant.

Years later, when Owen has spent two years fighting in the war and a period recovering from shell shock in hospital, he returns to the Morchard family. Each child has grown, but the traits that were there before are still recognisable. Lucilla is still obedient, though with a weariness that wasn’t there before. The other sisters have romantic entanglements that include Owen in disastrous ways. Adrian and David are more enigmatic, being away at war – with everything that entails for the waiting family.

But the most dominant character – the ‘optimist’ of the title, mostly relating to patriotism and pro-war sentiment – is the Canon. He is a fascinating portrait of a domineering man slowly squeezing life out of his family, but not in a violent or ogreish way. Rather, as George Simmers wrote in his excellent review on Great War Fiction back in 2007, ‘Morchard is revealed as a monster of selfishness, manipulating his family by a form of moral blackmail – they are terrified of inspiring the pain he expresses when they cross him in the slightest particular.’

In fact, I will quote the same passage George used to illustrate this point:

“Valeria!” The Canon’s voice, subdued but distinct, came to them from without. “My dear, go to your room. This is not right, You are acting in defiance of my known wishes, although, no doubt, thoughtlessly. Bid your sister goodnight and go.”

Val did not even wait to carry out the first half of the Canon’s injunction. She caught up her brush and comb and left the room.

“Are my wishes so little to you, Valeria? Said her father, standing on the stairs. “It costs so small an act of self-sacrifice to be faithful to that which is least.”

“I’m sorry, father. We both forgot the time.”

“Thoughtless Valeria! Are you always to be my madcap daughter?”

His tone was very fond, and he kissed her and blessed her once more.

Valeria went to her own room.

She sat upon the side of her bed and cried a little.

His edicts always come from a firm moral code – one that sees himself as instructor and protector of the household. He is not just hurt but astonished if anybody contradicts or disobeys him, or even has a contrary opinion to him – there is one instance, later in the novel, where Lucilla must use long-learned manipulation to do what she believes is right, and he believes is wrong. In the Canon’s defence, he holds himself to the same high standards as everyone else, and repents and apologises if he contravenes them.

Owen is trying to establish himself as a writer, particularly one in revolt to most standards of Victorian behaviour, belief, and society. There is a clash here, when the Canon reads Owen’s magazine article on ‘The Myth of Self-Sacrifice’. While the narrative is largely on Owen’s side, it seems, there is also the suggestion that Owen’s views can be as self-indulgent and blinkered as the Canon’s, albeit from a different direction.

It’s a fascinating portrait of a family, and Owen is an excellent device for being both inside and outside the circle – it is only as The Optimist develops that we start to see more of Owen’s own character and flaws, and question some of the assumptions he has made about members of the family (and which we may have unquestioningly followed along with).

This is one of Delafield’s more serious novels but, being Delafield, there is a lightness of touch and an ironic sensibility that is never too far away. This sentence is quintessential Delafield, who always seems to return to the topic of self-(un)awareness in everything she writes:

Lucilla, for her consolation, reflected that few people are capable of distinguishing accurately between what they actually say, and what they subsequently wish themselves to have said, when reporting a conversation.

In George Simmer’s review, he concluded that The Optimist is ‘one of the most thought-provoking novels of the 1920s’ and among Delafield’s best. I think it is certainly one that would merit re-reading and thinking more deeply about. It is not among my favourite of Delafield’s, perhaps because that occasional lightness of tone isn’t reflected in the plot or characters and I prefer her in slightly more comic mode, with slightly more heightened characters – but I think there’s a very good argument that The Optimist is one of her most intriguing and complex novels.

The Poor Man by Stella Benson – #NovNov Day 9

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I first read Stella Benson when I was writing about witches for my DPhil – Living Alone is perhaps her best known novel, and is certainly well known in particular academic circles. I was so beguiled by her quirky worldview and witty writing style – and so I was delighted when Michael Walmer started reprinting her novels. He has done The Poor Man, I only just realise, though my copy is a paperback from the 1940s. The novel was originally published in 1922.

The poor man of the title is Edward Williams – a Briton in California, overlooked and ignored by all. He is self-pitying and feeble, and on the outskirts of a society made up of fashionable bohemian types who speak authoritatively and often stupidly about any manner of art. There is a glorious scene where he hosts a party at which each guest submits a poem anonymously – they are read in turn, mocked and disparaged by everyone except the poet in each case. The only one which meets with wide approval turns out to be a letter that had been submitted by mistake. And how could anyone resist this portrait of Rhoda:

Rhoda Romero never asked people what they thought of her pictures. She thought she knew. They were mostly studies of assorted fruits in magenta and mustard-colour running violently down steep slopes into the sea. They were all called still life, curiously enough. Rhoda Romero also, I need hardly say, wrote poetry. It was, of course, unrhymed and so delicately scanned that often there was not room in a line for a word unless it were spelt in the newest American manner; the poems were usually about dirt or disease, and were believed in Chicago to have an international reputation.

You either love this sort of thing or you do not – and I emphatically do. In all the novels I’ve read by Benson, she has that cutting authorial voice undermining all her characters – including her ‘hero’. Edward falls for a woman called Emily – self-assured and impressive, though not obviously besotted with Edward.

She doesn’t hang around when he has a sudden illness – unclear exactly what – which requires immediate operation on his brain and some time of recovery. Indeed, she heads off to China to be the assistant of a noted journalist. And, when recovered, Edward decides he must follow her there.

He doesn’t have any money (the ‘poor’ of the title has multiple applications), and so we enter perhaps my favourite section of The Poor Man: where Edward tries to raise money to travel to China. And the most glorious way in which he tries to do this is with ‘a company that seemed inexplicably anxious that young America should become acquainted with the works of Milton’ – albeit in prose because poetry is ‘unhealthy for children, unmanly for Our Boys’. I have been giggling about the ‘inexplicably anxious’ line most of the day. Just perfect.

Edward does eventually get to China, and so the adventure continues, but that’s probably enough of the plot for now. The main thing with Benson’s writing in the exuberant ridiculousness of the prose, particularly the way that everyone’s intentions and impressions of themselves are consistently proved to be absurd and false. I loved The Poor Man, and I think it’s a shame that such an astonishing tour de force ever fell out of print. Thank goodness Michael Walmer is restoring her works steadily, and fingers crossed he is going to bring us the next of her books soon…

Anne Severn and the Fieldings by May Sinclair

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It’s not the first time I’ve said it, but there is always such a sense of achievement in reading a book that has been on the shelves for a long time. Particularly if it turns out to be a good’un. I bought Anne Severn and the Fieldings (1922) back in 2009 and it has been patiently waiting for me ever since.

Anne Severn had come again to the Fieldings. This time it was because her mother was dead.

She hadn’t been in the house five minutes before she asked “Where’s Jerrold?”

“Fancy,” they said, “her remembering.”

And Jerrold had put his head in at the door and gone out again when he saw her there in her black frock; and somehow she had known he was afraid to come in because her mother was dead.

Anne is ten years old, and has been a regular visitor to the Fielding family. She has a cautious, fragile connection to the three brothers – who are different from one another, but not in the ‘ticking boxes of different types’ that often happens in novels about young siblings. Jerrold is kind, wise, and almost parental; Eliot is sporty and intelligent and confident; Colin is the youngest and quite anxious. As for their parents – Mr Fielding is a bit distant and very well-meaning, and Mrs Fielding is the opposite of these things. She needs Anne to need her. She is overly attached, and uses emotions as weapons.

As the novel progresses, Anne spends most of her time as part of this family that isn’t related to her, but has sort of adopted her. It’s worth noting that the novel was published a few years before adoption was legally formalised in the UK, and the opening is set a decade or two earlier still. She grows older and Sinclair develops a convincing heroine – loving, uncertain of herself, a combination of spontaneity and regret. Her moral decisions are very interesting for the period. Early in the novel, she says she would do anything for somebody she loved. This prophecy comes true before the end of the novel. The relationships she has with the three brothers in turn, and that with their mother, are all drawn interestingly and convincingly. Sinclair shows us the different facets of one individual that come out in three different friendships, which are indeed quite different, despite all being under the same roof.

Anne Severn and the Fieldings reminded me a lot of The Tree of Heaven – in the sense of showing the important events of the early twentieth century through the lens of one family unit. While they naturally consider themselves of utmost importance, we also get a good sweep of the period – particularly the war.

I found the whole novel involving and psychologically interesting, but it’s the war sections that are the jewel in the crown. Anne goes to the front, working as a nurse. Colin goes too, despite everyone saying that he is too ‘highly-strung’ for it – and, indeed, he suffers appalling shell-shock – or PTSD as we would call it now. Sinclair avoids tropes of ‘our brave troops’ – and, if the actual fighting is a little sanitised, the psychological impact of trauma is dealt with clear-sightedly.

I think Anne Severn and the Fieldings might be better than The Tree of Heaven, though perhaps too similar for me to nominate for the British Library Women Writers series, at least just yet. It’s a novel to luxuriate in, nothing moving quickly but everything capturing the attention. The only thing that prevents it becoming an all-time favourite for me is Sinclair’s tendency towards melodrama, which rather spoils the effect at times. The dialogue, in heightened moments, feels a bit like a b-movie. It’s unsurprising for the era, perhaps, but it’s at odds with the nuanced understanding of human relationships that Sinclair is rightly known for.

Sinclair is in danger of being remembered for coining ‘stream of consciousness’ as a literary technique, one or two novels, and not much else – but if her prolific output holds other books as enjoyable and rewarding as Anne Severn and the Fieldings, then it’s time to get digging.

The Privet Hedge by J.E. Buckrose

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A few weeks ago, I decided to do a mystery book haul – picking four books I knew absolutely nothing about, from mid-century female authors I’d never heard of, to see if I could find some hidden gems. It’s all part of scoping out for future British Library Women Writers titles – hard work, but someone has to do it(!!) If I were canny, I’d find a way to write these off in my taxes, but I don’t understand at all what that means. It is embarrassing how financially illiterate I am.

ANYWAY. Of the four, I decided to start with The Privet Hedge by J.E Buckrose, from 1922, depending whom you ask. The reason I chose this one to start with is because it opens with a description of a house, and books-about-houses are among my favourite things. Here’s the first paragraph:

At the far end of Thorhaven towards the north was a little square house surrounded by a privet hedge. It had a green door under a sort of wooden canopy with two flat windows on either side, and seemed to stand there defying the rows and rows of terraces, avenues and meanish semi-detached villas which were creeping up to it. Behind lay the flat fields under a wide sky just as they had lain for centuries, with the gulls screaming across them inland from the mud cliffs, and so the cottage formed a sort of outpost, facing along the hordes of jerry-built houses which threatened to sweep on and surround it.

In this house live Miss Ethel and Mrs Bradford, as the narrative tends to refer to them. They are sisters, past middle age, who have always lived with each other except for the brief two years while Mrs Bradford was married. Quickly widowed, she returned to their life together – and, though a gentler soul than her sister in many ways, also always makes clear her sense of superiority from having once been married. She gives the impression of having lived an awful lot of life in those couple of years, and it is a superiority that Miss Ethel recognises and accepts.

Those ‘jerry-built houses’ of the opening paragraph are causing a change. A distant relative of theirs owns the land separating their little house from the encroaching housing estates – and he has just sold it for development. Swathes of housing estates on greenbelt land in villages feels like a very contemporary concern, but it was clearly equally pressing in the 1920s. The sisters, particularly Miss Ethel, are horrified that new houses might crowd in the other side of their privacy-ensuring privet hedge – blocking out the view and destroying their tranquillity.

If that weren’t all, their maid has also just left to get married. Luckily her younger relative Caroline has been put up for the role. She is a teenager, recently out of school, and has been ‘promised’ to Miss Ethel and Mrs Bradford ever since their maid announced she was leaving. But Caroline has a last-minute change of heart. Like many young women of her generation and class, domestic service no longer looked so promising. “I’d starve before I’d ask permission to go to the pillar-box, and spend my nights in that old kitchen by myself,” she says. Instead, she can earn money by manning the box on the promenade – for Thorhaven is a seaside town.

In the end she compromises by working there and helping out the sisters, though not as a live-in maid. It’s a really interesting look at the new job prospects of the 1920s for a certain type of young woman – and I particularly enjoyed all the details of life by the coast, and the society that lives there together out of season (and moves out of their house during season, to get some tourist income). Caroline’s main story is something of a love triangle, though, between the reliable but dull Wilf – and a man who is engaged to another woman. I tend not to find romance storylines very interesting in books, and this one did lean a bit into love-at-first-sight territory. It isn’t badly handled, but for me it was the least interesting element of an otherwise very interesting novel.

What helps The Privet Hedge rise above other novels of its type is Buckroses’s writing. The initial scene-setting paragraphs are rather lovely, showing a good eye for detail that brings the town and its inhabitants alive. Here is a dance scene, for instance:

Still the evening came with no sign of rain; the band stationed at the edge of the green played cheerful dances with a will, and it was no fault of theirs that the music sounded so lost and futile amid the roaring of the sea – rather as if a penny whistle were to be played in a cathedral while the organ was bombing out solemn music among the springing arches. Perhaps the visitors and the Thorhaven people felt something of this themselves, for they put no real zest into their attempts at carnival, but they danced rather grimly in the cold wind, with little tussocks in the grass catching their toes and the fairy lamps which edged the lawn blowing out one after the other.

Overall, I really liked The Privet Hedge. If it had predominantly been about Miss Ethel and Mrs Bradford, I would have wholeheartedly loved it – but as the novel progresses, their story becomes less prominent than Caroline’s. I suppose that was the market for this sort of book at the time – and it’s certainly enjoyable. But the older couple of sisters, anxiously watching modernity come literally and figuratively closer to their door, is what really sold this novel to me – and they are its greatest success.

My Discovery of England by Stephen Leacock

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When I went to Toronto in October 2017, there was only one site that I really, really wanted to go to. Well, two including Niagara Falls – but the place I was most excited to visit was a little town called Orillia. Mention that to anybody in Toronto and they will be baffled – and, having spent a day there, I can see why they might be. It’s a small, perfectly pleasant town, but not the sort of place tourists from England would usually make a beeline for – unless, of course, they love Stephen Leacock. Or are the twin brother of someone who loves Stephen Leacock.

So we spent a day there, and I got to visit his house. Not many people were doing the same, but I found it very moving. I’ve loved Leacock since I started loving books aimed at grown ups, more or less, and it was a dream come true to be in the house where he wrote.

I’ve read a fair amount of Leacock, and had even more unread, but I had not come across My Discovery of England (1922). As soon as I knew it existed, I had to get my hands on it. In the early twentieth century, there were lots of books written by British authors about North America – often on the back of a few weeks travelling between hotels. They repeatedly answered the same sorts of questions about American culture, American women, America’s future – you might remember it being teased in E.M. Delafield’s The Provincial Lady in America.

Well, Leacock decides to beat the writers at their own game – and writes the reverse, coming to England to ‘jot down his impressions’, always bearing in mind comparisons with the places he knows and loves in ‘America’ (he often refers to Canada and America interchangeably as ‘America’ in the book, mentioning in a footnote that he uses it as shorthand for North America).

By an arrangement with the Geographical Society of America, acting in conjunction with the Royal Geographic Society of England (to both of whom I communicated my proposal), I went at my own expense.

The resulting book is (a) very funny and (b) frequently shows how little has changed in the UK in the intervening century. For instance, here he is not long after his arrival, taking a train journey:

The journey from Liverpool to London, like all other English journeys, is short. This is due to the fact that England is a small county; it contains only fifty thousand square miles, where the United States, as every one knows, contains three and a half billion. I mentioned this fact to an English fellow-passenger on the train, together with a provisional estimate of the American corn crop for 1922; but he only drew his rug about his knees, took a sip of brandy from his travelling flask, and sank into a state resembling death. I contented myself with jotting down an impression of incivility and paid no further attention to my fellow-traveller other than to read the labels of his luggage and to peruse the headings of his newspaper by peeping over his shoulder.

It was my first experience of travelling with a fellow-passenger in a compartment of an English train, and I admit now that I was as yet ignorant of the proper method of conduct. Later on I became fully conversant with the rules of travel as understood in England. I should have known, of course, that I must on no account speak to the man.

A lot of the humour in the book comes from comparing the way English writers were treated in provincial towns in North America with the way he is treated in England’s major cities – he notes sadly, for instance, that he is not met by the major for a tour of the local soap factory. It’s all dry and I enjoyed it a lot.

Curiously, the one time he does seem not to be dry is when writing about co-education – and, despite being a professor at McGill University and teaching both men and women, he launches into quite an odd and unconvincing line of argument against women receiving degrees. Try, if you can, to put that to one side – and then there is much to enjoy in his cursory exploration of Oxford University (from the vantage of the Mitre pub which, one hopes for his sake, was nicer in 1922 than it is today). The university certainly doesn’t seem to have changed much…

In the second half of the book, he focused more on the disadvantages of being a visiting speaker – again, very amusing, but I preferred the first half of the book. But overall it was exactly the sort of mildly silly, gently biting book that I have come to expect and love from Leacock. Something fun for lockdown, certainly.

Ann and Her Mother by O. Douglas

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Image result for ann and her mother o douglasAlongside a few others, I picked up an O. Douglas novel in homage to a friend called Sarah – I’ve written a little bit about her, and why, at the bottom of this post. Like the other Douglas novel I read this year, this one was kindly given to me by my friend Emily’s mum, and it came from her mother’s library.

I chose Ann and Her Mother (1922) because it fit Project Names, and it turns out to be a little different from the other two I’ve read – Pink Sugar and The Proper Place. Both of those novels have quite a lot of plot and movement – whereas Ann and Her Mother takes place entirely across a handful of days, in conversation between Ann and – you guessed it – her mother. Ann is in her late 20s and her mother is what the 1920s considered old. Certainly she is old enough that Ann thinks it’s appropriate to write down an account of her life. The novel does acknowledge that there wouldn’t be a wide public for the ghostwritten memoir of a minister’s widow, and does so with a nod and a wink – because this is exactly what is written.

Another review I’ve read points out that it’s very autobiographical, but I don’t know enough about O. Douglas’s life to notice the similarities – other than that she was really called Anna Buchan, sister of the famous novelist John. In the novel, at least, the mother’s life has been dominated by the death of four people – recently, her husband; longer ago, two sons in war and a daughter in infancy. Douglas manages to write about the death of this young innocent in a way that sidesteps the mawkish because it is so heartfelt and genuine.

The loss of these four aside, there is much to amuse in their reminiscences of being respectively a minister’s wife and a minister’s daughter. Ann is a little quicker to see the ridiculous than her mother, and is occasionally reprimanded for not depicting the locals kindly. And she writes very well about growing up in the manse – having grown up in a vicarage myself, this rang SO true:

“I do so agree,” said Ann; “‘a bright, interested expression’ is far too often demanded of ministers’ wives and families. What a joy to scowl and look listless at a time. You know, Mums, a manse is a regular school for diplomatists. It is a splendid training. One learns to talk to and understand all sorts of people—just think what an advantage that gives one over people who have only known intimately their own class! And you haven’t time to think about yourself; you are so on the alert to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings. You have to try and remember the affairs of each different member, how many children they possess, and all about them, and be careful to ask at the right moment for the welfare of each.”

I have seldom read a less urgent novel. It is not one to keep you up late reading to find out what happens. There is almost no pace. But that is deliberate, and it perfectly suits a certain reading mood. I enjoyed easing myself into it in an evening, letting the gentleness wash over me. However painful the topics covered, this is not a painful book to read. The affection the two have for each other, and their optimism and faith, makes it an ideal novel to soak in.

Douglas does anticipate the inevitable criticism of the novel, as not being edgy enough, by having Ann send the unfinished manuscript of her mother’s Life to a friend…

“Here’s a nice state of things,” said Ann.

“Is anything wrong?” asked her mother.

“Well, I don’t know whether you would call it wrong or right. Mr. Philip Scott sends me back my MS., with his criticism of it. I agree with most of the things he says: my language is too incorrigibly noble, my quotations are very frequent——”

“But if they’re good quotations,” Mrs. Douglas interrupted.

“Oh, they’re good quotations. ‘It was the best butter,’ as the poor March Hare said. But what he objects to most is the sweetness of it. He says, ‘Put more acid into it.'”

Reader, she does not put more acid into it. This novel is entirely absent of acid. Perhaps it would feel too saccharine in some moods, and I did tend to pick it up only when it was exactly the sort of thing I wanted to read – but, at those times, it could scarcely be bettered. And is mercifully light on the Scottish dialect, impenetrable to non-Scots like myself!

And here’s a bit about Sarah, and how I came to pick up the novel.

It’s odd to mourn a friend that you’ve never met. I’ve been in an online book group since 2005, and it has settled into the same handful of like-minded readers for about the past ten years. We don’t all read the same books, but we have similar taste – and it is a lovely place to share reading tastes and recommendations. And, of course, other aspects of life come alongside. We’ve all become friends – and those of us in the UK meet up once a year. I’ve met a couple of the readers from the US. But I never met Sarah.

She was a very active member of the group, often starting and continuing conversations. She was encouraging, kind, and funny, and the group relished having her. Earlier this year she died, and I miss her contributions deeply – despite not even really knowing what she looked like. But I knew more important things, like her love for her husband and family, her infectious love of reading, and her favourite authors. Among them was O. Douglas, and several of us in the group used reading an O. Douglas novel as a way of saying thank you and farewell to Sarah.

The Lark by E. Nesbit

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The Lark
Sherpa posing (/sleeping) next to The Lark.

Well, two days in to 2016 and I’ve finished a novel that I’m pretty sure will be on my Top Books 2016, unless a lot of truly spectacular things come along; it’s already on my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About. The Lark (1922) by E. Nesbit is an absolute joy – charming, witty, dry, affectionate, and wry all in one go. May I offer a hearty thanks to Scott of Furrowed Middlebrow who first alerted me (and anybody who reads his excellent blog) to its existence, and a second hearty thanks to whichever person donated it to a charity shop in Yeovil, of all unlikely places. And, while I’m at it, a third hearty thanks to Lily P. Bond, who apparently bought this book at Ilminster Fair in 1925, and a fourth to Edith, who gave it to her mother with love at some unspecified date. (Copies can be found in ebook version for very little money.)

The novel starts off with a trio of children (Jane, Emmeline, and Lucilla) which is one of Nesbit’s few mistakes in this book, I think, because it will either disappoint those who like books about children or deter those who don’t: there is only a scene before they’re adults. The difference between their childlike naivety and their adult independence is, truth be told, only four years – but it might as well be a lifetime, so far as The Lark is concerned. As ‘children’, adventurous Jane decides to cast a spell which will show her the man she will marry (to the consternation of Emmie and Lucy): she wanders off to a wood to do so, and – lo and behold! – who should be passing but John Rochester. She sees him, he slips off, and the story is allowed to rush forwards to present day.

Now, if you’re thinking ‘Jane and Mr Rochester, how subtle, gosh I wonder what will happen to them’ then (a) you’re rushing ahead of yourself, and (b) Nesbit is consistently so knowing and self-knowing as a narrator that one can never get the upper hand. When he turns up again, and is ignored by the adult Jane, Nesbit coyly dismisses him as being ‘definitely out of the picture, which concerns itself only with the desperate efforts of two inexperienced girls to establish, on the spur of the moment, a going concern that shall be at once agreeable and remunerative’. It’s impossible to feel outraged at coincidences or unlikely behaviour if the narrator points them out too.

Jane and Lucie, you see, as destitute because their guardian has made bad investments with their inheritances (they are both orphans). ‘Destitute’ in this case means ownership of a beautiful cottage and £500, which this calculator tells me is the equivalent of over £20,000 today; this sort of destitute makes my full-time employment look rather inadequate. The indomitable pair decide to treat their misfortune (for such we must accept it) as ‘a lark’, and I can’t help agreeing with Scott that this is an excellent excerpt to quote:

“I want to say I think it’s a beastly shame.”

“No, no! “said Jane eagerly. “Don’t start your thinking with that, or you’ll never get anywhere. It isn’t a shame and it isn’t beastly. I’ll tell you what it is, Lucy. And that’s where we must start our thinking from. Everything that’s happening to us—yes, everything—is to be regarded as a lark. See? This is my last word. This. Is. Going. To. Be. A. Lark.”

“Is it?” said Lucilla. “And that’s my last word.”

This sentiment recurs – when one is unhappy, or bad things happen, they force themselves to laugh it off. It’s endearing rather than sickeningly Pollyannaish because they don’t find it easy, and they constantly tease one another about it. Their sarcasm and quips are delightfully witty, even if they retain a slightly cumbersome Edwardian propriety. In this particular instance, they must find a way to generate an income from within the narrow straits of a gentlewoman’s education – and land upon selling flowers. There are enough in their small garden to last them a day, but rather more can be found at an old shut-up house in the neighbourhood.

They manage to charm the old man who owns it to let them sell flowers from the garden room and – would you believe it? – he turns out to be John Rochester’s uncle. But Jane is far from pleased to see him, and insists that they can only be friends. There is much to enjoy about Jane and Lucy setting up a flower shop (including an improbable encounter with their future gardener in Madame Tussaud’s) – I love any story about people setting up a shop, particularly slightly feisty women in the 1920s. As The Lark develops, they will also start taking in paying guests – rather far into the novel, actually; it could have appeared earlier – and find their lives increasingly entangled with Rochester. Other characters I haven’t even had time to mention are the sceptical cook, the flirtatious maid Gladys, and the arrival of Miss Antrobus, who is supposedly Rochester’s intended. And there is a hilarious section involving poor Lucy disguising herself as an invented aunt.

The Lark could really have been about anything; it is Nesbit’s style that carries the day. There are more than hints of it in her children’s novels, but here – the first of her adult novels that I have read – she can give full rein to her dry humour and ability to show light-hearted exchanges between amusing, intelligent characters whom you can’t help loving. The whole thing is an absolute pleasure, and would be perfect between Persephone covers. It’s pretty rare that I’m sad to see a book end, but I will confess to feeling a little distraught that my time spent in Jane and Lucy’s company is over – until I re-read it, of course.

 

The Return of Alfred by Herbert Jenkins

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Quite a few of us, around the blogosphere, have delighted in the frothy joy of Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert Jenkins – my own review was not the first, but was among the most deliriously enthusiastic. Naturally, it sent me off buying a whole bunch of other Jenkins novels – none of which I have read. Instead, I listened to an unabridged recording of The Return of Alfred (1922).

This came free, courtesy of Anna Simon, reading at Librivox. Here it is, if you’d like to listen to it yourself. This is my first experience with Librivox and, I’ve gotta say, I was pretty impressed. Anna Simon is an excellent reader, with a lovely tone and great subtle distinctions between voices (without going quite into ‘dramatisation’ style). Cynics, have a listen.

But what of the novel? Well, if you think Patricia Brent, Spinster was overly reliant on coincidence, then you ain’t seen nothing yet. The Return of Alfred revolves around a gentleman (whose real name I have forgotten; curse not being able to turn back the pages of an audiobook!) who masquerades as James Smith when distancing himself from an overbearing and cantankerous father. Said father wants ‘Smith’ to marry a neighbouring woman, in order to join their estates, but Smith is a determined war hero with independence coursing through his veins – oh, and he’s very witty too – so, false name and canvas bag in hand, he hops on a train. Only it goes no further than a village in the middle of nowhere, where Smith is thrown out into the rain. He scales the fence of the first house he comes to… and is joyfully greeted as the long-lost Alfred.

The greeting is joyful from the butler, that is. All of Alfred’s family are dead or absent, but his butler, governess, and sundry others are thrilled to see him after an absence of around a decade. The neighbours aren’t so sure; Alfred has done some misdeeds in his time. Yes, dear reader, we have to swallow that Smith has an exact doppelgänger – and that nobody at all believes his protests that he is not the man they believe him to be. These protests are constant and unswerving throughout the novel, and at no point do they seem to make the slightest impression on anybody except a fantastic young boy called Eric, who bases his adjudication on Smith’s cricketing ability.

So, why does Smith stay, rather than high-tailing it onto the next village asap? Readers of Patricia Brent, Spinster might be able to guess the reason – yes, it is a case of love at first sight, with a woman whom he has glanced at a window. That is enough, it seems, to make him stay put. And she is barely more delineated than that for large chunks of the novel. The love story rather holds sway in Patricia Brent, Spinster; in The Return of Alfred, we are more interested in the possible outcome of the mistake (given the nemeses Alfred apparently has, that Smith must now encounter) – and I spent my time wondering if the was a reason that nobody believed that Smith was not Alfred.

As you can tell from my teasing tone, I found The Return of Alfred all rather improbable – but also another total delight. There is a chapter where Jenkins indulges himself far too much in describing a cricket match (the chapter is twice as long as the others, and nothing unexpected happens in the cricket match; it was the only chapter that I found dragged) but, besides this, it is all great fun. Incidentally, I have discovered that I much prefer to read comic books than listen to them, as I always want to ‘do’ the pacing and comic timing myself, and found myself re-saying things in my head with a different rhythm, excellent though the narrator’s reading was.

So, it’s not quite up there with Patricia Brent, Spinster for me – which would probably have been true whether I’d read or listened to The Return of the Alfred – but it certainly proved to me that Jenkins wasn’t a one-trick pony when it comes to silly, delightful tales of extremely unlikely events. Smith is fab, the villagers are amusing, and Eric’s abbreviations were more than dece. Thank you, Librivox, for making this book freely available to all!

Oh, and fun fact – this, and Patricia Brent, Spinster, were originally published anonymously; this one was simply ‘by the author of Patricia Brent, Spinster‘, and dedicated: ‘To those in many countries who have generously assumed responsibility for the authorship of Patricia Brent, Spinster – this book is dedicated by the author’.

The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne

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I’ve reviewed The Red House Mystery today, over at Vulpes Libris – a detective novel by the man who is probably my all-time favourite writer, A.A. Milne. Usually I’d just point you over there, but I hope my fellow foxes won’t mind me posting the review here too, since I’d really like to have my much-loved author reviewed in the Stuck-in-a-Book archives as well…

The Red House MysteryNowadays, The Red House Mystery is likely to provoke the words “I didn’t know A.A. Milne wrote a detective novel”; back in the day, you’d have been more likely to hear astonishment that the author of The Red House Mystery had turned his hand to children’s books. For, although Milne arguably only ever wrote one detective novel (Four Days’ Wonder just about counts as one as well, I’d suggest, but that’s another story), for a while it was the thing for which he was most famous. Having earned his name as a Punch humorist, he turned his hand to The Red House Mystery in 1922 and it was an enormous success. Two years later would come When We Were Very Young, and another two years later arrived a certain Bear of Very Little Brain – but, between 1922 and 1924, A.A. Milne and crime went hand-in-hand. And a few years ago The Red House Mystery was reprinted: hurrah.

I first read it sometime before that, in around 2002, when copies were traceable but the novel was certainly not in print. I enjoyed it, but that was about all I remembered when I decided, recently, to give it a re-read.

Everything kicks off ‘in the drowsy heat of the summer afternoon’; The Red House is occupied with various guests, but it is the servants who take centre stage at the beginning. Mrs Stevens (the cook-housekeeper) is talking to her parlourmaid niece Audrey about the colour of a blouse the latter will wear. That isn’t a detail that has any bearing on the later plot; it’s just an indication of the sort of domestic triviality that Milne so loves describing, whatever sort of fiction he is writing. And, indeed, whatever sort of fiction he is writing, he can’t avoid giving his prose an air of comedy. Both Stevenses are rather given to inconsequential conversation, and Milne throws in some fun verbal tics. Audrey relays the news that Mr Mark’s brother has returned from Australia (Mr Mark being the owner of The Red House); Mrs Stevens replies:

“Well, he may have been in Australia,” said Mrs Stevens, judicially; “I can’t say for that, not knowing the country; but what I do say is he’s never been here. Not while I’ve been here, and that’s five years.”
Upon being assured by Audrey that the brother has been absent for fifteen years, she says:

“I’m not saying anything about fifteenth years, Audrey. I can only speak for what I know, and that’s five years Whitsuntide. I can take my oath he’s not set foot in the house since five years Whitsuntide.”
You either like that sort of thing or you don’t. If you don’t, there is still the mystery to hang around for; if you do, you’ll find that Milne could write just about anything and you’d lap it up.

What he has written is a murder mystery that is pretty decent. My refusal to reveal any details at all about a detective novel has rather stymied this review, but suffice to say that it doesn’t revolutionise the genre particularly. That is to say, this was before the Golden Age had really taken hold, so the genre hadn’t come close to being clichéd. For context, The Red House Mystery came out the same year as Agatha Christie’s second novel. So, we have clues strewn willy-nilly, secret passages, midnight assignations, costumes, and all sorts of things that would be considered too hackneyed now. How nice to have been able to use them with impunity!

Milne lays out some ground rules for detective fiction (or, at least, his favourite detective fiction) in an introduction. Plain writing (no ‘effecting egresses’), no predominant love story, and ‘for the detective himself I demand first that he be an amateur’. He can be a extremely shrewd man, but not a specialist – or, at least, his specialism ought not to help him solve the murder. As Milne writes:

What satisfaction is it to you or me when the famous Professor examines the small particle of dust which the murderer has left behind him, and infers that he lives between a brewery and a flour-mill? What thrill do we get when the blood-spot on the missing man’s handkerchief proves that he was recently bitten by a camel? Speaking for myself, none. The thing is so much too easy for the author, so much too difficult for his readers.
The detective Milne creates is, indeed, an amateur; a guest at The Red House. He is Anthony Gillingham, and is intelligent, charming, quietly witty, and essentially an incarnation of Milne himself, so far as I can tell. It is difficult to get much of a sense of him here, besides his likeability, but I would have loved to see him feature in more detective novels. Sadly, that was not to be.

I have glossed over the surface of the plot, but that is to be expected. Importantly, The Red House Mystery is cosy crime at its finest. Milne does not have the genius for plotting that Christie had – but who does? This novel can certainly hold its own with the second tier of detective novelists and, I would controversially argue, is rather better than the Dorothy L Sayers’ books I’ve read. If you’ve somehow missed it, go and treat yourself.