Month: March 2011

To See Ourselves

StuckinaBook All , 12 Comments

Burns’ (anglicised) line ‘Oh would some Power the gift to give us / To see ourselves as others see us’ was one which Delafield played with on a couple occasions (the brilliant collection of sketches As Others Hear Us, and the play To See Ourselves which later proved inspiration for VMC The Way Things Are). More broadly, I think it can be seen as the cornerstone of her writing – whether witty or sad or biting (and Delafield excels at all of these, in different works) her primary technique is demonstrating people’s lack of self-awareness.

Danielle and I have both been reading Gay Life (1933) and both our reviews will appear today – if I’ve understood time differences properly, then Danielle’s will come along later. It is another example of characters who have built up false images of themselves – but rather than having a single focus, Gay Life is filled with a cast of many. We see through nearly all of their eyes at different points, and thus Delafield builds up many perspectives on the same few days and group of people. They’re all on a long holiday in the South of France, staying at a hotel, mostly having stayed to the point where they know each other reasonably well and have separated wheat from chaff – usually getting stuck with the chaff. Delafield’s title, of course, uses ‘gay’ in its original sense – but also ironically. Despite the supposedly delights of the resort, few of the characters are enjoying themselves; even fewer have happy or uncomplicated relationships with those around them.

There are so many people – I ought to start introducing them. Hilary and Angie Moon are recently, and dejectedly, married (‘The little that they had ever had to say to one another had been said in the course of an electrically-charged fortnight, two years earlier, when they had fallen desperately in love.’) She’s already on the look-out for a new beau, but isn’t likely to find it in grumpy Mr. Bolham, still less his hapless secretary Denis. Angie’s not the only woman willing to welcome love – Coral Romayne is besotted with Buckland, the beefy holiday tutor hired ostensibly to teach her neglected son Patrick. There are a few more, but I don’t want to dizzy you.

EMD is mistress of the brief description which utterly reveals a character and their flaws. This, for instance, is Denis: ‘Morally – in the common acceptance of the term – he had remained impeccable, for he was both undersexed and inclined to a physical fastidiousness that he mistook for spirituality.’ And Dulcie, one of the most amusing characters in the novel, who is the daughter of a hotel entertainer, and thus treading an awkward line between guest and servant: ‘Dulcie continued to prattle. It was evidently her idea of good manners, to permit no interval of silence.’

One character I haven’t mentioned, who is awfully significant, is the novelist Chrissie Challoner. She is staying in a house near the cottage, and one of the central threads of this multi-faceted novel is her encounter with Denis. He’s had a rather pathetic life, but she immediately sees through his facade of worldliness – and rather falls in love with his true self. Which leads to all manner of moonlight proclamations and furtive assignations. Being honest, I was a bit worried at this point. A lot of interwar novelists try their hand at romance and flail a bit madly. It’s all much more comfortable for the reader when they’re being arch and detached – and there is nothing detached about Chrissie’s pondering on his inner being, declaring she has never felt this before, etc. etc. I daresay such things are enjoyable to the people experiencing them, but not really to the reader…

But, of course, I ought to have trusted Delafield not to err. After a few pages where it seems Denis may have finally met a woman who will understand and appreciate him… but no, I shan’t spoil the plot for you.

Besides, Delafield is never too earnest. The humour of The Provincial Lady is toned down, but makes it appearances, especially when Dulcie is on the scene.
“Mr. Bolham, is your bedroom door locked?”

“Why should my bedroom door be locked?” said Mr. Bolham. “I’ve nothing to hide.”

Dulcie gave a thin shriek of nervous laughter.

“You are funny, Mr. Bolham. I shall die. I suppose it did sound funny, me putting it like that. What I meant was, really, could I possibly pop in there, just for one second, to get something – well, it’s a bathing-cloak really – that’s fallen on to your balcony.”

“Again?”

Dulcie giggled uncertainly.

“It’s not my fault, Mr. Bolham,” she said at last, putting her head on one side.

“I know. It’s the Duvals.”

“It just dropped off their window-ledge, you know.”

“Did madame Duval send you to get it?”

Dulcie nodded.

“I expect she thought you might be a tiny bit cross, as it’s happened so often,” she suggested.

Mr. Bolham felt her eyeing him anxiously, to see if this would get a laugh. He maintained, without any difficulty, a brassy irresponsiveness, and Dulcie immediately changed her methods.

“I like to do anything I’m asked, always – my Pops says that’s one of the ways a little girl makes nice friends,” she observed in a sudden falsetto. “And Marcelle – she lets me call her Marcelle, you know – she’s always terribly sweet to me. So naturally, I like to run about and do errands for her, Mr. Bolham.”

“Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed doing this one,” said Mr. Bolham sceptically. “I’ll send the towel, or whatever it is, up by the chambermaid.”
Although there are some central players in Gay Life, the cast is so wide that things don’t get dull or stilted. Delafield takes it in turns to focalise goings-on through the eyes of each character, so that we are still learning back-story well on into the last quarter of the novel – so it feels more like meeting every guest at a hotel than it does like a linear novel. Presumably that is the effect EMD wanted – and it certainly works. Plot isn’t entirely unimportant, though – and a Big Event rears its head towards the end.

Danielle asked me, in an email, what else I’d read by Delafield. I did a quick count on the back of a piece of scrap paper, and realised that I’ve read 19 books by EMD – mostly in pre-blog days, and a fair few in pre-uni days, when I could afford to indulge in one author for a month or two. (Favourites include: As Others Hear Us, Mrs. Harter, The War Workers, Faster! Faster!, Consequences…) Of that 19, I have read no duds. Gay Life isn’t the best of those reads – in fact, it probably lags somewhere towards the end – and yet it is really very good indeed. EMD deservedly has most of her fame from the Provincial Lady books, which are sublime and which I can well imagine reading every year for the rest of my life – but her other works shouldn’t be neglected. She seems incapable of writing a bad novel, and if most play towards sombreness and melancholy, she can never quite avoid the comic touch.

Gay Life is incredibly scarce, but you might be able to find it in a library. But you can’t go wrong with a Delafield – and I encourage you to look beyond the Provincial Lady books (and, of course, to read those IMMEDIATELY if you have yet to do so). It is wonderful that she is remembered at all, but she leaves a legacy of works which have been sadly neglected – have a hunt in your library archives and see what you can find! Go on, have a search now – and let me know what’s available in your area.

I’m looking forward to hearing Danielle’s response to this novel, and will put in a link here once her review appears. EDIT: here it is!

A Book By Any Other Name…

StuckinaBook All 20 Comments

Having recently chatted about William by E.H. Young, and Howards End by E.M. Forster, I’ve been thinking a bit about the naming of books. In both cases the focus laid at the feet of the man and the house (respectively) comes about mostly through the authors’ decisions about titles. How easily could Young’s novel have been called Lydia or The Nesbitts? Or something hazy like Decisions Once Made or Marry in Haste. You know the sort of thing. (Incidentally, the Oxford University library catalogue has eight books called Marry in Haste, dating from 1935 to 2000. What fun it would be to read them all, one after the other… Although four of them are Mills & Boon.)

As for Howards End – so many other titles would spring to mind first, if one were somehow to read an untitled edition. Helen and Margaret. The Lure of the Wilcoxes. Even, one might say, Sense and Sensibility. If any of these had been chosen, the significance of Howards End itself would have faded into the background.

This might seem a really facile point, but I find it fascinating how much these titles influence the way in which we read these novels – and how differently we would read them, had they more obvious titles. Why does Emma get her own title, where Mansfield Park claims the coveted spot there, and Persuasion’s title is handed over to a noun? Would we read these differently as Delusion, Fanny Price, and, erm, whatever Anne Elliot’s house is called. (Although apparently there is no evidence that Jane Austen chose the title Persuasion.)

Just something to think about when reading a novel – it isn’t something that usually crosses my mind, until titles are as directed as those which inspired today’s post. I know it’s a horrible cliche to end a blog entry with ‘question time’, but… Can you think of any book with a title which pointed your view in one direction, or which would read very differently under another title?

Howards End by E.M. Forster

StuckinaBook All , 10 Comments

I wrote quite a lot last year about being Third Time Lucky with Muriel Spark and Evelyn Waugh – after not loving a couple of their novels, I was bowled over by the third I read. Well, ladies and gents, it’s happened again! This time, courtesy of Mr. E.M. Forster. I admired, but didn’t particularly relish reading, A Room With A View and A Passage to India. Both were obviously well written books, but neither quite worked for me, and I found them more of a chore than a pleasure. A reliable friend told me that she’d felt the same way about those novels, but loved Howards End – I couldn’t make myself read it unaided, so persuaded my book group to read alongside me. Plus, having loudly proclaimed my love for Susan Hill’s Howards End is on the Landing, it seemed only right that I read the novel which inspired the title.


Well, thank you Sarah for telling me to persevere – I loved Howards End. In outline (and not giving away the huge plot points that my blurb does – BAD Penguin Classics) the novel is about the interaction of the Schlegel and Wilcox families. Impetuous Helen Schlegel and her more cautious, sophisticated (but often equally romantic – in the original sense of the word) sister Margaret first encounter the Wilcoxes on holiday somewhere, I think, but the action of the novel starts as Helen is staying with the Wilcoxes at Howards End. Within a few pages she has written to Margaret to announce herself engaged to Paul Wilcox – by the time their aunt has arrived on the scene, the engagement has been called off, but not before all manner of amusing confusion has taken place – and enough happened to make the families wish to avoid each other in perpetuity.

Naturally, this is not to be. The Schlegels and the Wilcoxes find themselves living opposite one another, and engaging in the same society. The romance between Helen and Paul is quickly put in the background, and their paths cross in all manner of other ways – during which we learn more about all the characters, including Paul’s father Henry Wilcox. Although at one point he is described as having ‘imperishable charm’, in general he is one of the more loathsome characters I’ve ever found within the pages of literature. The sort of man who favours logic over people, and is always able to argue himself rationally out of the most uncaring or selfish actions. Such a frustrating figure – and drawn so well by Forster – since it is almost impossible to fault his arguments, even while everything in you knows they are wrong. Eugh, he is truly horrible.

Woven throughout the novel are Leonard Bast and his, ahem, fiance Jacky. Leonard is a lowly clerk with cultured aspirations; Jacky is somewhat lowlier, and utterly without aspirations of the cultural variety. His life crosses with the Schelegels when Helen accidentally swipes his umbrella at a concert (‘”I do nothing but steal umbrellas! […] What about this umbrella?” She opened it. “No, it’s all gone along the seams. It’s an appalling umbrella. It must be mine.” But it was not.’) Forster is not so crude as to have stock figures, but it can still be said that Bast represents the lower-middle-classes. He is intelligent, and yearns after the outward signs of it; the Schlegels, on the other hand, see his natural affinity for beauty – and hate any affected attempt he makes to cloak himself in learning. The clash of these sensibilities leads to some wonderful exchanges, including (overblown analysis alert) two of the best pages of writing I can remember reading. Jacky – only a rung or two above the oldest profession in the world – gets it into her jealous head that Leonard is with the Schlegels and turns up on their doorstep. At this point they have forgotten who he is, and Helen reports back her conversation with Jacky. That is the genius of the section – which the (otherwise admirable) film misses. What makes it brilliant is that we don’t see Jacky’s explosive accusations – only Helen’s account of them, which reveal both her snobbery and her self-awareness;

“Annie opens the door like a fool, and shows a female straight in on me, with my mouth open. Then we began – very civilly. ‘I want my husband, what I have reason to believe is here.’ No – how unjust one is. She said ‘whom’, not ‘what’. She got it perfectly. So I said, ‘Name, please?’ and she said, ‘Lan, Miss,’ and there we were.”
and
“We chatted pleasantly a little about husbands, and I wondered where hers was too, and advised her to go to the police. She thanked me. We agreed that Mr. Lanoline’s a notty, notty man, and hasn’t no business to go on the lardy-da.”

There’s something about indirect, reported speech that always has the potential to be hilarious…

To reveal the further entanglements of these characters and families would be to reveal too much. They do not – can never – escape one another, though, and their idealistic differences become increasingly difficult to overcome. Characters are rarely in opposition to each other – Forster’s brushstrokes are not that broad. Rather, he creates realistic characters whose opinions sometimes change; whose values are not always sturdy or practicable, and who do not always say exactly what they mean, or what they wish to say.
Lest this all sounds terribly worthy, I should reiterate that Howards End is also really funny – mostly humour derived from the foibles of class and the society. To pick one amusing sentence: ‘He did not kiss her, for the hour was half past twelve, and the car was passing by the stables of Buckingham Palace.’

What makes Howards End so good, in my opinion, is the melee of the characters – and the directions in which their conversations go. So often exchanges take unexpected turns – steering away from novelistic cliche. In doing so, Forster is endlessly perceptive about how people do interact. If, occasionally, he gets a little bogged down in political or societal arguments (‘Only connect’, and suchlike) it must be conceded that these suit his characters, and (unlike some of them) he always puts people ahead of these ideas and ideals. There is much beauty in the way he writes, and endless attention to detail. This is picked more or less at random, but I thought it a lovely paragraph – adding nothing to the plot, but everything to the pleasure of reading the novel:

They drew up opposite a draper’s. Without replying, he turned round in his seat, and contemplated the cloud of dust that they had raised in their passage through the village. It was settling again, but not all into the road from which he had taken it. Some of it had percolated through the open windows, some had whitened the roses and gooseberries of the wayside gardens, while a certain proportion had entered the lungs of the villagers. “I wonder when they’ll learn wisdom and tar the roads,” was his comment. Then a man ran out of the draper’s with a roll of oilcloth, and off they went again.

Throughout most of the novel, Howards End itself remains elusive. We see it at the beginning; we are teased with another visit, where Margaret makes it only as far as the railway station. Like the lighthouse in Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, Howards End represents something to be reached and attained, rather than a constant physical presence in the novel. It flits in and out of the novel’s pages, offering something which it eventually completely subverts.

Perhaps I loved it because Forster had his characters on home turf, rather than acting as tourists? I find novels set abroad (unless they’re written by someone from that country) tend to become travel guides, and those are very much not my cup of tea. Or perhaps Howards End is simply more astute and, well, better? I don’t know. I’m just glad that I continued to try Forster – and grateful that he wrote a novel so beautifully and perceptively.

I’d love to hear from any of you who’ve read this, and how you think it compares to other Forster novels. I’d especially like to hear from you if you’ve read Zadie Smith’s On Beauty – a reworking of Howards End, I believe – to know whether or not it’s worth bothering with?