1949

The Far Cry by Emma Smith – #1949Club

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Karen and I are unusually in sync with our club reads this time. Not only did we both visit Beverley Nichols’ All I Could Never Be earlier in the week, we are both finishing with Emma Smith’s The Far Cry. (Here are Karen’s thoughts.) Apparently I bought my copy in February 2012, so it is good to finally get it off the shelf – and it was nothing like I expected.

This isn’t my first dance with Emma Smith. Years ago, I loved her childhood memoir and another memoir about working on the Grand Union Canal. They were written with a curious sort of confident naivety, and I didn’t know how that would translate to fiction – and, indeed, Smith only published two novels: The Far Cry in 1949, and a second in 1978.

The heroine of the novel is Teresa Digby, who is 14 years old but often feels rather younger or rather older. She is a bit spoiled and petulant, but also worldly-wise and manipulative – and yet still an enjoyable, spirited person to be around. Perhaps we like her because she is so clearly better than her relatives: her unaffectionate, domineering Aunt May and her impetuous and selfish father. Her mother has long been absent.

Smith is very amusing about this unconventional, discordant domestic set up. For example…

Aunt May was already at breakafast. She said nothing to Teresa and Teresa said nothing to her, having chosen to play the part of sulky disgrace rather than any of the other parts she might have chosen from a repertoire acquired during nearly fourteen years of being late for breakfast while staying with Aunt May. Her aunt, for her part, preferred this attitude to pertness or pretended dreaminess, though she disliked all of Teresa’s attitudes, and Teresa too, together with most other little girls. So, thinking intensely about their idea of one another, they ate and drank their way through breakfast.

The opening section of The Far Cry reminded me of Rachel Ferguson’s writing: an eccentric family, a drily sardonic narrator, and characters you can’t help enjoying despite their less appealing qualities.

This set-up is suddenly disrupted when Teresa’s absent mother decides that she is coming back to reclaim her. Mr Digby can’t stand the idea, and so he spontaneously decides that he and Teresa will move to India! There is a little method to his madness: this is where his other daughter (and Teresa’s half-sister) Ruth lives with her husband. And so off they go…

Being the 1940s, travel of course is a much more prolonged experience than today, and a significant amount of the novel takes place onboard the ship. It is there that Mr Digby befriends a Mr Littleton, and Teresa finds solace and companionship with a sharp and undemonstrative older lady, Miss Spooner. It is a meeting of minds, or at least of temperaments. I thought this was rather a lovely description:

Two nights before they arrived, Teresa, undressing, said: “It’s so awfull hot. I wish I could sleep outside.” “Why not? said Miss Spooner, “I think it’s a very good idea. I’ll sleep outside as well.”

It was easily done. They pushed their mattresses and sheets through the cabin window and, with some slight feeling of indecorum, tripped down the passage in their nightclothes. Most people had already gone to bed. Except for a few late walkers, the decks were empty. Teresa leaned over the deserted rail, her night-gown blowing round her bare ankles, and watched the huge and deeply orange moon lumber over the rim of the sea, begin to climb, begin almost at once to fade and turn pale as though defeated by too many stars. Then she lay beneath her sheet, drew it up to her chin and tried not to go to sleep. But the sound of a couple a few feet away quietly talking together made her droswy; the ceaseless splash of waves, the round and solitary ring of last footsteps passing close beside her, all these increased her drowsiness and so she slept.

Her writing is often so beautiful, and well-judged between the ornate and the direct. She demonstrates such assurance for a debut novelist. Smith is also excellent at shifting moods and evolving perspectives. Because, at first, Teresa finds India overwhelming and unfriendly. It is a world she never imagined, and she has been flung into it without any real preparation – all to live with a sister whom she barely knows. But there is a moment when she suddenly – with the adaptability of youth – makes her peace with her new world. More than that, relishes it.

With wide eyes and open mouth Teresa drank in the confusion as though she tasted a new wine and could never have enough of it. Her fears were gone, her caution; her former instinct, as old as herself, to repulse externals, gave way to a reckless rush of confidence. She flung down her defences; she threw open her doors. She longed to be occupied by this anonymous turmoil which she felt to be so safe, for in all these crowds not a single face looked at her threatenning, not a hand touched her except by accident, not a soul knew who she was or cared.

There are so many lovely passages in this book, and I shan’t type any more out, but what impresses me is that The Far Cry feels like a character piece. Sometimes, novelists who focus so much on dreamy prose are equally dreamy when it comes to precision in their characters. Smith manages to do both. Teresa is a fascinating, evolving creation.

Along the way, though, the perspective changes. We start to see things from Ruth’s point of view. And it quickly becomes clear that her marriage with Edwin is a lot more troubled and complex than Ruth’s sister or father realise. She is rather horrified by them descending on her, and very torn over the future of her relationship. The jubilant, funny tone of the earlier chapters has gradually changed over the course of The Far Cry, and by now it has become quite a reflective, sombre novel. The transition happens naturally enough, so I think it’s probably deliberate – but it would be hard to discuss the tone of the novel with any consistency.

I shan’t give away any more plot, but the novel definitely kept me interested through to the end – mostly by the delineations of the characters, and the beautiful depictions of their various responses to their environments. It’s worth acknowledging that, like any British writer in the 1940s, it isn’t as sensitive to the Indian characters as it should be. And it is curious that no mention is made of Indian independence, which happened in 1947. I suppose the novel must be set shortly before that, and the political rumblings would have been ignored or entirely foreign to Teresa, Ruth and Mr Digby.

My only other reservation is that the end has rather a rush of dramatic incidents. It is only here that Smith betrays the hand of a debut novelist, who rather overplays the big events. I think a subtler ending would have better befitted the novel’s overall nuance.

But a small quibble to end this review and end the 1949 Club. It’s lovely to pick up a Persephone that has been waiting for me for so long, and find it wonderful.

 

The Innocent Traveller by Ethel Wilson – #1949Club

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When I was in Canada earlier this year, I was keen to add more books by Ethel Wilson to my shelves. I’d enjoyed her writing for a while, but was fully bowled over by how brilliant The Equations of Love was, which I read for another club year. One of the books I bought was her second novel, The Innocent Traveller, which fortuitously fits into the 1949 Club.

The Innocent Traveller covers the lifespan of Topaz, and it is a long life – about a century, from the 1840s through to around the time of writing. And what a wonderful character Topaz is. Barb wrote about this novel and called her ‘irrepressible’, and it is the perfect word. I would add ‘exuberant’. From our first sightings of her – crawling under the table, amidst the familiar knees, while Matthew Arnold is visiting – through to her final hours, Topaz is in love with life and allergic to conventionality. Here, for instance, she meets a young playwright:

Topaz was frightfully excited. She had never before sat on a log with someone who was writing a play. Memories of Sir Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and the Lyceum Theatre in general romped through her mind and she did not know where to begin.
[…]
“What are you calling your play, Eustace?” asked Aunty when she recovered.

“Break, Break, Break,” said the young man. “Who is this uncommonly plain little girl standing in front of us? How very wet she is!”

“That?” said Aunt Topaz, suddenly seeing Rose. “Oh, there you are. How do you do, Rose? That is my great-niece. Yes, she is plain, isn’t she? When wet. When dry she looks better, because her hair curls.”

But I am getting away from myself. Let’s start earlier. Topaz grows up in a properous house in London among many and various relatives. Her mother dies in childbirth when Topaz is still very young, and her father remarries – specifically, he marries his late wife’s sister, Jane.

While Topaz is undeniably the star of the novel, Wilson does tell us about everyone else too – the brothers and sisters, their children, the other relatives. Often she tells us in speedy shorthand, which gives the novel an unpredictable and rather amusing tone – particularly when it is counterpointed by her loquaciousness on vaguer topics. We might hear someone’s entire future in a couple of sentences, and then get something as delightfully and unnecessary lengthy as this chapter-opener, on the topic of time:

Of all the inventions human or divine which have been bestowed upon civilised peoples the one most taken for granted, yet the one most practical, is the division of Eternity – or is it of Time – into seven days of the week. Uncivilized persons, one supposed, do not feel the lack of this arbitrary division. The passage of Time is marked for them by such signs as the seasons if any, by day and night if any, by the lunar and solar changes at all events, and by the occurrence and duration of other physical phenomena such as hunger and gestation. These changes are enough; and to some indolent civilized people that is a very enviable kind of existence which they would willingly exchanged for their own. For our exitence which we call civilized becomes increasingly complex; so that 3pm next Wednesday week has an entity and form and prognosis before ever it arrives; and instead of living in polar time and space like free Eskimos, we make for prisoners of ourselves by appointments which we arrange for ourselves for 10am on Tuesday week and 5pm on Thursday forgnith, and the first two weeks in July, and thus, between us, we murder our peace. The only thing in our changing world that we can now regard as being safe and sure is that next Monday will certainly be Monday, next Tuesday will be Tuesday and nothing else, and that Saturday afternoon will always be Saturday afternoon; and for this much stability we should be thankful.

I loved Wilson’s tone, which combines dryness and whimsy so well. And yet she presents Topaz without even the smallest hint of authorial sneering. We see Topaz fail to find a husband, support her ageing parents fairly inadequately, and become in control of the household – all as joyfully and vaguely and poorly as ever. Nothing can dampen her excitement at the world. Nothing could make her think she had missed life’s adventures by failing to find a husband or have children. She is an eternal optimist – and I like that the title brings out her innocence, because her naivety is really innocence rather than ignorance.

Her family find her eccentric, of course, but there is no real antagonism there. And it is with a makeshift family unit that she starts the next adventure: Topaz moves to Canada, along with her widowed sister Annie and her unmarried cousin Rachel. She is already middle-aged, and has a further 50 years in this new land – which she embraces with enthusiasm.

I’ll be honest – a lot of The Innocent Traveller felt quite spontaneous. You’d struggle to find anything resembling plotting – it is just one person’s life, and the lives of those around her, told jubilantly and eccentrically. And perhaps that is because life is, of course, unpredictable and unplotted, and the novel is apparently based on a real person. The author’s note includes:

This is the story – part truth and part invention – of a lively woman who lived for a hundred years and died triumphant in Vancouver and is nearly forgotten after her small commotion of living.

The metaphors are not mixed. The drop of water, the bird, the water-glider, the dancer, the wind on the canal, and Topaz, are all different and all the same…

And the ‘plain’ Rose referred to in the first quotation? That is Ethel herself, or a version of her, appearing on the scene.

Because Wilson covers a century over the course of the novel, she can also cover the shifting social norms and expectations. She often does this in an amusing way, with a sort of heightened tone aping the language of the historian and amplifying it. For instance…

Great-Grandfather Edgeworth was a kind and just employer, but he accepted without question what he saw, and he saw a world become at last static. His imagination, which flew beyond the bright blue sky to the invisible, did not pierce the squalor of the Poor so near at hand in the grim town. The Poor took their familiar deplorable place in squalor, and it would have seemed a novel and disturbing idea to Great-Grandfather Edgeworth that the Poor should reasonably aspire to eat well, drink well, live well and die well. Not wrong, of course, but chimerical. Each age, like our own, has its large blind spots. The social conscience was stirring but not awake. Great-Grandfather Edgeworth was a product of the ages which preceded the young Victoria. Here he was, sleeping in the garden, ninety years old, an upright old man in a world which he really thought was upright.

Isn’t it delicious? Her writing is always a joy, and ‘joy’ is the right word for this book. I might prefer her more tightly plotted novels, and have a special place in my heart for the dry sharpness of Equations of Love, but you can’t go wrong with The Innocent Traveller – and, above all, spending time with the irrepressible, exhuberant Aunt Topaz.

Parson Austen’s Daughter by Helen Ashton – #1949Club

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Parson Austen's daughter

The cynical part of me wonders whether Helen Ashton had embarked on writing a biography of Jane Austen when she decided it would be easier to make it a novel instead. That’s probably unfair, since she turned her hand to a number of biographical novels for a range of figures – but I’ll admit that I couldn’t quite get the thought out of my head throughout my whole time reading Parson Austen’s Daughter.

The ‘novel’ (more on those inverted commas later) follows Jane Austen from before her birth through to her death. Along the way, the majority of the focus is on her personal and romantic life, with a few interventions about her writing – though rather less than I’d have liked.

The positives? I think Ashton does a great job of capturing Jane Austen’s character. You can see where this version of Jane would have found the humour and spiritedness of the people she creates in her novels. She is funny and flippant, often to the chagrin of her more considered, reserved sister Cassandra.

“Oh! I love to watch her at it,” said Jane, tossing her arms in the air. “She has so much French address. To captivate Henry, who knows all her faults, who has made up his mind not to fall in love, that would be a conquest indeed. She is the most finished coquette in England, and I must learn to imitate her.”

“I am afraid she is a bad example for you to copy,” said grave Cassandra, but Jane only laughed. “The men do all they can to make us wretched,” she vowed, “so why should we not take our revenge where we can get it? It is all very well for you, my dear Cassy, you will have no trouble with your Tom. He is devoted to you and you want nobody else; but I am not going to put up with the first comer. I intend to break a few hearts on my own account before I settle down to the stupidity of married bliss, and Cousin Eliza shall teach me how to do it. I owe it to myself,” said Jane, looking in the mirror. She was the nineteen.

I also appreciated how Ashton evolved her character – so that, as the years go by, Jane becomes more mature, more serious and perhaps a little sadder – while retaining enough of her irrepressibility to entertain us. There are moments of genuine pathos throughout, and Ashton makes the most out of what little we know of Austen’s connection with Tom LeFroy and her very brief engagement – as well as the tragedies and triumphs faced by Cassandra and other members of the family.

And the negatives… sort of everything else? That’s not quite fair, because Ashton writes well throughout, and there is never a weak moment in her writing style or characterisation. But the issue is that you can’t – or at least you shouldn’t – simply write a biographical novel as though it were a biography with made-up conversations. The structure of a traditional biography just doesn’t translate well into a novel.

Case in point – we have to wade through various members of the family and how they all interconnect before we even get to Jane. There is no immediacy or urgency, or even focus. And that continues throughout the novel. It is very good when focused on Jane – and quite tedious when the canvas extends further and further. Not only does Ashton insist on telling us everything significant that happens to Austen’s brothers and sister, but she also throws in cousins and neighbours and anybody else she can find research about. And, alongside that, we constantly get updates about Napoleon and other major historical points that would be useful background information in a biography – and totally unhelpful in a novel.

Ashton can be a brilliant novelist, and perhaps she would have been a brilliant biographer, but this half-way house is not a success, in my opinion. If she had written a shorter, much more focused novel that is actually about (and solely about) Jane, or perhaps Jane and Cassandra, then I think it could have been brilliant. But this sprawling, loose, exhausting book is all the more frustrating because you can see the kernel of something brilliant in it.

All I Could Never Be by Beverley Nichols – #1949Club

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When we planned our timings for the 1949 Club, I hadn’t realised there would be a two-day work retreat… which was wonderful, but has put me very behind in amalgamating reviews, let alone reading them or writing my own. I have several more books to write about this week, though they may come in a scramble towards the end of the week…

And today’s is a book by a reliable, much-loved author: dear Beverley Nichols. I’ve been accumulating them rather faster than I’ve been reading them, but turning to All I Could Never Be has reminded me afresh why I love him so much.

As in several of Nichol’s books, the tone of this collection of essays is nostalgia for the 1920s. There are often links between the end of one essay and the start of the next, but other than that they are pretty disparate – covering his various friendships (usually with the great and the good), the genesis of some of his books, and perhaps most surprisingly a few sections on his Christian faith and its evolution.

Along the way, Nichols tries to walk a rather tricky line at times. He is keen to emphasise the humble origins of his career in journalism, suggesting himself as a sort of everyman appearing as an impoverished and curious outsider whenever his path crosses any celebrities or nobilites. But it is an impression that fades rather quickly when he talks about his friendship with (say) Nellie Melba, George Bernard Shaw or the Queen (i.e. the King’s wife – this is 1949, remember). For the truth is that Nichols clearly was never an outsider – except that, unlike the truly inner circle, he is an incorrigible name-dropper. When the names dropped are not famous, they will be at least titled. Somehow, I find it all charming rather than monstrous. And that’s probably because of his evidently unaffected delight in these people – and because he has such a way with words. This, for instance, is from an account of his early days of journalism:

I was dispatched to interview a female centenarian. She, poor dear […] sat staring at me with small red eyes, occasionally muttering, to nobody in particular, the phrase, ‘Boo-boo-la-la’. This, I felt, was an insufficient basis on which to build the sparkling denunciation of ‘the modern girl’ which my editor had requested me to obtain from her, and I returned to the office empty-handed.

That article may not have been sparkling, but Nichols always is in All I Could Never Be. Sometimes it is waspish, not to say bitchy – ‘Doubtless Randolph Churchill has many charms, but on the few occasions that I have met him he has hidden them’; ‘One’s first sight of Gertrude Stein was startling, like seeing Gibraltar at dawn’ – but often it is in delight at his fellow man (or woman). The Baroness who can’t resist buying a chandelier on every shopping trip; the Bright Young Things who jostled about in extraordinary costumes; above all, Nellie Melba. He is clearly in awe of her, and there is a moving account of the effect that hearing her sing as an older woman had on Nichols.

Some of the ‘names’ meant nothing to me, and presumably their star had dimmed since 1949. I have no idea who Emily Borie Sherfesee is, and his clue ‘whom Chicago would perhaps remember as Emily Ryserson’ did not help me out. But, nonetheless, I enjoyed his commentary that she was widely loved, ‘[not] for any of those curious qualities which, for lack of a better phrase, I must call ‘party manners’ – for she did not play the piano, her bridge was atrocious, her backgammon non-existent and – worst of all – she never told malicious stories about her dearest friends’. It is a joke, of course, but I think it reveals more than a kernel of truth about sort of society in which Nichols moved for so long. After all, he is certainly not reticent about revealing everything he can about his dearest friends in this book.

But it is not all gossip. Along the way, he talks us through the background to some of his books. Some, he is unflinchingly critical of – he dismisses his work of pacifism, Cry Havoc!, and explains why he recanted its thesis in the face of the Nazis. Others, he recalls fondly – his autobiography Twenty-Five, say, and particularly Down the Garden Path and its two sequels. All I Could Never Be was published before the Merry Hall trilogy, so his focus is on the first three books about his house and garden – and in these essays we learn what we perhaps suspected: that they are more fabrication than fact. Or, at least, the people in them are. He explains the real-life inspirations for a couple of the figures, and while the rest are fictional, the love he has for this house certainly isn’t. I found it interesting to see how celebrity culture was alive and well all those decades ago, and Nichols had to deal with bibliophile trespassers in his garden.

I’m so glad these more literary things were in the collection, because it’s always fascinating to see how a much-loved author arrived at his ideas – though I don’t think I’ve previously read an author being able to so dispassionately praise or censure his own prior work.

What I did not expect to find in this books was Nichols’ earnest reflection on Christianity. I had no idea that he was a man of faith, and have never read The Fool Hath Said because I’d worried he would just be scathing about faith. But in a chapter towards the end of All I Could Never Be, he writes this beautiful paragraph:

It was after one of these walks that I came home and read again, for the first time in years, the gospel according to St. Mark. As the sublime story unfolded itself, I kept whispering to myself – ‘if only it were true – if only it were true!’ And then, suddenly, I realised that I had never made any serious effort to find out whether it was true or whether it was not. I had based my conviction on a cheap and facile assumption – the assumption that miracles did not happen, although I was at that very moment surrounded by miracles, from the flowers on my desk to the ghostly bouquet of shadows that they cast on the wall. To the historical basis of a story that had held a large part of the civilised world for two thousand years, a story which was for all men a matter of life or death, I had given less attention than to the study of a company report. It was, to say the least of it, not very intelligent.

Over several more chapters, Nichols explores his discovery of faith – and the different groups which he became part of, and then left. I don’t know how that faith developed or changed after 1949, but I really appreciated reading something so thoughtful and sincere in a book that is often deliberately and delightfully flippant.

Perhaps All I Could Never Be has such a vague and unrevealing title because it covers a span far broader than a singular theme. And, gosh, I loved it. I was reminded what a joy it is to spend time with Nichols – with his irrepressible pen, his pithy epithets, and his character which is always a hundred per cent committed to whatever he is exploring – whether that is flowers, celebrities, or Jesus.

The Sound of Music by Maria von Trapp – #1949Club

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Cover of The Sound of Music

Today, I’ll be writing about a story that we all know – though quite a few people I’ve spoken to didn’t realise it was ever a book. As the title of this post has already given away, this is the book that led to the smash-hit musical The Sound of Music – and my 1970 edition shares that title, though it was originally published as The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.

So, yes, Maria von Trapp was a real person – and a surprising amount of the film appears to be based on truth. Or, at least, the truth as Maria sets it out in her autobiography. She was an irrepressible novitiate nun who wasn’t very at adhering to rules; she became governess to the children of a widower (though not as many children as in the film – at least until they started having their own); she married him. And that is about the first 80 pages of the book!

When the biography was adapted for screen, it’s perhaps not a shock that they focused on the romantic element of the story. Though, in truth, it isn’t especially romantic on the page. Maria has fallen for the children in her care (one of whom, confusingly, is also called Maria), but seeks God’s and the other nuns’ wisdom on whether or not she should accept his proposal. And that’s setting aside the amusing moment at which she accidentally accepted it, via a garbled message from one of his children. Marrying would, after all, mean giving up what she believed to be her vocation – but she is later persuaded that marriage and (step)motherhood could be her vocation instead. You can see why this scene wasn’t included as a dizzying moment of Hollywoodesque love:

“What does God want of me now, Reverend Mother?”

“He wants you to serve Him well where He needs you most, and serve Him whole-heartedly and cheerfully.”

Slowly I wound my way home. The children must be in bed by now, I thought, when I opened the big house door as quietly as possible to slip in unnoticed. But there stood the Captain.

“Well, and…” was all he said.

Timidly I went over; and all of a sudden there came all the tears I hadn’t found before.

“Th-they s-s-said I have to m-m-m-marry you-u!”

Thankfully, this rather dutiful acceptance turns into real love before very long. The quote also demonstrates something that isn’t particularly prevalent in the film: Maria’s faith. Again, it shouldn’t be a surprise that a woman who was considering becoming a nun would also talk a lot about God and about how her relationship with Him determines much of her life. I appreciated that element of the biography, which felt natural and authentic at all times.

The Sound of Music is also very funny at times. Maria has an eye for absurdity, and the book is packed with anecdotes to make you smile – from the mistakes she made when learning English in America, to horrendous performances, to the usual sort of self-deprecating accounts of misunderstandings that make this sort of book so fun.

So, what happens after the plot of the film is finished? They do, indeed, leave to evade the growing influence of the Nazis – but not so dramatically or dangerously as it is depicted in the film. In a rather more sedate way, they get the paperwork they need and get on a boat to America. There are issues along the way (on one entrance to the country, Maria says she wants to stay forever – which sees her briefly imprisoned for attempting to overstay her visa) but their new country is broadly welcoming. It is also where the bulk of Maria’s story takes place. As the original title – The Story of the Trapp Family Singers – suggests, the book documents the idea of forming a singing group and their gradual evolution into a nationwide success. Much of what she writes about is the pieces they perform and how they go over, and if you have more musical knowledge than I do, then you’ll probably get more out of those.

It’s hard to believe that a family could become this successful just off the back of touring theatres – rather than releasing music, or appearing on radio or TV. It was wryly amusing to read Maria’s rather prescient take on the modern age of entertainment:

Our age has become so mechanical that this has also affected our recreation. People have got used to sitting down and watching a movie, a ball game, a television set. It may be good once in a while, but it certainly is not good all the time. Our own faculties, our imagination, our memory, the ability to do thigns with our mind and our hands – they need to be exercised. If we become too passive, we get dissatisfied.

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

Along the way, Maria shares about her own health issues – including losing several babies to miscarriages, which she attributes to a kidney complaint. We see the growing impact of an inevitable war. And we indubitably grow to love Maria. She becomes older, wiser and a little more earnest than her film counterpart – while the Captain is noticeably gentler. But fans of the movie won’t be disappointed by the reality that you find on the page. And if you’ve never seen the film, then you’ll also enjoy this unexpected, heartwarming, very honest tale of a very unusual family.

A Graveyard To Let by Carter Dickson – #1949Club

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Any club year is a good excuse to read a good, old-fashioned murder mystery. In Keswick a few years ago, I bought a handful of a shop’s wide selection of novels by Carter Dickson and John Dickson Carr – who are, of course, the same person. I’m not sure what distinction there might be between the type of novel he wrote under each name, or what makes this book a ‘fast, tough mystery’ in the words of the cover blurb. ‘Tough’ as in hard-to-solve, or hard-boiled, or some third option? No matter, let’s enjoy this ludicrous cover image and get into it!

Cover of A Graveyard to Let, showing a blonde woman looking alarmed next to an overgrown graveyard.

 

Dickson is renowed for variations on the locked room mystery, and this is a curious spin on it. Frederick Manning is a very wealthy American businessman who doesn’t seem particularly fond of any of his three adult children. The novel opens with a meeting between he and they, and his daughter’s all-American boyfriend, in his offices – where he laments the memory fo their long-dead mother, admits to have a mistress, and sets various cats among pigeons. “I was wondering,” he says, for instance, to his daughter’s partner, “why you and I dislike each other so much.” Any practised reader of detective novels will know that, in this misanthropic, selfish gentleman, we have found our probable victim.

Not long later, the family are all gathered at Manning’s palatial home – including Sir Henry Merrivale, also known as ‘H.M.’ He is apparently a series detective figure – loud, eccentric, violently intelligent, and the sort of character who is quite delightful to read about and a nightmare to know. In his initial appearance in this book, for example, he antagonises and exasperates a cop (whom we will meet again later) by apparently being able to get through the metro gates with a magic word. With his wealth and idiosyncracies, he could have been crafted by P.G. Wodehouse – and there is a lot of humour of the ‘fish out of water’ variety, with this very English man thrown into an American context. But there is also an undercurrent of steely determination to solve murders and misdoing.

The reason the family have come together is because Frederick Manning is going to reveal a secret – and H.M. has been told that he will witness a miracle. And he does. Seemingly to evade the sound of police sirens, Manning dives fully-clothed into the swimming pool. He doesn’t emerge, and his body isn’t found. Where has he gone?

It is an exciting premise for a novel, and Dickson/Carr had to find dozens of variants of the ‘locked room’ mystery – for this isn’t quite a locked room, of course, but the idea is the same.

From here, things naturally spiral. H.M. somehow manages to interview and follow all the major characters, and brings energy to the novel that sustains us. And, yes, we do end up at one point in an overgrown graveyard that is on rented land – though I suspect Dickson came up with the excellent title and retro-fitted the scene in question.

Obviously I shan’t spoil anything, but I will say that the solution to the swimming pool mystery was a bit of a let-down – and the murderer was the person I picked in the opening scenes, though that was more by good luck than any deduction. As plots go, it was a bit flimsy – but, for a reading experience, it was enormous fun. Totally silly, totally engaging, and I’d certainly be happy to read more of H.M.’s eccentric sleuthing.

 

A Clear Dawn by Winifred Peck – #1949Club

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The three women of the McWatt family, Honesty, Mary and their niece, Bridie, sat around the interior grate of their little flat in Napier Crescent, Castleburgh, on a cold December evening in 1945, their eyes on the black marble clock on the mantelshelf, tense with anxiety and anticipation.

The opening paragraph of Winifred Peck’s A Clear Dawn made me feel pretty sure I’d picked up something I’d enjoy. We’re in a domestic setting with a group of women and something is happening to shake things up – already I am squarely in the middle of my comfort zone. And, as I read most of A Clear Dawn on a very long train journey to Edinburgh, I quickly realised that ‘Castleburgh’ is a stand-in for that city. It felt apt. And all the more coincidental, given that I’ve had A Clear Dawn on my shelves for more than 20 years.

As that opening tells us, three women live together in a small flat. Two sisters in their 40s – though, as often in novels of this period, they feel rather older – and a niece in her 20s. Honesty is intelligent and sharp – perhaps living up to her name a little too closely at times. Mary is kind and deeply committed to her Christian faith. Bridie is loyal to her aunts but also aware that her youth and vitality deserve a wider canvas than their restricted world.

What has brought ‘anxiety and anticipation’ to the trio? It’s the return of Walter – their brother and uncle, respectively. Not only is he coming back to Scotland after years in the Middle East, he is returning with a fiancé, Lily. The women don’t know anything about her, but are prepared to make her welcome in their lives – well, ‘prepared’ to differing degrees. But the flat truly belongs to Walter, and they plot how best to shift living arrangements and furniture so that the newlyweds will be able to move in with them, once they are, indeed, newly wed. Until then, Lily can stay with a nearby aunt and Walter can stay with them.

During the initial meeting, it quickly becomes clear that this arrangement will not succeed. Whatever the opposite of a ‘meeting of minds’ is, that’s what happens almost as soon as Lily steps over the threshold. As the reader soon learns, she is marrying Walter largely because she is at an age when there are unlikely to be many further options, and because of a misplaced idea that he is wealthy. This modest flat, and the proposed living arrangements, are a horror to her.

“Oh, Wattie darling, such a funny mistake!” The falsity of Lily’s high, sweet voice with its cutting edge was obvious even to gentle Mary. “Your kind, kind sisters thought we were coming to crowd out this dear little flat when we married. I’ve been telling Honesty that of couse, of course, we mean to have a little home of our own!”

I think Winifred Peck is masterful at dialogue. Can’t you just hear her? And what made A Clear Dawn so enjoyable to me is that Lily isn’t some sort of spoiled ogre. You feel almost as much sympathy for her as for the sisters she may end up displacing. This is, after all, not the life she thought she was getting. And that sympathy is indicative of something that runs like a seam through the novel: Peck’s lack of cynicism. Characters are complex, but when they do good, noble things, it is celebrated. There are lines like this, which you’d struggle to find in a novel written today: ‘Perhaps it was true, yes, she supposed it was certainly true, that love and forgiveness must be put in the scales against truth and honour, and weigh them down in the end.’ In this cynical era, such simple, hard-won truth feels refreshing and powerful.

The only note in A Clear Dawn that felt less successful to me was the introduction of Ian. He is the estranged son of the absent-minded couple for whom Honesty is housekeeper. We learn that he was, as a child, possibly responsible for the death of his younger sister – and his parents lament that he has turned out bad. He is, in fact, sociopathic. When he arrives on the scene, causing chaos for various characters – particularly Lily – he doesn’t quite live up to this description. He is selfish, weak, immoral – but I think Peck’s pen drew back from creating anybody as evil as he is initially described. Even so, he is a curious addition to a novel filled with ordinary, flawed, lovable people. For even Lily is lovable, even if it is a love that comes with impatience – and Walter, similarly, you want to shake. But Honesty and Mary are two of the most engaging, enjoyable characters I’ve come across for a long time. I wonder why Peck decided to throw something so dark into the world of striking pastels that she had created.

And the title? It comes from Milton, and is quoted by one of the characters late in the novel: “By this time, like one who had set out on his way through life by night and travelled through a region of smooth and idle dreams, we now arrive on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.” If I’m honest, I don’t truly understand what that means – except perhaps a new start, with the reality of things clarified for us?

There are certainly characters who embark on new starts at the end of this novel, and some who must mourn the ending of what they hoped for. There is a surprising amount of incident in the book. But it is really a novel about character, as all the best novels are, and succeeds brilliantly on that count. Honesty and Mary are particularly wonderful characters, and the family dynamic between the core characters – especially the dissatisfying meeting of new and old women – is done exceptionally well. I loved reading A Clear Dawn and it reminded me why I love domestic, middlebrow novels of this period so much.

It’s good to have that reminder. Quite often, because I am on the hunt for future British Library Women Writers titles, I read novels like this by authors I’ve never heard of. They’re picked from the dusty corners of bookshops, in the hope that I’ll stumble across something brilliant. It has led to some wonderful discoveries in the series – Winifed Boggs, Dorothy Evelyn Smith, Theodora Benson – but, of course, the majority are mediocre. And perhaps it dinted my impression of how much I loved this variety of novel. Thank you, Winifred Peck, for reminding me why it is my favourite thing. Kicking off the 1949 Club with a definite success (and I’m sorry that it is so hard to get of, friends).

A delightful reread for #ABookADayInMay – Day 4

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I read Ashcombe (1949) by Cecil Beaton back in 2012, sitting in the Bodleian Library. I quickly knew I needed my own copy – and this beautiful edition arrived. Here we are, 12 years later, and I have re-read and re-loved Beaton’s tale of finding, renovating and loving a beautiful countryside home in Wiltshire. Will I still feel the same as when I first wrote about it?

I think I must have been drawn the book initially because of its inclusion of Edith Olivier – I certainly read it during my DPhil, which included a chapter on her novel The Love-Child. It was while staying with Olivier in 1930 that Beaton made the decision to go and visit Ashcombe – a sizeable house left in some disrepair, hidden at near-inaccessible lengths in the depths of the Wiltshire countryside. (It is clearly a mansion, however homely Beaton tries to make it sound.)

I do not know if the others spoke during the trek up the hill. I was perhaps vaguely conscious of their eulogoies, but I was almost numbed by my first encounter with the house. It was as if I had been touched on the head by some magic wand. Some people may grow to love their homes: my reaction was instantaneous. It was love at first sight, and from the moment that I stood under the archway, I knew that this place was destined to be mine. No matter what the difficulites, I would overcome them all; considerations of money, suitability, or availability, were all superficial. This house must belong to me.

As it happened, the house never did belong to Beaton. The subtitle to Ashcombe is ‘the story of a fifteen-year lease’ – and Beaton did indeed lease the house and its significant grounds from its owner, who hadn’t thought it quite habitable. And indeed it wasn’t. The nominal rent of £50 per year was so low because Beaton would spend so much money on restoring the house – and, in the days before listing restrictions (or maybe even planning permission?), he went much further than restoring. Ashcombe has lots of (black and white) photographs included, and some of these are before and after sets – where he’s clearly extended windows, added walls and doors, and knocked things about at whim, as well as extensive landscaping. The landlord certainly got good value, but also seems incredibly tolerant for Beaton to pursue any whim at all. How many of our landlords would let a tenant have every visitor sketch their hand on the bathroom wall?

The photographs also show many of the people who came to stay. While Beaton leased Ashcombe for 15 years, he never lived there full-time. It was a retreat from a week in London, and he was often away abroad for months at a time. But while he was there, he brought packs of the great and the good from London (and even, before he was sure of the cook’s ability, all the catering from London too). We get to sneak into their lives, which seem to be a whirlwind of costume parties, charades, artistry and camaraderie. Quite what the locals thought we never discover – these are privileged, wealthy, often titled men and women who have seemingly endless energy and opportunity for antics. Many are names you’ll probably recoginse – Augustus John, Salvador Dali, Rex Whistler, Siegfried Sassoon. Even Tom Mitford gets a look-in, which he seldom does in books about his sisters. Naturally, I relished the times he spoke of Edith Olivier – older than most of her famous friends, and relatively new to this world, having been oppressively sheltered until her father died when Olivier was already firmly middle-aged, if not old.

Of the neighbours on whom I grew to rely more and more, Edith Olivier was perhaps the most cherished. It was she who, by bringing me into contact with so many new friends, was so largely responsible for my having blossomed into a happy adult life: and it was she who continued, without effort on her part, to discover your people of promise and bring them to her house. So many of the young writers, painters and poets came to her with problems about their work and their life, and they knew that after she had listened intently to their outpourings, her advice would be unprejudiced, wise and Christian. Edith’s youthfulness and spirit were of all time: she had unlimited energy, vitality and zest for life. Interested in every strata of humanity, she had never been known to be bored. After a strenuous day she would retire to bed, not to sleep, but to read at least three books, one of which she was to review, in addition to writing a most detailed journal of all that had happened to her during the previous twenty-four hours.

Having sat in Wiltshire Record Office with volumes of the journal, I can attest that it is ‘most detailed’. She wrote at enormous length and in horrendous handwriting.

So much of Ashcombe is joyful: the joy of home and the joy of friends. Beaton writes brilliantly about the pull of a beautiful place, and about the frenetic happiness that a group of carefree people can bring out of each other. They are unafraid of simple silliness. But the book does have its mournful edge. Nine years after the lease began, the Second World War started.

I remember I was about to step into a hot bath when I was informed that Poland had been invaded. The news was like a death knell. We had to wait one endless day more before we heard, from a calm but tired voice on the radio, that Hitler had refused the last request for a peaceful solution to his demands.

At Ashcombe, as we sat listening to the Prime Minister in the small parlour, my mother wept a little. The speech was soon over. We were now at war.

Beaton writes with sensitivity about the impact on war – mostly on fatalities among his friends, particularly Rex Whistler, since Beaton’s own wartime experience was clearly easier than others. Ashcombe is something of a retreat from the worst of the bombing and devastation in London, but is not left unaffected.

Almost equally sombre is the end of the lease. Beaton hoped to continue living there (at least for some of the year) for the rest of his life – but, after the lease had been extended a few times, I finally came to an end. The landlord wanted it back and there was nothing Beaton could do. Houses are often important in fact and fiction, but I don’t think I’ve ever read a better account of the heartbreak of leaving a home you have truly loved, against your will. It only happened to me once (when all my housemates rather suddenly chose to leave Oxford), but it is devastating and takes a long time to get over.

Beaton may have had other homes and I daresay they were palatial and beautiful – but Ashcombe clearly caught and kept his heart. In this delightful, poignant, effervescent book, he has given the house an excellent tribute.

Because of the Lockwoods by Dorothy Whipple

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I thought I’d read The Priory by Dorothy Whipple quite recently, but apparently it was more than four years ago – so I wasn’t exactly rushing onto my next Whipple when I read Because of the Lockwoods (1949). I’ve had it for goodness knows how long. Certainly I read my first Whipple back in about 2004, so I’m spacing out her novels. And I’m glad I finally picked this one up, because it’s up there among my favourites of her output.

At the heart of the novel are two families: the Lockwoods and the Hunters. They are amiable neighbours living in neighbouring grand houses in the north of England – the Lockwoods’ is a little grander than the Hunters’, but they are in the same echelon of society. It is natural that their offspring should be friends with each other. That’s Martin, Molly, and Thea for the Hunters, and Clare, Muriel, and Bee for the Lockwoods (Muriel and Bee are twins, and Whipple doesn’t care much to distinguish between them.)

Towards the beginning of the novel, all this equilibrium changes when Richard Hunter dies. It is discovered that he has not left his grieving family with much in the way of money. They must sell their house and most of their possessions; they must move to a humble street and move in less heightened circles. It’s the sort of street that would represent the height of some people’s ambitions, and indeed one character does consider it a vast achievement to be there, but it is a fall from grace.

While the Hunters’ social circle changes instantly, the Lockwoods do maintain their friendship. Though it is a friendship warped out of all recognition. They are no longer equals, and so the Lockwoods find every possible method of patronising and belittling the Hunters. Mrs Hunter is a kind, naive woman who sees only attempts at kindness. Martin is too besotted with Clare to put up much of a fight. Thea is really the heroine of the novel, and she sees the Lockwoods for what they are: unkind to the point of cruelty, thriving on their sense of superiority.

What Thea doesn’t know, but the reader learns early on, is that Mr Lockwood has defrauded the widowed Mrs Hunter out of a fairly sizeable amount of money. Not a life-changing amount, but enough that it would have helped prevent the indignities of their fall. It might have helped improve the prospects of the Hunter children, each of whom feels obliged to leave school as soon as possible, to earn money.

And they feel obliged because Mr Lockwood insists. He is not content to commit fraud – he is abrupt, rude, and callous to the Hunters at all time. He continually bemoans that he has to spend time helping the Hunters with financial advice, but he never really goes out of his way to do anything. Whipple has drawn a believably despicably tyrant – though a tyrant only to outsiders. The portrait is sophisticated enough to show that Mr Lockwood is loving to his own children.

The interweaving of the families is the main plot of Because of the Lockwoods, but I have to mention Oliver – a lower-class man that the Hunters initially avoid friendship with, but who helps them more than anybody else. Not least in accepting who they now are, and the position in society they hold.

I really loved reading Because of the Lockwoods. I know Whipple is well-loved in the blogosphere, and often singled out as a stand-out in Persephone’s catalogue – at her best, I think she is brilliant, though some of her novels are rather workmanlike in my opinion (though always enjoyable). This is definitely up there among her best. I only noted down one passage to quote, but it shows some really fine and evocative writing:

The train gathered speed. The town passed before Thea, strung out by streets and squares, embosomed in trees, pierced by spires, spanned by bridges, dominated by the cathedral towers. Then receding, the town drew together, closer, tighter, until it grew so small she could see it no longer.

If you’re a Whipple newbie, I think this would be a brilliant place to start. If you love her but haven’t got to this one yet, don’t wait.

 

Others who got Stuck into this Book:

“It is a wide and dramatic canvas that provides a stark warning to those who value status and material things over all else.” – Rachel, Book Snob

“Although primarily domestic, Dorothy Whipple explores the different sides of human nature.” – HeavenAli

“Once again, Whipple’s characters are brilliantly drawn. I loved Thea and hated the Lockwoods” – Karen’s Books and Chocolate

Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey

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Brat Farrar: Amazon.co.uk: Tey, Josephine: 9780099536840: BooksMy old housemate, and dear friend, Kirsty has three abiding passions: dogs, lexicography, and talking about how great Josephine Tey is. It was she who gave me a copy of Brat Farrar (1949) last year, as part of a lovely package to cheer during lockdown, and I suspect it was me who got my book group to read it. It definitely came up during our discussion of Daphne du Maurier’s brilliant novel The Scapegoat, because the premise is very similar. (In most years, The Scapegoat would have been among my best reads – but 2020 had some truly brilliant reads.)

Brat Farrar is the lead character of the novel – yes, it is a name, and an almost wilfully terrible one. What a bad title! I wonder why she did it? Anyway, he meets a man who tells him he is a doppelganger for a neighbour called Simon Ashby. As it happens, Simon’s twin brother went missing when he was 13, seven years earlier. A suicide note was found, but his body has never been identified – one washed up that was assumed to be him, but it was beyond recognition. So Brat is persuaded to go back and pretend to be the missing Patrick – and, as the older twin by a few minutes, inherit the family wealth. Speaking as an older twin by a few minutes… I wish.

Brat is a nice man, and isn’t particularly swayed by the idea of an inheritance – what really gets him is the idea that he’ll get to work with a whole stableful of premium horses. Brat is an orphan (his name is a corruption of St Bartholomew’s Orphanage) and has made his way in the world through being on a ranch in America. Man, he loves horses almost as much as Josephine Tey thinks the reader loves horses.

It’s an intriguing set up, if one is willing to suspend disbelief, and I always am for some sort of coincidental premise. It’s the less vital parts of the puzzle that left me slightly more incredulous – for instance, Patrick’s family don’t seem that bothered about his return from the dead. They react in the way I might if I saw someone I hadn’t expect to see for another month or two. Patrick’s aunt and guardian, Bea, is a delightful character – wise, kind, very mildly dry – and I loved her, but she is representative of the whole family in her fairly lukewarm response. I suppose one can’t spend half the book with people fainting from surprise, but still. Anyway, they’re all pleased to see him and immediately taken in – except for the twin, Simon, who is rather stand-offish and the last to be convinced that Brat is Patrick.

It’s very interesting to read about, but there isn’t much tension. It suffers from comparison with du Maurier’s The Scapegoat, which is better in many ways but particularly the feeling that everything could crumble at any point. Because we know the truth of his identity from the outset, and never seriously suspect that Brat’s cover will be blown (he has been immaculately coached by the family friend), we aren’t left very gripped. It’s entertaining to read, but bizarrely unsuspenseful for a mystery novelist.

And then, lordy me, the horses. Perhaps the most interesting character is that christened ‘Timber the murder horse’ by my book group – he has killed a man by smacking him into a tree, and his one wish in life is to do it more people. I enjoyed reading about him, and Tey really gets into the limited psyche of a horse. Where I started skimming was at a race or showjumping or something, where there are pages and pages and pages of descriptions of horses and their style and pedigree and all sorts. Just leave horses alone, guys.

Brat Farrar was left me in the strange position of really enjoying reading it, but having piles and piles of caveats. None of those are Tey’s writing style, which is excellent. It’s one of those cases where there is the kernel of a much better book at the heart of a good book. Perhaps that kernel turned into The Scapegoat?