Trance by Appointment by Gertrude Trevelyan

Recovered Books by Boiler House Press continue their admirable work of bringing out G.E. Trevelyan’s novels and sent me Trance By Appointment back in March. I read it in July and I’m finally writing about it – and, gosh, Trevelyan was such a varied writer. That sort of variety might explain why she hasn’t had perhaps the legacy she deserves, since it is hard to describe what sort of writer she is, or what to expect when you open one of her novels.

Trance By Appointment (1939) was Trevelyan’s final novel, and is in many ways the most traditional of the ones I’ve read by her. Two Thousand Million Man-Power is formally interesting, doing rather brilliant things with fluid prose and a sense of diving from the general to specific; William’s Wife has an extraordinary single-mindedness in its focus on one woman’s self-inflicted downfall. And Appius and Virginia is a little experimental in style as well as unusual in topic.

Against that backdrop, Trance By Appointment feels more ordinary in style and topic – though ‘ordinary’ is not a criticism in this case. Jean is certainly living an ordinary life: she is a working-class girl living in London, and that does mean that we have to put up with a little of Trevelyan’s attempts to paint a portrait of everyday, working-class Lond0n life (she even uses “You won’t ‘arf catch it if Mum sees you!”) She is good at this sort of milieu in William’s Wife but a little unconvincing in the outset of this novel.

But try not to let that hold you back – because we see Jean in a fascinating world. Simply to earn a little money, she becomes a sort of apprentice to ‘Madame Eva’ – a kind, canny woman who charges her clients to read palms, tarot cards, or a crystal ball. Her instructions are an interesting mix of showmanship and insight: she takes for granted that their service is inherently charlatan – but she also gives hints of how you can genuinely interpret people’s demeanour and their words to give accurate understandings of their future.

Jean is timid and uncertain, and stumbles her way through the initial readings – never quite understanding that any element of it might be fraud, despite Madame Eva’s best efforts. And then one day…

Jean set out the cards and started off reading them to her, and then, while she was talking, all at once it was as if the cards went big and misty and faded out, and she was looking all along a road that had sunshine at the end of it. She didn’t know any more until she came back the way she did when she was by herself and heard her own voice as if it had been talking. There were the cards still laid out in front of her, but she was sitting back in the chair and she hadn’t moved them from the first layout, hadn’t even turned up the wish.

She was going to do it when the girl got up and took her hand. “Oh, thank you,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “You have helped me such a lot.”

She put down her money and went out, and Jean went and told Madam Eva. She felt all in a daze.

Jean discovers that she has The Gift. She goes into a trance, without any recollection of what took place during it – except it clearly helps people. She then learns that her spirit guide, leading her into this realm, is a young girl called Daisy – the late little sister of Mr Mitch. In introducing us to Mr Mitch, Trevelyan doesn’t show her greatest moment of restrained subtlety: ‘Mr. Mitch was a bit fat, with a white face, and his hair was curly except that he oiled it down, and was starting to go bald on top, he brushed it across.’

Things progress, and Mr Mitch becomes increasingly controlling of Jean – including marrying her, and swiftly showing her little affection. His total disdain towards his offspring is a little exaggerated, perhaps. I’m sure such men exist, but I think he would have been a more interesting character had he been a little less full-throated in his hatred of Jean spending any time with their children, and his total lack of care for Jean’s wellbeing. Sometimes showing us the worst of humanity is, while possible, not paricularly likely.

The reader can see where the novel is going to go, more or less, and we see Jean’s descent into misery – not done as well or as gradually as the descent in William’s Wife, but engaging nonetheless. And there is a revelation in the latter part of the novel that truly shakes Jean’s outlook on her unasked-for talent, as well as asking wider questions about everything we’ve done so far. It was a decision on Trevelyan’s part that certainly made Jean a more compelling character.

Trance By Appointment is a short novel and I think that’s for the best – because, on its own terms and at a reasonable length, it works very well. Lacking the subtlety of character and plot in some of Trevelyan’s other novels, and the ambitious stylistic choices she makes elsewhere, it would have dragged had it been any longer. As it is, I can safely recommend Trance By Appointment as a good read – and, if not a final flourish in a fascinating career, at least a respectable culmination of a writing life that had rather better highlights.