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British Library Women Writers 13: A Pin To See The Peepshow by F. Tennyson Jesse

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I think A Pin To See The Peepshow (1934) is probably the British Library Women Writers title that was best-known before being republished. It wasn’t a household name, of course, but a lot of people have come across it for various reasons – the 1980s Virago reprint, a couple of TV adaptations, or the fact that Sarah Waters cited it as helping inspire her novel The Paying Guests.

We were really lucky to get it for the British Library Women Writers series. Or, rather, the people at the British Library who are in charge of such things are very talented – I think it was complicated to sort out the rights (since the copyright holder from the 1980s has since died). But they did it, and this much-sought-after book is once again easy to get hold of!

If you’re new to the novel, it is heavily based on the 1920s Thompson/Bywaters murder case. To quote the opening paragraphs of my afterword…

Like many novels, A Pin to See the Peepshow starts with a disclaimer: ‘Every character in this book is entirely fictitious, and no reference whatever is intended to any living person.’ The note is more disingenuous than such notes usually are, but one part is true: neither of the two main characters on whom the novel is based were any longer ‘living persons’. Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters had both been killed by hanging 11 years before the novel was published.

Not all the details of their lives match those of Julia and Leo. Edith had a sister, and her father outlived her, for instance, and Tennyson Jesse slightly closes the age gap between the lovers. But the gist of the case was the same: a husband was murdered by a jealous man in the throes of an adulterous affair – and a jury determined that both halves of the affair were responsible, and should be hanged. The trial was a cause célèbre that everyone was talking about and everyone had an opinion on.

It is clear that Jesse is very sympathetic to Julia/Edith. Julia is an intelligent, articulate woman who suffers from a poor background, unsympathetic family, and unpleasant husband. When she starts an affair with Leo, it feels taboo but also like an escape from the drudgery that she has been unfairly condemned to. When the murder case starts – surprisingly late in the novel, and it would feel like more of a spoiler if the novel weren’t so closely based on fact – we remain on Julia’s side. But Jesse doesn’t paint a simple black and white case. Julia may be ultimately an innocent, but she is a complex, flawed one. She’s very good on class – and the fact that Julia’s precise place in the class pecking order condemned her fate:

If only she had been higher or lower in the world! In the class above hers the idea of divorce would not have shocked, and a private income would even have allowed her and Carr to live together without divorce, and no one would have been unduly outraged. Had their walk in life been the lowest, had they been tramps or part of the floating population of the docks down London River, they could have set up in one room together, and no one thought twice about it.

I think A Pin To See The Peepshow is an astonishing work – it might not be my favourite of the titles in the series, but I think there’s a strong argument that it’s the best.

In writing my afterword, I enjoyed delving into the details of the original case more – seeing which bits Jesse chose to leave out, or amplify. Comparing Julia’s prose and Edith’s actual love letters was particularly illuminating. I found it quite complex to write the afterword while keeping reality and fiction separate, but hopefully it all made sense and it was certainly easy to choose which topic to write about. (Incidentally – the episode of ‘Tea or Books?’ that I’m proudest of is episode 34, where Rachel and I compared Jesse’s book with E.M. Delafield’s novel about the same case, Messalina of the Suburbs.)

I’m always wary of suggesting too many books for the series that have previously been reprinted, and there are three or four that were Virago Modern Classics at some point – so those ones have to really justify their place in this series. A Pin To See The Peepshow inarguably does that. I really hope that, now it is back in print, it stays there.

Others who got Stuck into this Book:

“A Pin to see the Peepshow is a memorable and sometimes chilling work which gets under the skin; and it’s also a brilliantly written and constructed novel, which is compelling reading.” – Karen, Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

“The most remarkable thing about this book though is the sustained insight it offers into a woman’s life and way of thinking, and how convincing the portrait of Julia is.” – Hayley, Desperate Reader

British Library Women Writers 12: Which Way? by Theodora Benson

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Two new British Library Women Writers titles have just been published, and I’m quite behind with keeping up to date with my posts about the previous ones. The new ones will turn up here before too long but, before that, let’s talk about the others!

Which Way? by Theodora Benson is the first book in the series where I didn’t have a copy previously. I read it many years ago in the Bodleian, and re-read it as a photocopy that the kind people at the British Library arranged, but it was impossible to get hold of otherwise. Which makes it feel all the more exciting to have rescued it.

I think I first read it after seeing a publisher’s advert – the premise intrigued me. I still think it’s a brilliant idea. Fans of the film Sliding Doors will recognise the idea – what if a small moment had been different? Something seemingly inconsequential could make a huge change in the way a life pans out.

For Claudia Heseltine in Which Way?, it’s choosing which invitation to accept. We get to know Claudia in the opening section of the novel, and it ends with her walking into a room with two letters and a phone call about to be answered. It’s a scene that is repeated a few times in the book – and each time she accepts a different invitation for the weekend.

There was a fire in the room, very comforting and gay. It threw a lovely sheet of orange on the big armchairs on each side of it….An antique clock marked time in a hushed monotone. Only the fire was alive, consuming its life – for what? Then the door opened and as Claudia came with hurried steps into the fire’s glow, two open letters in her hand, the telephone began ringing. She shut the door and turned up the lights.

What I particularly liked about Which Way? is that, though initially set up as a choice between three men, the different outcomes aren’t really about them. Yes, different paths lead Claudia to marriage or relationships or singleness, but what they really draw out of her are different ways to be a woman in the 1930s. Facets of her personality, occupations (domestic or otherwise), friendship groups, even taste in popular culture – all of these are influenced by the metaphorical door she chooses.

The main reason I wanted Which Way? to be part of the series is the innovation. There is nothing strictly fantastic here – Claudia doesn’t jump between timelines; she isn’t aware of the multiverse she inhabits – but it’s such a clever way to look at how circumstances can bring out latent aspects of a person.

Others who got Stuck into this Book:

“I read this book around two weeks ago, and it’s still hovering heavily in my thoughts. I highly, highly recommend it to anyone interested in women’s fiction or social history.” – Asha, A Cat, A Book, A Cup of Tea

“An excellent plot idea, then, and carried out impressively. But there’s more to enjoy here. It’s hard not to feel a sort of fascinated horror at the complete emptiness of Claudia’s life, or lives.” – Harriet, Shiny New Books

Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton

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I bought two copies of Fifty Sounds (2021) by Polly Barton in the year it was published – one for a friend and, because I couldn’t resist it, one for me. Not only was it that beguiling Fitzcarraldo white, adding to my growing pile of matching covers with diverse insides – but it was about languages. As a monoglot, I find the experience of becoming fluent in another language a total mystery, and absolutely fascinating. That is all the more true when an author writes about immersion in a language and culture, and even better if translation is involved. Polly Barton’s memoir (of sorts) was thus unmissable for me.

Fifty Sounds is about a lot of things, but the most obvious of them is Barton’s experiences moving to Japan to teach. The chapters are each headed with a ‘mimetic’ – close to what we’d call onomatopoeia in English, though Japanese has far more of them and the link between sound and meaning isn’t always immediately clear. And often the word has several different meanings, each of which can be traced back to some slippery integral sound-meaning, or may rely on subjectivity. Some examples of these chapter titles include ‘hiya-hiya: the sound of recalling your past misdemeanours’, ‘kyuki-kyuki: the sound of writing your obsession on a steamy tile, or the miracle becoming transparent’, and ‘shi’kuri: the sound of fitting where you don’t fit’.

Before Barton moved to Japan aged 21, she knew very little of the language or culture. It seems a very impulsive move – she cannot answer the questions she gets about why she chooses Japan. The surface answer is that a boyfriend convinced her they should both apply – though, as it happened, only Barton got a place. As you get to know her more in these pages, it’s a decision that embodies so much about the way Barton approaches situations: bravely, adventurously, perhaps unwisely. She doesn’t even go to Tokyo or somewhere that might be on a bucket list – she goes to a small island, and dives head-first into a period that seems absolutely overwhelming.

I loved Fifty Sounds for many reasons. As I’d hoped, Barton is so interesting on the topic of language-learning. The moment when she understands something she reads casually is described like an awakening. There are fits and starts as she gets closer to fluency – though ‘fluency’ is a concept she will examine in the book, as well as exploring what the stages between ignorance and fluency could be. And she is so good on the different personalities one might have in different languages, and what that phenomenon does for one’s sense of a stable identity.

Barton’s primary interest isn’t a clash of cultures – she finds the idea of exploring Japan only in relation to her own Englishness rather shallow and reductive – but she does write about how a language will interplay with a culture’s unspoken norms. And how much one may have to adopt a cultural viewpoint when one adopts a language. Here, for instance, is a conversation she has with Y – and older, married colleague, with whom she is having an affair:

That day, I had been reading something about kimi, which, the book said, is used by older men when speaking to subordinates at work or younger men, and also by men to women.

‘Is it true?’ I ask Y now of the above, and he nods. I actually end up asking him this question about a lot of things I’ve read in the textbook, like an idiot: is it really true?

‘But you don’t ever say kimi,’ I say. ‘I’ve never heard you say it.’

‘I could do,’ he says. ‘It’s kind of cute.’ And then he says, kimi, your hair is hanging in front of your face, and tucks it behind my ear.

And so, though I sense I am not allowed, I try it back. I call him kimi.

‘No,’ he shakes his head. ‘You can’t say it to me.’

‘Why?’ I say, in a way that is aiming to be cheeky and a little bit kittenish, but in fact makes me seem like a child. ‘Because you’re a man? Because you’d older than me?’

‘Yes,’ he says, serious. ‘It’s rude.’

‘But it’s not rude if you say it to me?’

‘No.’ He seems utterly unapologetic in a way that surprises me. I think I make a noise, some form of pff sound, and we get onto another conversation.

As that mention of her older, married boyfriend suggests, Barton doesn’t cloak anything. She is very open about her poor choices, indeed she often seems quite excoriating about herself in a way that makes Fifty Sounds as much confessional as linguistic exploration. It’s occasionally quite painful to read. As always with this sort of book, I can’t help feeling what the reactions were from friends and family (and exes) on publication day.

But I am not among that number, so I can simply admire the ambition and innovation of this book. It’s genre-bending, as so many of Fitzcarraldo’s output are, and Barton combines all the different influences with incredible success. I’ve previously loved Bleaker House by Nell Stevens and This Little Art by Kate Briggs, and Fifty Sounds feels rather like the meeting point of those two brilliant books. It is certainly an exceptional, and exceptionally interesting, achievement.

Two non-fiction titles I’ve read recently…

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Here are some very quick thoughts about a couple of non-fiction books I’ve read in the past few months. I expect a similar round-up of recent fiction reads will follow before too long – watch this space!

A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit 1858-1924 by Julia Briggs

I didn’t know much at all about E. Nesbit – only that I loved her books as a child, and then rediscovered her as an adult writer a few years ago, with the incomparably delightful The Lark. So I dove into Briggs’ book, knowing that Briggs was a renowned biographer and expecting a treat. And it was… maybe weird? The biography is very good in many respects, particularly Briggs’ acute literary eye. She melds critical analysis and biographical detail so well, often slipping off onto tangents that would feel irksome if they weren’t so well observed. Here’s a bit…

The contrast between E. Nesbit and Kenneth Grahame is revealing: Grahame, here [The Golden Age] and in The Wind in the Willows, creates an ideal fantasy world – dreamlike, safe and largely sealed off from the disappointments, embarrassments and sheer muddle of daily life, though paradoxically Grahame’s writing is at its most powerful when it hovers on the edge of acknowledging its own evasions. E. Nesbit’s fictional world never had the irresistible imaginative appeal that his has had, being at once less perfect and more vital. The world of her books is as elusive, confused, messy and absurd as the world of lived life. When she makes use of fantasy elements, whether in the form of a children’s game or as some magic power present in her story, her characters are constantly brought up against the hard edge of things-as-they-are, often with hilarious, and always with informative consequences.

I learned a lot about Nesbit’s associations with the Fabians, about her progressive left-wing politics, and (most unexpectedly and enjoyably, for me) the period where she devoted herself mainly to identifying the ‘real’ author of Shakespeare’s plays. What I could have done without were the many rather prurient passages devoted to the people that Nesbit or her husband had affairs with. Briggs doesn’t feel completely at home with the more gossipy parts of a biography, and perhaps overcompensates for that by flinging herself into them with abandon. I also found the darting back and forth to comparisons between Nesbit’s life and her books a bit tricky, since it meant we were introduced to works piecemeal, often with a half dozen fleeting mentions before they were introduced properly.

An interesting and forthright biography, and certainly an enjoyable read, but I think I might prefer the apparently more discreet and probably more chronological biography by Doris Langley Moore – which seems the source of many of the details here.

 

The Long Week-End by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge

This social history of the interwar period was published in 1940, so it’s impossible to imagine anything more hot off the press. It’s the sort of book I could either write several thousand words about, or a mere handful – and either one would conclude ‘get this book, have it on your shelf, dip in and out of it with delight’.

Graves and Hodge cover literature, art, sport, politics, religion, fashion, the press, and many more aspects of everyday life – taking us through all the years in detail, so we are left with specific understanding of the progression of all these elements, rather than an amorphous sense of what happened ‘in the interwar period’. Almost every page will have a detail you’ll want to share. I particularly liked the fact that movie subtitlers were known as ‘came-the-dawner’s – and this snapshot of a craze which was as short-lived as the more recent British examples of loombands, fidget spinners, or tanks of tiny fish to nibble your ankles in the middle of shopping centres:

In 1922 the craze was for a simple gambling device known as ‘Put and Take’. It was a small six-sided top which players, after putting money into a pool, each spun in turn; and then acted according to the order printed on the side that lay uppermost when it fell — ^put one more coin to the pool, or two or three; or took one or two; or. took all. People spun their tops on luncheon table, on the bars of pubs, on the covers of magazines in railway carriages. For a few months scarcely a home was without its top, then suddenly the game entirely ceased. The simpler the craze, the more universal its scope, and the swifter its end.

It’s an invaluable book. I only wish I could remember all the fascinating details I read – but since there is no through narrative here, it’s worth having on a coffee table to dip into at whim, and enjoy.

The Dogs Do Bark by Barbara Willard

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I can’t remember why I bought The Dogs Do Bark (1948), but it’s possible it was seeing a mention in passing on Scott’s Furrowed Middlebrow blog. There, he talked about it being a novel set in a seaside resort, and the title made me think it might be in a boarding house. Sorry, boarding house novel fans, it is not. But it is interesting in its own right.

There aren’t any dogs in the novel. Instead, the title comes from an idiom or poem or something. I’d never heard of it, but it is helpfully put as an epigraph to the book: ‘Hark, hark! The Dogs do bark! The Beggars are coming to Town. Some in rags, and some in tags, and some in velvet gowns.’ Eventually the meaning of all of this is explained, but I’m not sure it ever quite made sense.

The setting is St. Swithin’s-by-Sea, and Willard introduces the community very amusingly. I think her strongest, wittiest writing comes at the outset of the novel – the drama of events somewhat take over the archness with which she begins, but I loved this scene-setting:

The concert hall was full. St Swithin’s-by-Sea prided itself on an appreciation of the arts. It was a small, clean town, swept by south-west gales and great seas in winter-time, swept by trippers and red-faced holiday-makers in summer-time – a small town with a keen municipal conscience, which burgeoned in the shape of neat painted litter baskets, a picture gallery which was the bane of the ratepayers, a repertory theatre with a small subsidy, and fortnightly concerts in the autumn and spring. A visiting orchestra, under the baton of a conductor whisked rather unexpectedly into prominence by the BBC, had today brought forth a tribute in the form of pots of azaleas, which were spaced among the perennial ferns at the edge of the platform. The ladies of St. Swithin’s were very much in evidence, wearing their pearl earrings, their furs, their most responsible and intellectual bearing. The listened, flatteringly rapt, to a programme devoted without stint to the works of Grieg.

At the concert is Christine – an eager and passionate young woman, with the competing emotions of duty, romance, and honour. She is, I reiterate, young – young and naïve. Her sister Rosetta is neither of these things, married to a weak man she doesn’t much respect or like, though perhaps deep down she loves him. And all of them live with their domineering father and his mild, wise sister. Throw into the mix a devoted and slightly creepy butler, and that’s the uneasy household.

Mr Zeal – yes, Zeal is the family name – was injured in the First World War, and is a wheelchair user. He certainly doesn’t let that stand in the way of ruling his family with a rod of iron, particularly sapping the life out of his son-in-law. He is not cruel to them, but his jokes often have a sharp edge and other people’s feelings don’t factor in his decision making. Nobody seems to expect anything else.

With this set up, it’s rather a surprise that the main theme of the novel is… begging letters! It’s certainly a plot that I haven’t read anywhere else. In an era before spam emails and online fraud, the professional begging letter was the way in which the undiscerning kind could be swindled of their money. Of course, no doubt some people genuinely sent out pleas for money they needed. But, according to Zeal’s friend and local political candidate Crowther, there is an epidemic of wicked people using begging letters falsely. (Crowther’s son, by the way, is going out with Christine, and an engagement is on the cards.)

Crowther launches a campaign against such begging; Zeal thinks there is no problem with it. It all leads to the crux of the novel, where Zeal decides to trick Crowther. But there is more going on, under the surface…

I really enjoyed The Dogs Do Bark, and Willard’s writing is certainly very adept. As I hinted earlier, she does get a little melodramatic when the peaks and troths of the plot take over, and I’m not sure the stakes are quite as high as she thinks they are. While begging letters are a fascinatingly unusual topic for a novel, I think I’d have preferred them to have to bear a little less dramatic weight. A novel that just depicted life in St. Swithin’s-by-Sea, maintaining the dry style of the book’s opening, would have been a total delight. Apparently Willard was better known as a children’s historical fiction writer, and I can see that the approach she takes might well suit that genre and audience.

As it is, it was an enjoyable romp and all a bit silly – though not without poignant moments alongside. Certainly worth picking up if you come across it, if only because you’re unlikely to read anything from the 1940s quite like it.

#1954Club – not long now!

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Every time Karen and I run a ‘club’ year, I know there are people who wish they’d been warned earlier – so here you go!

There is just over a month to go until we ask everyone to read and review books from 1954, wherever you write about books. Any sort of book, any language. I always love our six-monthly club events, and 1954 is looking like a bumper year for my bookshelves.

Announcing the next club… – Stuck in a Book

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

The Initials in the Heart by Laurence Whistler

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I can’t quite remember why I bought The Initials in the Heart (1964) by Laurence Whistler back in 2012. It might be because of his connection with his brother Rex Whistler – though I didn’t know much about him then – or it might be because my friend Carol mentioned it. Either way, it spent almost exactly a decade on my shelves before I finally took it down. I don’t really know what I was expecting, since I didn’t know anything about it, but it certainly wasn’t this.

The Initials in the Heart is Whistler’s ode to his wife, an actress called Jill Furse. They courted and wed, but the marriage only lasted five years – Jill has ill health throughout their time together, and the end is written in from the beginning. We know, from the epigraph onwards, that this is a tribute from a man who only got to be a husband for a brief span.

Grief memoirs are very common now, and I find them fascinating and compelling. Whistler writes in a different mode. It truly is a tribute to a life, without dwelling on anything after the time they had together. It is less introspective, and perhaps less cathartic, but it does mean that joy and hopefulness can be experienced as Whistler experienced it. Here’s the opening:

The best thing my poetry ever did for me was to bring about the story of this book. But that is enough to compensate in advance for the inevitable death-bed recognition of failure.

To be. a poet! Not relinquishing this hope, from the age of fifteen or so until now when I was twenty-four, I published in November 1936 a third book of verse called The Emperor Heart, and at my elder brother Rex’s suggestion sent a copy to the novelist Edith Olivier at Wilton, that well-read, vivacious, slightly eccentric person who was his closest friend, though perhaps twice his age, and who lived in the Daye House, the converted dairy at one side of the park. Staying with her when it arrived was a young actress, then twenty-one, whose career of great promise on the London stage had been interrupted by illness—paratyphoid, it was said. 

Of course, I know many details about Edith Olivier’s friendship with Laurence’s brother Rex, from Anna Thomasson’s wonderful biography of them called A Curious Friendship. Maybe it was seeing Olivier’s name on the first page that made me buy this book, and my beloved author of The Love-Child does make occasional appearances throughout Whistler’s memoir. But this isn’t her story, and she chiefly serves as the introducer of the central couple.

There is a gentleness at the heart of this memoir. It is, softly and generously, a story of young love – of building a home together, and then several other homes as they move around. It is a story of war interrupting time together; it is a story of a young actress who is feted by many but whose health often denies her the opportunities she is given. Perhaps we see Jill in an idyllic light, from her husband who adored her, but the portrait of a kind, ambitious, thwarted woman comes alive. It is a skilled portrayal of someone who combined contentedness and discontent – somehow both resigned to her limitations while continually fighting against them. The illnesses she experienced are never completely clear, even down to the exact details of the one that cost her life. But those illnesses are the bare facts of Jill’s life: more important is the voice and the person. She kept diaries and wrote letters, and Whistler incorporates many of these – giving us a firm sense of who she was. Here is a passage she wrote while pregnant with their second child:

Last night I lay watching a troubled moon through the plane leaves, very peaceful and happy. There is something about a family house, ugly though it’s been made outside. I like thinking of my ancestors back in the 17th Century lying in bed and waiting for their children to be born. And particularly in the autumn it has a shabby melancholy that’s friendly and kind – great tawny drifts of leaves swirling in the weedy drive, and idiotic geese screaming in the wind from time to time. The leaves are beautiful, mobbing one’s feet in the wind, and lying like footprints on the stones. So I’m glad you arranged this. I have all your serene confidence to lean on. It’s stronger than anything else and makes me perfectly at rest.

Since this is the story of their relationship, and of Jill, other elements of Whistler’s story are skated over. He began to make money as a glass engraver (see, for instance, the cover of the book) but this path to success is only told piecemeal. He includes a little of his war experiences, but chiefly as they mean separation from Jill. I think this approach was wise. It means the story of Laurence and Jill is not diluted.

Whistler writes beautifully, with occasional striking turns of phrase. This moment, in his initial shock of grief, really moved me: ‘I went back to my room, knowing all privation in a moment, and as yet nearly nothing about it. It was like dying, I imagine – at once too strange and familiar to explain – and it was, in a way, dying.” Throughout, his prose is sensitive and perceptive, deeply personal while remaining calm and evenly paced.

The Initials in the Heart is an unusual little book. It’s special.

Project 24: Books 2 and 3

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That was a longer break than intended – but don’t worry, Covid didn’t hit me all that hard. The fatigue was the worst part, but the whole thing was over within a week. Thank goodness for vaccines! Then I went off on holiday for a week to a converted railway station. It was with the same group that went away in early March 2020, in fact, so it felt like a sign of normality creeping back into our lives.

On the way there, we stopped off at Astley Book Farm. It’s one of those bookshops that is more enjoyable for the experience than the stock, necessarily, though the stock is vast and affordable so you’re bound to find something to read. It’s a converted farm that is now a lengthy warren of book-filled rooms, and their café is the best I’ve found in a bookshop. Soup, toasties, simply enormous pieces of cake.

There were lots of books I’d probably have taken home if I weren’t Project 24-ing (only buying 24 books this year), but two really stood out…

House Happy by Muriel Resnik

The turnover isn’t massive at Astley Book Farm, and I often find myself mulling over books that I reluctantly left behind on my previous trip. I’ve picked up House Happy every time I’ve been to Astley, over the past five or so years. It was a little more than I’d usually spend on a book (though rather less than it is selling for online), and Project 24 meant I could afford to splurge a little.

I was drawn in by the lovely, lively cover – but also by the description on the jacket flap. ‘It all start with an enormous bed. Lucy Butler bought it in a secondhand store on impulse, a force which activated most of her decisions.’ Turns out it is too big for her apartment, and so she has to house hunt (my favourite thing in a novel) – and finds a dream house she can’t afford.

Murder on the Second Floor by Frank Vosper

I hadn’t heard of Vosper, who is more famous as an actor (Wikipedia tells me), but the opening paragraph cried out to me:

Meet Sylvia Armitage. She is the heroine of this story. Sylvia is not reclining gracefully in a hammock, attired in a simple gown of flowered muslin, beneath a cherry-laden tree in a quaint, old-world garden. Neither is she sitting on a table, swinging her long, slim, graceful legs, with a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in a long holder in the other, saying shocking things about biological urges to a horrified aunt. She is not even in a notorious night-club in New York, standing on a table, attired in less than half a bathing-dress, with a gentleman’s silk hat at a rakish angle on her wicked little head, drinking her own health – in such liberal potations as must seriously impair it – surrounded by fifty intoxicated lovers in paper hats, carrying a dozen balloons apiece. No; at the risk of opening our story in a drab and disappointing manner, the truth must be told. Sylvia Armitage is washing-up. Yes, washing-up, in the scullery in the basement of a most ordinary boarding-house in a most ordinary street in Bloomsbury.

I couldn’t leave it there, with that paragraph, could I? I’m delighted with all three of my Project 24 purchases so far, though have yet to read any of them. But I think I’ll remedy that before long – but which to start with?

StuckinaBook’s Weekend Miscellany

StuckinaBook All 29 Comments

Friends, I have Covid. At the time of writing (Friday evening) it isn’t too bad – coldy symptoms and exhausted – so hopefully it’ll stay that way. Hopefully the days of isolation will help me get through some books, though early signs suggest it might be better at tackling the Netflix queue.

They: The Lost Dystopian 'Masterpiece' (Emily St. John Mandel) By Kay DickAnyway, whether you’re at home or out and about, here is the usual Miscellany to help kick off your weekend….

1.) The link – I am heartbroken that Neighbours is facing the axe. For those not in the know, it’s an Australian soap opera – and, except my family, has been the longest constant in my life. I’ve been watching for 24 years, and love mocking how silly it is, but love it all the same. If you fancy signing a petition to keep it alive, then what’s the worst that can happen?

2.) The book – everyone is talking about the newly rediscovered They by Kay Dick, reprinted by different publishers in the UK and US in recent weeks. I only know Kay Dick for her interviews with Ivy Compton-Burnett and Stevie Smith in Ivy and Stevie, but if They is even a tenth as good as people are saying, then I’m sure it’s worth seeking out.

3.) The blog post – I was so delighted to see Asha’s review of Which Way? by Theodora Benson at her excellently titled blog, A Cat, A Book, and A Cup of Tea. And those are exactly the three things that are going to occupy the next part of my evening.