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.
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
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.
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?
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.
Anyway, 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.
As mentioned, I’m only buying 24 books this year. Two a month. We’re nearly halfway through February, and I have bought my first book – so I am doing well with my rations!
It’s always interesting (to me, at least) to see which books come to the fore in a Project 24 year. It’s an opportunity to buy some of the books that might otherwise not be in my budget, and probably not so much the year for experimenting on new names – and the first book I bought, by post, is by an author I adore.
In our recent Tea or Books? episode, Claire mentioned that The Flowering Thorn is one of her favourite books by Margery Sharp. I do have quite a few unread Sharps, but I didn’t have that one. And when I googled to see which secondhand copies were available, I came across this one. Well, I couldn’t be expect to resist that cover, could I?
I’m very happy with this one as a Project 24 title, and I’m looking forward to diving in before too long.
I can’t remember if I’ve talked about Project 24 in 2022 yet – basically, I’m only going to buy 24 books (for myself) this year. I’ve done it a few times in the past, and succeeded by the skin of my teeth. I’ve found that I buy a lot more books for other people in Project 24 years…
Why? It’s not a budget thing – it’s because I don’t have space. I live in a very small, very full flat. I also have about 1700 books I haven’t read, so I do realise that I won’t run out of things to enjoy.
Because it’s primarily about space, I’m not limiting the number of audiobooks I’m buying. If I read e-books, they’d be fine too.
It’s interesting to get to the end of the year and see which books where deemed important enough to get hold of. So, yes, I will be keeping you up to date with what I buy in 2022, but I thought it would also be fun to look back at 2017 and see how many of the 24 books I’ve read.
(Incidentally, I’d read 10 before 2022 ended – so I’ve got a good start.)
1. Dearest Andrew by Vita Sackville-West
Yes – I read this collection of letters more or less as soon as I bought it.
2. Norman Douglas by H. Tomlinson
No – I collect Dolphin Books whenever I see them, but this is one of the ones I’ve not yet read.
3. The Runaway by Claire Wong
Yes – my friend Claire wrote this one, and I read it straightaway. Though have yet to read her next novel, and must.
4. The Pleasures of Reading: a Booklovers’ Alphabet by Catherine Ross
No – though it’s been a while since I read a book about reading, so…
5. A Winter Away by Elizabeth Fair
Yes – bought this one for a podcast episode, so read it pretty quickly.
6. Sunlight in the Garden by Beverley Nichols
Yes – another one I read instantly, because I had the other two in the trilogy and adored them.
7. The Pelicans by E.M. Delafield
Yes – I really kept pace with buying and reading in Project 24, as apparently I also finished this one before 2017 was over.
8. Country Notes by Vita Sackville-West
No – still waiting, still enticing.
9. All the Dogs of My Life by Elizabeth von Arnim
Yes – having accidentally bought a book I already had, I have since read it. Really interesting, and quite troubling.
10. Catchwords and Claptrap by Rose Macaulay
Yes – I think I’d read it before I bought it, in the Bodleian, but have re-read it since.
11. The ABC of Authorship by Ursula Bloom
Yes – a wonderfully out-of-touch book about becoming an author – that I quoted in the afterword to Tea Is So Intoxicating.
12. Jacob’s Room is Full of Books by Susan Hill
Yes – loved this sequel to Howards End is on the Landing.
13. Insomniac City by Bill Hayes
Yes – a lovely memoir by Oliver Sacks’ widower.
14. Letters From Klara by Tove Jansson
Yes – I’ll always buy, and instantly read, any new translation of Jansson’s fiction.
15. ABC of Cats by Beverley Nichols
No – though honestly don’t know why, since it combines Nichols and cats, two of my favourite things.
16. Stephen Leacock by Margaret McMillan
Yes – and with special memories of visiting Leacock’s house.
17. My Remarkable Uncle by Stephen Leacock
No – I think it’s a bit different to the other Leacock books I’ve got, so should experiment.
18. Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson
Yes – in fact, I finished it earlier this week.
19. The Equations of Love by Ethel Wilson
No – but even keener, now that I’ve read and really appreciated Swamp Angel.
20. A Journey Round My Skull by Frigyes Karinthy
No – it’s an odd one to be the right mood for, but its day will come.
21. Letters of Margaret Laurence and Adele Wiseman
No – I used to have a book of letters on the go all the time, but it’s been a while.
22. David of Kings by E.F. Benson
No – and it is definitely too long since I read an EFB.
23. Aspects of E.M. Forster by Rose Macaulay
No – if I’m honest, this felt more like one for the shelves, to dip into, than one I’d necessarily read cover to cover.
24. E.M. Delafield by Maurice McCullen
No – and why not? This study seems so up my street. I’m not entirely sure where I put it…
So, I’ve read 13 – just over half, but only 3 of those were between 2018 and today…
Have I learned anything from this exercise? Sadly, no. But it was fun.
My first Project 24 book of 2022 has been bought online, and I’ll share what it is when it arrives. Wish me luck!
I’m going to do a slightly different weekend miscellany this week, largely because I had so many contenders for the blog post that I wanted to include. So this is just a round-up of reviews that I wanted to draw your attention to…
D.E. Stevenson, Margery Sharp – and a special guest!
In this episode, we have a special guest in the form of Claire – you’ll know her blog The Captive Reader. We were delighted to have her as a guest, especially as she also came up with our topics.
In the first half, we discuss books about grief – and whether or not we are drawn to them. In the second half, we compare two novels with similar premises: Five Windows by D.E. Stevenson and Four Gardens by Margery Sharp. Both, thankfully, have recently been republished by Dean Street Press.
Get episodes a couple of days early at Patreon, and listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your podcast app of choice. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we’d really appreciate them.
Get in touch at teaorbooks@gmail.com with any suggestions or feedback – we love hearing from you.
The books and authors we mention in this episode are:
Maeve Kerrigan series by Jane Casey
The Good Companions by J.B. Priestley
Let’s Get Physical by Danielle Friedman
Ghosts: A Cultural History by Susan Owens
Un Noel de Maigret by Georges Simenon
Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson
Dishonoured Bones by John Trench
John Buchan
Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson
Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson
Margaret Atwood
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott
Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery
Enid Blyton
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill
Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt
Let Not The Waves of the Sea by Simon Stephenson
Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
All The Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
A Half-Baked Idea by Olivia Potts
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
Anthony Trollope
A Magnificent Obsession by Helen Rappaport
After the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport
These For Remembrance by John Buchan
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
In the Mountains by Elizabeth von Arnim
Mrs Tim of the Regiment by D.E. Stevenson
The Stone of Chastity by Margery Sharp
Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield
Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp
The Gipsy in the Parlour by Margery Sharp
Britannia Mews by Margery Sharp
The English Air by D.E. Stevenson
Green Money by D.E. Stevenson
Listening Valley by D.E. Stevenson
Miss Read
Moon Tiger by Penelope Tiger
The Diviners by Margaret Laurence
I don’t seem to be finishing many paper books at the moment, but I am tearing through audiobooks. If I continue at this rate, I might end up listening to as many books this year as physically reading them. Thanks Audible Plus! (Not a sponsor, but I’m open to offers.)
Here are three more that I’ve listened to recently…
Surprised by Joy (1955) by C.S. Lewis
I’ve actually got the book on my shelves, but I decided to listen instead. I thought it was about his encounter with Jesus and decision to become a Christian – and it is, but only at the end of what is really a memoir of his childhood and early adulthood. With emphasis on childhood. It takes us through his days at various different schools, and really delves into what makes these positive or negative experiences. Nobody has better expressed how awful P.E. is, and what a blessing it is not to have to do it anymore.
I really enjoyed this book, and Lewis’s gentle thoughtfulness. The only downside with the audiobook is that I think it would have been better in Lewis’s (presumably) Northern Irish accent. The fact that the narrator was English was particularly odd when Lewis was talking about feeling out of kilter in England, as an outsider.
Come Again (2020) by Robert Webb
One could hardly ask for a better narrator than Olivia Colman, and in Come Again she often juggles three or four distinct accents in conversation with each other. She is brilliant, but sadly the book isn’t. It’s about a middle-aged woman called Kate whose life has fallen apart in the wake of her husband’s death from a brain tumour that had been growing for decades – but with almost no symptoms. She wishes she could go back to when they met at university, and warn him. And one morning she wakes up to find out that her wish has come true – she is waking up on the day she met him, as a 19-year-old.
This part of the novel is brilliant. Kate is snarky, funny, and a complex emotional character. The book is often very poignant, as well as delightfully funny (though some tangents on Brexit and Donald Trump, while I wholeheartedly agree with Webb’s/Kate’s stance, don’t really cohere). The trouble is that it doesn’t work at all with the rest of the novel – which is about gangsters trying to track down a memory stick that exposes the secrets of a powerful man. The final quarter of the novel, particularly, is very weak – car chases, fights, and all sorts of nonsense that lets down all the emotionally sophisticated narrative that preceded it. If only an editor had spoken to Webb about not putting ALL his ideas in one novel.
The Adventures of Sally (1922) by P.G. Wodehouse
Oh, inject Wodehouse straight into my veins. What a delightful experience. The plot scarcely matters – it includes a surprise inheritance, various actresses, a theatre impresario, boxing, jaunts across the Atlantic, broken engagements, irritating brothers, love at first sight and all the other usual Wodehouse ingredients. Sally is funny, spirited, and with a lovely dryness. As usual, it is Wodehouse’s mastery of the humorous sentence that, time and again, makes this novel a hoot. I particular loved Ginger and his inability to translate his own brand of slang.
He glanced over his shoulder warily. “Has that blighter pipped?”
“Pipped?”
“Popped,” explained Ginger.
As before, anything you’d recommend from the Audible Plus catalogue? Do let me know! (I think I paid £3 for Webb’s book, but the other two were free.)