1920s

Confusion by Stefan Zweig

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ConfusionDo you ever go to a bookshop and love the displays and feel of it so much that you want to buy something almost as a souvenir? I don’t often buy new books, but a morning browsing in the London Review of Books bookshop last September (when I had a lovely time with Rachel, incidentally) was so fun that I wanted to pick something to take home with me. And I couldn’t resist the beauty of Pushkin Press editions, and an author I’d been meaning to try for ages. Step forward Confusion (1927) by Stefan Zweig, translated from the German by Anthea Bell. I think the cover art was created by Petra Borner, as she gets a note on the jacket (“Her roots are prominent in her work, which often merges natural and magical elements, with bold lines and colours.”) It is definitely lovely.

Confusion is a novella, and I don’t think it’s particularly at the forefront of the Zweig’s literary reputation – but I thought it told a very interesting tale. It is from the perspective of a revered and ageing Languages and Literature Professor, Roland, who has (as his brief introduction explains) recently been given a Festschrift dedicated to him by his department; ‘nothing short of a complete biographical record’. It is this gift that makes him feel an oversight:

The carefully compiled index comprises two hundred names – and the only one missing is the name of the man from whom all my creativity derived, who determined the course my life would take, and now calls me back to my youth with redoubled force. The book covers everything else, but not the man who gave me the gift of language and with whose tongue I speak: and suddenly I feel to blame for this craven silence.

And that takes us to the rest of the book. One of my pet literary peeves is a book which starts with the present day and then leaps back to the past, to wind back to the present – but in Confusion the present day is really only a vantage for stepping back – and that backward glance only encompasses a short period of time. A period that was extremely influential in Roland’s life.

The story is simple, really. After a brief stint as a rather riotous student at one university, more interested in finding willing local girls to share his bed than fine minds to share his study, Roland is asked to leave. A little reluctantly, he enrols in another university – and eventually goes along to a lecture, not expecting very much.

He is immediately beguiled. The lecturer – I want to say that we never learn his name, but it’s equally possible that I just don’t remember it – weaves a tale around literature that captivates Roland. The way he delivers the talk transfixes Roland, introducing him to theories and perspectives and attitudes that leave him excited and desperate for more. (Sidenote: this is the sort of teaching experience one sees occasionally in fiction; I never had it – but I am certainly grateful to Mrs Walker, Miss Little, and Mr Brooks – the teachers who most excited me in my subject throughout high school. Thanks y’all, even though you’ll never see this. I’m not sure I ever had quite that touch-paper moment at university, but that’s perhaps because I didn’t need it; I was already in love with literature. And that, perhaps, dates back to Miss McGovern in Year One.)

But the relationship does not stay purely academic. Roland and the teacher become friends, and he is welcomed into their domestic life – meeting the teacher’s wife too. She is young, dignified, kind, and unhappy. Roland cannot help getting involved in their lives.

From then on I became attentive in a new way; hitherto, my boyish veneration of the teacher whom I idolized had seen him so much as a genius from another world that I had entirely omitted to think of his private, down-to-earth life. With the exaggeration inherent in any true enthusiasm, I had imagined his existence as remote from all the daily concerns of our methodically ordered world. And just as, for instance, a man in love for the first time dares not undress the girl he adores in his thoughts, dares not think of her a natural being like the thousands of others who wear skirts, I was disinclined to venture on any prying into his private life: I knew him only in sublimated form, remote from all that is subjective and ordinary. I saw him as the bearer of the word, and the embodiment of the creative spirit. Now that my tragicomic adventure had suddenly brought his wife across my path, I could not help observing his domestic and family life more closely; indeed, although against my will, a restless, spying curiosity was aroused within me.

Confusion is so brief that I don’t want to spoil the denouement, though it is a natural conclusion to what has gone before and certainly isn’t played for shock. But the way it is told is what is important – and Zweig’s writing (in the hands of Anthea Bell) is beautiful, rhythmic, and with the natural balance and sensitivity of the born storyteller.

So, Confusion probably isn’t regarded amongst Zweig’s foremost fictions – or, who knows, for all I know it is – but I certainly loved reading it. And now I need to resist the urge to buy all of his books in Pushkin editions and no other.

The Other One by Colette

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The Other OneDark Puss! I did it! I read a novel by Colette! I think I remember you, or someone, suggesting that this wasn’t the best one to start with – but The Other One was the novel on my shelf, so it was the one I read. And, better yet, I liked it!

The Other One had a couple of things stacked against it before I started. Firstly, I haven’t had the best of luck with French literature (this novel was published in 1929 as La Seconde and translated by Elizabeth Tait and Roger Senhouse, at least in my edition; I don’t know enough about translation to know if they are commonly associated with Colette. Confusingly, a previous novel was translated as The Other Woman.)  Secondly, it’s about a love triangle – and I find novels about the agonies of people committing adultery exceptionally tedious.

So, why did this one work for me? (Spoilers ahead.) Perhaps primarily because, for the most part, nobody is suffering any agonies at all. Indeed, I spent much of the novel thinking that this was an amicable arrangement for all parties – and I’m still not sure if that was me being duped by Colette, or missing some signals that Fanny wasn’t aware of her husband’s affair. Because when she does become aware, there are some very poignant, excellently handled scenes. More of that anon.

The novel concerns Farou, a theatre impresario who is of the unattractive the-genius-must-be-tolerated variety. Unattractive to the reader, that is, or at least this reader; women seem unable to resist him. The two women in question are far more appealing, nuanced characters. His wife Fanny is controlled, witty, and covers selfishness with charm. Her confidante and companion is Jane, who is Farou’s secretary and mistress, but who admires Fanny as vehemently as she admires Fanny’s husband.

So, yes, I’m still puzzling over whether or not we’re supposed to think that Fanny knows what’s going on. But there is a stark scene about two thirds of the way through this short novel where Fanny spies the two together in the bathroom, and after that her poise is shattered. All comes out, but it isn’t the flinging-plates-and-screaming of stereotype or soap opera. One of my favourites moment in The Other One came during the scene where Fanny lays her accusation before Jane:

The violent slamming of a door in the flat interrupted her. The pair of them, their hands on their hips, in a pose of acrimonious argument, listened to it.

“It’s not him,” Jane said at last. “If it were he, we’d have heard the outer door first.”

“It makes very little noise since the new draught-excluders were fixed,” were Fanny. “In any case, he never comes in here before dinner.”

This sort of domestic detail, at this crucial moment, was tensely funny – as well as revealing a great deal about the dynamic between these women, even in a situation like this. Colette has really built up complex portraits of these women, and the novel seems much more about their dynamic than it is about Farou (or about his son, who is also in love with Jane, in a subplot that lent a bit of depth but not much else).

Oh, and the writing is pretty lovely throughout. Here was another bit I highlighted (and by ‘highlighted’ I, of course, mean that I made a tiny note in pencil):

There they stayed till lamp-time, shoulder against shoulder, with few words passing, silently pointing to a bat, a star maybe, listening to the faint fresh breeze in the trees, imagining the reddening glow of the sunset they never saw unless they climbed the hill opposite.

I’ve heard from Colette aficionados that The Other One isn’t necessarily the best or most exciting place to start with Colette, but I was long overdue reading a book by her, and this one was on my shelf in Oxford. And if this one isn’t considered particularly special amongst her output, then I’m in for a treat – because I thought it was great! I can only imagine how much I’ll enjoy her writing when she has her sights on a topic that I find more interesting, given how successfully she convinced me with this one.

 

Mist and other ghost stories by Richmal Crompton

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MistAt Christmas, a very kind lady (and fellow bibliophile) living in the village next to my parents’ village gave me a copy of Mist and other stories (1928) by Richmal Crompton. It was published last year in a nice (limited) edition by Sundial Press, in a series called Sundial Supernatural. I’ve been aware of this collection for many years, but it was virtually unobtainable – so this reprint is very welcome.

You might be surprised to hear the name ‘Richmal Crompton’ and the word ‘supernatural’ mentioned together. She is, of course, chiefly remembered as the author of the William books, starting with Just William; in our corner of the blogosphere, she may also be known for her addictive domestic novels featuring wide casts of family members or villagers. Yet, though Crompton often used the William books to tease those who believed in the occult (who can forget the spiritualists she lampoons in those stories?) she had a longstanding interest in the occult herself.

In novels, this only came to the fore in The House (published as Dread Dwelling in the US), which I was lucky enough to borrow from someone a while ago. In that novel, the evil spirit of a house manages to terrorise its inhabitants. As Richard Dalby writes in his introduction to this collection, The House presages works like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, but it was also a theme very much in the air of the time.

It’s also returned to often in Mist and other stories; houses and their inhabitants have inextricable links or apparent enmities. Here, for instance, is a section from ‘Marlowes’:

It was a bitter disappointment to us. We’d looked forward so long to this. We’d found exactly the house we’d wanted. And then – it wouldn’t have us. We decided at the end of the first month that we couldn’t stand it. We’d have to go. You can’t live in an atmosphere of hatred like that. We felt bewildered and unspeakably wretched. We couldn’t sleep. We weren’t going to try to find another house. We wanted this and no other, and as this didn’t want us we’d have to back to America. Often when we were out on the fresh sunny downs behind the house the whole thing seemed ridiculous.

You’ll be pleased to know that things work out ok for them, once they’ve sorted out some of the anxieties the house has about its present and former occupants.

More often, the stories here deal with love triangles – often a previous spouse or lover haunting the current one, whether as a ghost or through possession. ‘Harry Lorrimer’ doesn’t deal with a previous lover, but does include possession:

They were not Harry Lorrimer’s eyes. Or, rather, they were Harry Lorrimer’s eyes in shape and colouring, but – it was not Harry Lorrimer who looked out of them. And there was worse. For the eyes were the eyes of a man without a soul. And if you’ve never seen eyes like that then pray God you never may.

I was a bit worried that the stories would be scary, particularly since I read most of them on dark winter evenings – but I needn’t have worried. Those looking for stories in the manner of M.R. James will be disappointed, but I welcomed stories that were interested in the psychology and minutiae of dealing with the supernatural, rather than trying to scare the reader.

Crompton, bless her, doesn’t do twists. In none of these stories was I shocked. The good people invariably remain good; the bad people are clearly bad. Never does it turn out that the haunted damsel was deviously behind everything all along – which could have been quite fun, thinking about it, but it was also reassuring to see short stories about ghosts that are preoccupied with other things than terror. Essentially, it is precisely how a domestic novelist would approach the occult.

 

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (#Woolfalong)

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Thank goodness it’s a leap year, as this helpful 29 February means I’ve just snuck into the January/February bracket for posting my first contribution to Ali’s Woolfalong – more on that here. Basically, in these first two months, the aim was to read (or reread) either Mrs Dalloway or To The Lighthouse – the two most famous Woolf novels. Being a massive Woolf fan, I was delighted with the opportunity to reread.

To The Lighthouse

This is, I think, the fourth time I’ve read To The Lighthouse (1927), but the first time I’ve done so since about 2009. Would I still love it as much? Short answer: yes. Slightly longer answer: I seem to need more of a focused opportunity to read Woolf than I used to. Perhaps my brain has become more scrambled, but I found I needed a bit more concentration than usual to properly appreciate her prose – but it more than pays off.

It is often said that Woolf novels have little plot. Certainly, despite multiple reads, I couldn’t remember a great deal about what happened in To The Lighthouse. (And yet, in a moment I won’t spoil in this review, it is the only novel at which I have ever gasped aloud in shock at something that happens, and the ingenious way that it is told.) Essentially, the Ramsay family and some hangers-on are staying by the coast, waiting to see whether or not they can travel to the lighthouse the next day – and that is the starting point for conversations, musings, changes, hatreds, heartaches, observations. And what a starting point:

“Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow,” said Mrs. Ramsay. “But you’ll have to be up with the lark,” she added.

To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail, within touch. Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystallise and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests, James Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy stores, endowed the picture of a refrigerator, as his mother spoke, with heavenly bliss.

I only meant to quote up to ‘…within touch’, but I couldn’t stop. It’s such beautiful, such rich writing. Woolf uses words and sentences with an extraordinary sense of their patterns and waves, forming sentences that flow in and out – darting here and there; observing and reflecting – until the simplest moments become daring composite images of the person concerned. The worst writers are those that imitate Woolf and get it wrong; the best writer of the 20th century (to my mind) is Woolf. Her strength is seeing past the surface of a simple word or action, and delving into every nuance.

This is also why readers will tend to love or loathe Woolf. If you read for plot, there is little for you. If you like prose always to be sparse and effective (a style I also love), then Woolf will probably rankle. If you like to read quickly, then you’ll have to learn to slow yourself down to appreciate Woolf – I certainly had to this time around (perhaps I read faster than I used to?) – but I was encouraged by this passage about reading towards the end of To The Lighthouse:

But he was absorbed in it, so that when he looked up, as he did now for an instant, it was not to see anything; it was to pin down some thought more exactly. That done, his mind flew back again and he plunged into his reading. He read, she thought, as if he were guiding something, or wheedling a large flock of sheep, or pushing his way up and up a single narrow path; and sometimes he went fast and straight, and broke his way through the bramble, and sometimes it seemed a branch struck at him, a bramble blinded him, but he was not going to let himself be beaten by that; on he went, tossing over page after page.

Isn’t that glorious? Time and again, for almost any experience she documents, Woolf is able to explore and unravel more than the moment suggests. Her descriptions aren’t always intuitive, but they reveal more than any other author I’ve read; there is infinite richness here.

Of particular note are the ways Woolf documents the evolving relationships between Mr Ramsay and his son James, the latter of whom harbours passionate but silent hatred. (‘Hating his father, James brushed away the tickling spray with which in a manner peculiar to him, compound of severity and humour, he teased his youngest son’s bare leg.’) Equally wonderful are the scenes of Lily the artist, looking at her canvas and battling against feelings of failure and creative obstacles.

The edition I read was the Oxford World’s Classics pictured above, which is lovely to look at and to read, but David Bradshaw’s notes are eccentric to say the least. I can write now (since my DPhil is over) that he took my first year viva, and was so aggressive and discouraging – not to mention unscholarly, in a rude criticism based on his confusing of two different books – that I almost quit my research afterwards. I  was not predisposed to enjoy his editing, therefore, but I hope this isn’t colouring my view of his footnotes, which feel rather phoned in and are often facile (who needs to know, for instance, Bradshaw’s hypothetical musings on why the rent is to low?), though there are some useful points among them. But there are so many editions of To The Lighthouse out there that you can more or less have your choice of them.

The important thing is, I think, that you try her. Try her fiction, and try her non-fiction (which we’ll get to later in the Woolfalong). Perhaps you’ll love her, perhaps you’ll hate her, but if you’re in the former camp, it will change your reading life forever and add a depth and dimension to your experience of fiction that no other author I’ve read has been able to match.

Disappointing myself (with The Age of Innocence)

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Age of InnocenceYou know when there’s a book that you really assume you’re going to love, and you end up not loving it? Everybody you know who usually shares your taste are big fans; the author seems right up your street, but… it doesn’t work. And it’s not just the disappointment of reading a book that doesn’t hit home – it’s the added disappointment in yourself, for somehow not measuring up to your own expectations.

I’ve given the game away in the post title. It’s The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

For those who don’t know, The Age of Innocence is about 1870s upper-class New York (published in 1920, in four serialised parts, and then as a novel) and particularly about Newland Archer, his fiancée May, and the mysterious woman (Ellen Olenska) who catches his eye. It’s basically your classic love triangle, surrounded by the details and mores of society.

The positives: there are occasional lines that I loved, where Wharton lets her slightly barbed wit or satire come through. This one was a joy, about an opera:

She sang, of course, “M’ama!” and not “he loves me,” since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

Love it. That’s in the first few pages of the novel, and gave me hope – but I found that we lost that, and instead were treated to the minutiae of 1870s etiquette and the minutiae of Newland Archer’s ummings and ahhings. Now, the etiquette thing I could cope with. If Wharton had been writing about the 1920s, I’d probably have loved it. But so much of The Age of Innocence seems to be implicitly drawing a distinction between the 1870s and the 1920s of Wharton’s original audience that the 2010s are out of kilter with whatever framework she is building and conclusions she is coming to.

As for Newland Archer, well…

This was a book group choice, and a few people commented on the fact that he’s not a very nice person. He’s certainly unkind, selfish, and hypocritical – not the ‘charming, tactful, enlightened’ that my edition’s blurb claims; is it being sarcastic? – but none of that matters. A great book can be written about an unpleasant person. I could read about Lady Catherine de Burgh for days. The characters in The Age of Innocence committed a far worse crime in my eyes. I found them all boring.

If the crux (or a crux – can you have more than one crux?) of a novel is whether a man chooses the woman he loves with the messy past or the woman he likes and has Society’s approval, then it’s essential that the reader cares. And millions of readers obviously have cared. This book is a classic, after all, and I know plenty of people who love it. But… I just wasn’t bothered. I didn’t want to spend any time reading about these people. I couldn’t even tell the difference between most of the supporting cast, who lived in one identical rarefied building after another.

Perhaps all this would have been saved if I’d been able to get along with Wharton’s writing. This isn’t my first Wharton – I read Ethan Frome years ago – but I don’t remember what I thought of that. There’s something in her style that I find curiously obfuscatory. It was a bit like looking at something through translucent plastic, or trying to follow an autocue that was moving too fast. I couldn’t connect.

Frustratingly, I couldn’t work out why the style didn’t work for me. Clearly Wharton is a good writer. She isn’t even the Henry James-esque ‘good’ writer whose sentences are so laboured down with clauses that they’re unreadable. And it’s certainly not anything like being the wrong age or the wrong nationality, or any of those slightly silly reasons that people sometimes come up with. I didn’t hate it, but I certainly didn’t enjoy it. I confess to being disappointed with myself.

Oh well. Chalk this one up to experience, I suppose, and a recognition that sharing 90% of a person’s taste won’t account for the other 10%.

Which books have you found leave you cold when you were expecting to love them?

 

Introduction to Sally by Elizabeth von Arnim

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Reprints Issue 8

I really did mean to review Introduction to Sally (1926) back when I read it before I attended the Elizabeth von Arnim conference last year, but… oops. I don’t think it’s one of her best regarded novels, but I thought it was fantastic – and heard a great paper on it too. It’s rather more high concept than the others I’ve read: essentially, what would happen if a hyperbolically beautiful woman was born in a working-class environment? What if a Greek goddess came to life – but only with the looks, not with any of the powers or bravado?

Spoilers: it doesn’t go particularly well.

This novel makes an intriguing counterpoint to Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm’s 1910 novel about a woman so attractive that all the undergraduates at Oxford University fall in love with her; Sally, likewise, attracts every man who sees her. The difference is that Zuleika welcomes and expects it: Sally would just like to get on with her life, and humble shopkeeper Mr Pinner (her father) is just keen that she gets married quickly, to avoid being taken advantage of by the nearby Cambridge university undergraduates. As the opening line states with typical von Arnim panache, ‘Mr Pinner was God-fearing man, who was afraid of everything except respectability.’

We start with a quick back story: Sally is short for Salvatia, being a much-longed-for daughter. Her mother sadly dies, and Mr Pinner is anxious and fraught, and not the sort of man who could put a defence against very much. Sally is docile and naive, unaware of the affect her beauty has as she grows older. Her naivety becomes quite the hallmark of the novel; she is as exaggeratedly simple and good as she is beautiful, making this all rather like a fairy tale – or, rather, a fairy tale character plunged into the slings and arrows of the real world.

The real world comes into the shop in the form of Jocelyn Luke. He is fine-speaking and high-falutin’, horrifying Mr Pinner until he realises that Luke is proposing marriage. To please her father, chiefly, Sally accepts – though she has little idea what Luke is saying when he quotes poetry or expresses his undying love. Von Arnim writes these scenes brilliantly; they are funny while also carrying dark undertones.

Jocelyn sat down too, the table between them, the light from the oil lamp hanging from the ceiling beating down on Sally’s head.

“And Beauty was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” he murmured, his eyes burning.

“Pardon?” said Sally, polite, but wishing her father would come back.

She is shy and uncertain, and very much of her class. She drops her ‘h’s, says ‘I don’t mind if I do’ rather than ‘yes’, and is generally full of habits and tics that would make Eliza Doolittle blush.

This is all very well at first, but it soon grows to infuriate Jocelyn. All Sally wants is to be a good, honest, quiet wife and mother, and von Arnim has no great notions about the egalitarian nature of marriage. If there is a message in this novel (and perhaps there is not) it is that a marriage between ‘non-equals’ cannot possibly work. In this particular marriage, Sally has to put up with Jocelyn’s interfering mother (while she, in turn, has to cope with attentions of her brash neighbour Mr Thorpe), and she finds that situation equally difficult – though with the sort of fatalistic pragmatism that von Arnim writes beautifully.

Sally’s knees shook. She clutched the grey wrap tighter still about her. Mr. Luke’s mother was so terribly like Mr. Luke. Two of them. She hadn’t bargained for two of them. And she was worse than he was, because she was a lady. Gentlemen were difficult enough, but they did every now and then cast themselves at one’s feet and make one feel one could do what one liked for a bit, but a lady wouldn’t; a lady would always stay a lady.

The chief difficulty is Jocelyn Luke’s monstrous jealousy. He cannot cope with any man speaking to Sally, believing – often quite rightly – that they have designs on her. When she meets anybody with whom she can have a normal conversation, he gets in the way and tries to isolate her. This fairy tale turns dark – though Luke’s rod of iron comes from hysterical jealousy rather than malice.

The ending is a little less engaging; it feels rather as though von Arnim has written herself into a corner, and has to find a solution that isn’t too bleak – but what makes this novel great is von Arnim’s writing style. Line by line, she shows her wry wit and her well-practised ability to turn a sentence. This may not have the charm of an Enchanted April, nor the realism of some of other dark works, but it is a triumph of its variety of twisted fairy tale. I loved it, and highly recommend tracking it down.

The Lark by E. Nesbit

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The Lark
Sherpa posing (/sleeping) next to The Lark.

Well, two days in to 2016 and I’ve finished a novel that I’m pretty sure will be on my Top Books 2016, unless a lot of truly spectacular things come along; it’s already on my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About. The Lark (1922) by E. Nesbit is an absolute joy – charming, witty, dry, affectionate, and wry all in one go. May I offer a hearty thanks to Scott of Furrowed Middlebrow who first alerted me (and anybody who reads his excellent blog) to its existence, and a second hearty thanks to whichever person donated it to a charity shop in Yeovil, of all unlikely places. And, while I’m at it, a third hearty thanks to Lily P. Bond, who apparently bought this book at Ilminster Fair in 1925, and a fourth to Edith, who gave it to her mother with love at some unspecified date. (Copies can be found in ebook version for very little money.)

The novel starts off with a trio of children (Jane, Emmeline, and Lucilla) which is one of Nesbit’s few mistakes in this book, I think, because it will either disappoint those who like books about children or deter those who don’t: there is only a scene before they’re adults. The difference between their childlike naivety and their adult independence is, truth be told, only four years – but it might as well be a lifetime, so far as The Lark is concerned. As ‘children’, adventurous Jane decides to cast a spell which will show her the man she will marry (to the consternation of Emmie and Lucy): she wanders off to a wood to do so, and – lo and behold! – who should be passing but John Rochester. She sees him, he slips off, and the story is allowed to rush forwards to present day.

Now, if you’re thinking ‘Jane and Mr Rochester, how subtle, gosh I wonder what will happen to them’ then (a) you’re rushing ahead of yourself, and (b) Nesbit is consistently so knowing and self-knowing as a narrator that one can never get the upper hand. When he turns up again, and is ignored by the adult Jane, Nesbit coyly dismisses him as being ‘definitely out of the picture, which concerns itself only with the desperate efforts of two inexperienced girls to establish, on the spur of the moment, a going concern that shall be at once agreeable and remunerative’. It’s impossible to feel outraged at coincidences or unlikely behaviour if the narrator points them out too.

Jane and Lucie, you see, as destitute because their guardian has made bad investments with their inheritances (they are both orphans). ‘Destitute’ in this case means ownership of a beautiful cottage and £500, which this calculator tells me is the equivalent of over £20,000 today; this sort of destitute makes my full-time employment look rather inadequate. The indomitable pair decide to treat their misfortune (for such we must accept it) as ‘a lark’, and I can’t help agreeing with Scott that this is an excellent excerpt to quote:

“I want to say I think it’s a beastly shame.”

“No, no! “said Jane eagerly. “Don’t start your thinking with that, or you’ll never get anywhere. It isn’t a shame and it isn’t beastly. I’ll tell you what it is, Lucy. And that’s where we must start our thinking from. Everything that’s happening to us—yes, everything—is to be regarded as a lark. See? This is my last word. This. Is. Going. To. Be. A. Lark.”

“Is it?” said Lucilla. “And that’s my last word.”

This sentiment recurs – when one is unhappy, or bad things happen, they force themselves to laugh it off. It’s endearing rather than sickeningly Pollyannaish because they don’t find it easy, and they constantly tease one another about it. Their sarcasm and quips are delightfully witty, even if they retain a slightly cumbersome Edwardian propriety. In this particular instance, they must find a way to generate an income from within the narrow straits of a gentlewoman’s education – and land upon selling flowers. There are enough in their small garden to last them a day, but rather more can be found at an old shut-up house in the neighbourhood.

They manage to charm the old man who owns it to let them sell flowers from the garden room and – would you believe it? – he turns out to be John Rochester’s uncle. But Jane is far from pleased to see him, and insists that they can only be friends. There is much to enjoy about Jane and Lucy setting up a flower shop (including an improbable encounter with their future gardener in Madame Tussaud’s) – I love any story about people setting up a shop, particularly slightly feisty women in the 1920s. As The Lark develops, they will also start taking in paying guests – rather far into the novel, actually; it could have appeared earlier – and find their lives increasingly entangled with Rochester. Other characters I haven’t even had time to mention are the sceptical cook, the flirtatious maid Gladys, and the arrival of Miss Antrobus, who is supposedly Rochester’s intended. And there is a hilarious section involving poor Lucy disguising herself as an invented aunt.

The Lark could really have been about anything; it is Nesbit’s style that carries the day. There are more than hints of it in her children’s novels, but here – the first of her adult novels that I have read – she can give full rein to her dry humour and ability to show light-hearted exchanges between amusing, intelligent characters whom you can’t help loving. The whole thing is an absolute pleasure, and would be perfect between Persephone covers. It’s pretty rare that I’m sad to see a book end, but I will confess to feeling a little distraught that my time spent in Jane and Lucy’s company is over – until I re-read it, of course.

 

Mark Only by T.F. Powys

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Mark OnlySneaking in on the penultimate day of The 1924 Club, I have finished Mark Only by T.F. Powys – a rural novel from (of course) 1924, which I bought only recently and didn’t even realise was from 1924 until I got home. (Fab endpapers and previous owner’s bookplate to your left). Sorry The Crowded Street, sorry The Unlit Lamp, I definitely meant to read you – but that will have to wait for another time. (Do keep sending in your 1924 Club reads, of course!)

I don’t know whether it’s the Reader’s Block I’m feeling or something inherent in Mark Only, but I struggled a bit with this book. Every time I picked it up, I enjoyed reading it – his prose has a rhythmic simplicity that is enjoyable – but I would realise, after turning a dozen pages, that I had no idea what was going on. Even as I finished it, I feel like I might only have gathered the broad outline of the plot – but also a strong feel for what the novel is like, which is more important, I guess.

So why is it called Mark Only? Well, prepare yourself for a rib-tickling oh-no-he-didn’t opening scene: Mark’s baptism. It is all going a bit wrong because Hayball, the vicar, has spotted a dead centipede in the font.

My. Hayball knew that the cupful of water that Potten had brought would soon follow the other and be all run away, and there would only be the dead centipede left. He did not want to touch that. “It wouldn’t do,” he thought, “to baptize even the last child to be born in the earth with the decomposed body of a dead centipede.”

“What name?” he asked crossly.

“Mark,” replied Mr. Andrews, and then added a little louder, “Mark only.”

Mr. Hayball looked into the font. By putting his fingers to the bottom discreetly and warily, he might by good luck avoid the centipede.

“Mark Only, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

Lol, right? If you’re thinking ‘that’s a bit of a weak joke to hang a novel on’, then you’re not wrong. Apparently this slip of the tongue marks (ahaha geddit) Mark out for a life of misery. Because sure.

He’s not the sharpest tool in the box – but he’s a simple, well-meaning farm hand, more given to laughter than malice. Sad for him, he’s one of the few of this nature in Dodderdown. But before I go on, here’s another example of Powys’ prose:

Still looking over the gate, Mark saw Dodderdown with eyes that looked backwards. He had been down there when a child and had played with the kittens in the straw; he had run into the pond after the soft fluffy ducklings. His father had set him upon the great horse, with his little boots far from the ground as though they were lost to it. The other children used to throw mud at him because he had been baptized with “Only” for a name. That was a Dodderodwn not unkindly in all its aspects. There were pleasures in it, sugar pleasures, cake pleasures, and the sunshine that makes a child shout with joy when he sees a minnow a brook.

Not all bad, you see? For now…

I did a bit of googling, and came across an intriguing article that compares Powys to Tolstoy. Well, I’ve read two novels by Powys and none by Tolstoy, so am not best positioned to judge, but the article includes this extract from a contemporary review of Powys’ Mockery Gap, published in 1925, accusing Powys of

producing book after book (this last is the fifth in two years) depicting all rustics as dolts and rascals, bestially lustful and cruel, and all sophisticated characters as nervous wrecks and ineffectual sentimentalists.

Well, it’s not far out. Charles Tulk – a lame man who wanders the streets and earns his keep chiefly by stealing – is a bit of a Iago, maliciously trying to spoil the lives of those around him. Mark Only is singled out for poor treatment from him and from Mark’s own brother, James. Through some plot that I never quite disentangled, Mark Only is either led to believe that his wife has slept with James, or his wife has actually slept with James, or Mark is tricked into sleeping with someone else. Or possibly all of the above.

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that all the dialogue is dialect. We’re not in Mary Webb territory – thank goodness – because the prose doesn’t use dialect and is never overwritten, but every character thees and thous and thilks and thiks. There are SO many examples of bain’t. So many. I’m flicking the book open at random, looking for any dialogue, and…

1924 Club“I be coming,” she said, “I be coming, thee best bide for I, Peter. ‘Twas ‘ee then, Peter, that did take granfer’s waistcoat to wear ‘en. Don’t ‘ee now be a-going off to fair without I, and mind out I bain’t going to be late home, for they lanes be dark at night-time, an’ ’tis a pressing boy that ‘ee be.”

(I stopped typing before she got to the topic of cows, but it came soon.)

So, there are some pretty unpleasant people around. It gets a bit rapey at times, which is of course rather horrific. There is some comic relief in the form of two men who are scared of their wives, and spend their time commiserating with each other for marrying. Yep, that’s the comic relief. But for the most part, miserable things happen and Powys has a very gloomy view of rural life. It’s nice not to get unrealistically cheery village folk, but going the other way isn’t any more realistic: I wish he’d tempered his perspective a little more.

Having said that, I still enjoyed reading the prose, as Powys writes very well, and I’ll certainly get around to the other novels by him that I have on the shelf at some point. And, since rural novels were so popular in the 1910s and 1920s, I’m glad to have been able to add something representative of that vogue to The 1924 Club.

 

Virginia Woolf in 1924

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VW diary vol 2I’ve been struck down with a little bit of Reader’s Block it seems – not sure how pervasive yet – so I’ve not finished any more 1924 books yet. What terrible timing! I’m hoping to finish off one more before the week is out, but for today, let’s take a look at how Virginia Woolf greeted the year in her diary. Spoilers: it’s not with an egalitarian worldview. Or short paragraphs.

2 January 1924: The year is almost certainly bound to be the most eventful in the whole of our (recorded) career. Tomorrow I go up to London to look for houses; on Saturday I deliver sentence of death upon Nellie & Lottie; at Easter we leave Hogarth; in June Dadie comes to live with us; & our domestic establishments is entirely controlled by one woman, a vacuum cleaner, & electric stoves. Now how much of this is dream, & how much reality? I should like, very much, to turn to the last page of this virgin volume & there find my dreams true. It rests with me to substantiate them between now & then. I need not burden my entirely frivolous page with whys & wherefores, how we reached these decisions, so quick. It was partly a question of coal at Rodmell. Then Nelly presented her ultimatum – poor creature, she’ll withdraw it, I know, – about the kitchen. “And I must have a new stove, & it must be on the floor so that we can warm our feet; & I must have a window in that wall…” Must? Is must a word to be used to Princes? Such was our silent reflection as we received these commands, with Lottie skirmishing around with her own very unwise provisoes & excursions. “You won’t get two girls to sleep in one room as we do” &c. “Mrs Bell says you can’t get  drop of hot water in this house…” “So you won’t come here again, Nelly?” I asked. “No, ma’am, I won’t come here again” in saying which she spoke, I think, the truth. Meanwhile, they are happy as turtles, in front of a roaring fire in their own clean kitchen, having attended the sales, & enjoyed all the cheap diversions of Richmond, which begin to pall on me. Already I feel ten years younger. Life settles round one, living here for 9 years as we’ve done, merely to think of a change lets in the air. Youth is a matter of forging ahead. I see my contemporaries satisfied, outwardly; inwardly conscious of emptiness. What’s it for? they ask themselves now & then, when the new year comes, & can’t possibly upset their comfort for a moment. I think of the innumerable tribe of Booth, for example; all lodged, nested, querulous, & believing firmly that they’ve been enjoined so to live by our father which is in heaven. Now my state is infinitely better. Here am I launching forth into vacancy. We’ve two young people depending on us. We’ve no house in prospect. All is possibility & doubt. How far can we make publishing pay? And can we give up the Nation? & could we find a house better than Monks House? Yes, that’s cropped up, partly owing to the heaven sent address of Nelly. I turned into Thornton’s waiting for my train, & was told of an old house at Wilmington – I’m pleased to find [how] volatile our temperaments still are – & L[eonard] is steady as well, a triumph I can’t say I achieve – at the ages of 42 & 43 – for 42 comes tripping towards me, the momentous year.

Now it is six, my boundary, & I must read Montaigne, & cut short those other reflections about, I think, reading & writing which were to fill up the page. I ought to describe the walk from Charleston too, but can’t defraud Montaigne any longer. He gets better & better, & so I can’t scamp him, & rush into writing, & earn my 20 guineas as I hope. Did I record a tribute from Gosse: that I’m a nonentity, a scratch from Hudson, that the V.O. is rotten; & a compliment all the way from American from Rebecca West? Oh dear, oh dear, no boasting, aloud, in 1924. I didn’t boast at Charleston.

 

Something Childish and other stories by Katherine Mansfield

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This review is part of The 1924 Club. To discover more, and see all the reviews so far from across the blogosphere, visit my hub post or Karen’s hub page.

Something Childish

When I found out that Vulpes Libris were doing a Short Story Theme Week again, I thought Something Childish by Katherine Mansfield would be the perfect book to kill two birds with one stone – 1924 AND short stories? Yes please. Head over to Vulpes Libris to read my thoughts about it.