1930s

Ssshhhh…

StuckinaBook All , , 6 Comments

Let’s start the week as we mean to go on – with a review of a rather good book. The book in question is Secret Lives (1932) by Mr. E.F. Benson. Thanks to Nancy for bringing this to my attention absolutely AGES ago, I was finally able to get around to it just before I was struck down with illness.

It’s no secret that I love, love, and love the Mapp and Lucia series, as do many of you, but I hadn’t read any other EFB novels – despite having quite a few on my shelves. Secret Lives is reportedly the closest to that series and, although it isn’t as good as them, it certainly has the same spirit.

Think Lucia in London for the setting – i.e., we’re not in a Tillingesque village, we’re instead on the exclusive Durham Square in London. Exclusive, indeed, because Mrs. Mantrip’s father had systematically whittled his tenants down to the respectable and well-to-do, making sure Durham Square became the residency of choice for the highest society in London. And, for all that, it is incredibly provincial in its in-fighting, and the fact that everybody knows everybody else’s business. For a start, there is the matter of dogs in the garden. Mrs. Mantrip’s father (whom she reveres, and whose Life she is gradually writing – or, indeed, thinking about writing) expressly forbade it. But Elizabeth Conklin and her ten Pekinese – all circling her on leads – are keen to oppose. Cue all the wonderful cattiness and polite venom which fans of Mapp and Lucia have come to expect.

But then the title comes into play. ‘Below the seeming tranquillity of the Square surprising passions and secret lives were seething in unsuspected cauldrons.’ Margaret Mantrip’s secret passion, despite her outward literary pretensions, is for the novels of Rudolf da Vinci. Think Marie Corelli – i.e. atrociously written, probably addictive, lots of swooning heroines and dashing heroes.

The only distinguished thing about it, from a literary point of view, was its unique lack of distinction. It was preposterous to the last degree, but there was a sumptuousness about it, and, though nauseatingly moral in its conclusion, there was also fierceness, a sadism running like a scarlet thread through its portentous pages.
Margaret keeps these titles on a bottom shelf, hidden by a curtain and surrounded by her father’s collection of theological titles… And then there is mysterious Susan Leg who has recently moved into the Square – very wealthy, but says ‘Pardon?’ and ‘serviette’ and serves caviar spread on scones. What’s going on?

It doesn’t take an overly-perceptive reader to realise quite quickly that Rudolph da Vinci and Susan Leg are one and the same. And, indeed, E.F. Benson doesn’t leave us in the dark for long. In the hands of a lesser novelist, Leg’s unveiling might have been the denouement – but Benson is more interested in the intrigue and humour to be found in deception and social superficiality. Throw in an anonymous society columnist and a scathing reviewer, and there is enough confusion and hypocrisy all round to make the most ardent Tillingite happy.

As I said at the beginning, Secret Lives doesn’t match the brilliance of the Mapp and Lucia series, where every character (even when a bit two-dimensional) is a delight – but, once you’ve exhausted that series, this is a wonderful place to look. And a middlebrow novelist being biting about lesser novelists – and, especially, about critics – is always good fun. Thank you, Nancy, for recommending this novel – I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

I forgot about the Books to get Stuck into feature on my Persephone reviews (N.B. the poll results, with all 163 votes, are up now – thanks for voting!) but here they are, back again. Obviously the best companion novels, if Secret Lives sounds intriguing, are the Mapp and Lucia series, and Tom Holt’s or Guy Fraser-Sampson’s sequels, but here are some other suggestions:

Books to get Stuck into:

Elizabeth Taylor: Angel – although not very similar in tone, the wonderfully awful and self-unaware Angel is also modelled on the Marie Corelli type.

Rose Macaulay: Keeping Up Appearances – funny and arch, this 1920s novel has a mediocre novelist, but also all sorts of secrets and secret lives tangled up together, and is definitely worth seeking out.

“Experience doth take dreadfully high wages…”

StuckinaBook All , , 10 Comments

.
On the off chance that you’ll have me back, after Mel and Dark Puss have proved me completely dispensable over the past month, I’m going to turn my hand to another book review! And this time it’s a Persephone book, which always curries favour. I am getting a little ahead of myself, what with Persephone Reading Week coming up around the corner, but I thought it would cheating to review this then, since I actually finished it in the middle of March.

Dorothy Whipple’s High Wages (1930) is the latest Whipple novel to be published by Persephone and the third that I’ve read – the other two being the very wonderful Someone at a Distance and the pretty wonderful They Knew Mr. Knight. [edit: I forgot that I’ve also read Greenbanks, but don’t remember much about it…] High Wages focuses on Jane Carter, who takes a job working for Mr. Chadwick who runs a draper’s shop in Tidsley. She’s doing it on account of a stepmother, but we don’t think about her much after the first chapter, and she only really acts as a catalyst for what follows. Jane enters the politics of a small town and a small shop, dealing with the meanness of her employers, the lovesickness of her colleague Maggie, and the quiet friendship of poor-wife-made-good Mrs. Briggs.
Persephone’s write-up of the novel is very interesting, far more than just description of the book, and I recommend you give it a read by clicking here. They include this thought:She is not, of course, a ‘great’ writer. You could not take one of her sentences, as you can with, say, Mollie Panter-Downes, and hold it up to the light. But she is serviceable, perceptive and humane.I agree on all counts – while Whipple’s prose is a cut above a lot of her contemporaries (and almost everything I flick through in the bookshop now) she isn’t a notable stylist. She even veers towards the saccharine or predictable on occasion in this novel (though not in the other two I’ve read) – I definitely blame the romance plot, which High Wages could have done without, and would have been a better novel for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Whipple’s publisher leant on her to include it… but it just got a little silly towards the end. (Query: is it possible to write the dialogue of people desperately and recklessly in love without sounding like a mediocre soap opera? Then again, I’m quite fond of mediocre soap operas…)


That aside, there is plenty to love. How could you not like a book with the following sentiment? :Oh, the comfort of that first cup of tea! The warmth and life it put into you! They held their hands round the cups to warm them and their eyes looked less heavily on the bleak kitchen.

‘What do we do now?’ asked Jane.

‘We have another cup of tea, said Maggie’The day-to-day runnings of the shop make excellent material for a novel, and that’s what I enjoyed most in High Wages – the hierarchies in the shop and those of the customers, and how Jane negotiates them. Such is the minutiae that Whipple does so well, and so perceptively.

An interesting sideplot is the maid Lily and her abusive husband. That sounds very gritty, but Whipple has a way of taking gritty plots and making them pretty cosy… And I do have a weakness for dialect-driven, unselfconscious servants in interwar novels – the best being Nellie in another Persephone, Cheerful Weather For The Wedding. For a taste of Nellie, click here – otherwise, back to Lily:

Lily arrived. She whimpered as she lit the fire, and as Jane reappeared at intervals in the kitchen, she told her Bob wasn’t like a husband at all.

‘Aren’t you going to love me a bit I says to ‘im this morning, and ‘e says with such a nasty look, “To ‘ell with you and your love.” Just like that.’

And when she tried to kiss him good-bye, he’d thrown a plate at her.

‘Whatever do you want to kiss him for?’ asked Jane, squeezing out the wash-leather for the shop-door glass. ‘Throw a plate back at him, my goodness.’

She thought she herself would make short work of such a husband.

‘No…’ Lily shook her head as she dipped the bald brush into the blacklead. ‘I couldn’t do that. Bad as ‘e is, I love ‘im. Besides, it’s me as ‘as to pay for the plate.’
Well, quite.

Throughout High Wages there is fairly strong divide between rich-bad-people and the ‘onest-‘umble-poor. Mrs. Briggs bridges the divide – in that she’s rich, but always harks back to the simpler times before her husband (whose name I forgot, but which I presume is Alfred or Albert; this sort of man is always called one of the two) got rich. I did find that all a little tedious… but that’s a small quibble. And is really mentioned as way of bringing up rich-bad-Sylvia, and this amusing description of her:
Sylvia, poor child, hadn’t a grain of humour in her composition. Not what he called humour. She didn’t like Punch. That was his test. She laughed at hats sometimes, but he couldn’t remember that she ever laughed at anything else.
All in all, High Wages is an enjoyable novel, though not one I think Persephone would have reprinted had it been Whipple’s only novel. I recommend you start with Someone at a Distance, if you’ve never read a Whipple novel before – but High Wages doesn’t do any damage to the credentials of Persephone’s most popular discovery.

Miss Mole

StuckinaBook All , 25 Comments

It is nice to have someone in my book group who has very similar reading tastes to me. It means I needn’t harp on about my choices all the time, I can sit back and let Miss Mole (1930) by EH Young be selected, without even having to suggest it myself. Thanks Ruth! This was my first EH Young (of the three or four which have found their way to my bookshelves) but it definitely won’t be my last. AND Miss Mole won the James Tait Black Award, which is generally a better guide for good books than any of the other major book awards.

Miss Mole is a fairly mischievous forty-something who seeks work as a housekeeper. She embarrasses her cousin Lilla, who is from the ‘better’ side of the family, into finding her a position with a nonconformist minister Robert Corder, his daughters Ethel and Ruth, and their cousin Wilfred. Miss Mole’s defence against the potential boredom of her life is concealing her lively and humorous character behind a facade of the dutiful, unintelligent housekeeper which is expected of her.

She could see herself clearly enough with other people’s eyes: she was drab, she was nearing, if she had not reached, middle-age, she bore the stamp of a woman who had always worked against the grain[…] Who would suspect her of a sense of fun and irony, of a passionate love for beauty and the power to drag it from its hidden places?
This is the sort of family-orientated novel which Richmal Crompton sometimes does better, and sometimes rather worse. Young never falls into the pitfalls to which Crompton is occasionally prone – preciousness or being ever so slightly saccharine. Miss Mole is a fairy-tale, but without sentimentality. That is not to say the novel is remotely cynical or disillusioned – but rather that there is nothing which would be more appropriate in a book called Tales For Disconcerted Infants. But it is definitely in the fairy-tale mold – Miss Mole deals with the various dilemmas and quandaries facing the members of the Corder family, who all grow to depend upon her. And she has a few problems of her own, which are gradually revealed, though the family around her remains oblivious.

They were all too young or too self-absorbed to understand that her life was as important to her as theirs to them and had the same possibilities of adventure and romance; that, with her, to accept the present as the pattern of the future would have been to die.
But it is as impossible to pity her as it is to envy her position, because she is so irrepressible. Though she teases everyone, especially her cousin Lilla (and all while pretending to be respectful, and subtle enough to evade retaliation) there is no malice in Miss Mole. There were a few bits which made me laugh out loud, and plenty which made me smile:
“This is a fine old city, Miss Mole,” he said, “full of historic associations, and we have one of the finest parish churches in the country – if you are interested in architecture,” he added, with a subtle suggestion that this was not likely.

Hannah longed to ask what effect her indifference would have on the building, but Mr. Corder did not wait for reassurance about its safety.

EH Young’s strength is in dialogue – when Miss Mole is wittily dissecting other people’s words, but in the guise of guileless innocence, Young crafts the exchanges so finely. The prose narrative is good, but sometimes drags a bit, and doesn’t have the liveliness which Miss Mole injects into the dialogue. Perhaps this is why EH Young is a very good, but not a great, novelist – however, when it comes to drawing characters, she is really rather brilliant. Miss Mole is a creation of whom Jane Austen would be proud, and I think I’ll remember her for some time.

As I said – my first EH Young, but not my last. Thank you, books, for being sturdy enough to last 80 years and allow me the enjoyment of all the wonderful novelists who are neglected by most of the publishing world today! EH Young is surely due a reprint from someone…

 

Hurrah for Mrs. Tim!

StuckinaBook All , , 17 Comments

You know how it is – you start a book in October, and… you finish it in January. I don’t quite know how that happened, but there it is, Mrs. Tim of the Regiment by DE Stevenson has been on my bedside table for at least three months, dipped in and out of, and yesterday evening I read the last page. It certainly wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy it, but perhaps because I wanted something light, enjoyable, and reliable on the bedside table. All the books I’ve read in the Bloomsbury Group series have been gems, and this was no different.

The first thing to say, which Elaine and others have noted in their reviews, is that Mrs. Tim of the Regiment is very much a book of two halves. Though not signposted, this novel is actually Mrs. Tim of the Regiment and Golden Days put together, but they have been that way since 1940 odd – it wasn’t Bloomsbury’s decision. The two books are very different in style – both are about Hester Christie (aka Mrs. Tim) an army wife, looking after her husband and two children, and being witty and self-effacing and coping with everything that’s thrown her way. But, though it all takes diary format, only the first half really feels like a diary – the second half is far more narrative driven.

And the second thing to say is – how very like the Provincial Lady this is! Well, the first half especially. Sometimes I had to remind myself that I wasn’t reading an unknown fifth PL book. Take, for instance, this sizeable quotation:

Suddenly the spell is broken, the door of our compartment is pushed ajar, and through the aperture appears the fat white face of Mrs. McTurk. Of all the people in the world Mrs. McTurk is, perhaps, the one I least want to see. I can’t help wondering what she is doing in the train, and how she found me. She must be – I suppose – one of those peculiar people who walk about in trains. Why couldn’t she have remained peacefully where she was put by the porter amidst her own belongings in (I have no doubt) a comfortable first-class compartment?

“Is this really you?” she says

I reply that it is. The woman has the knack of saying things which invite a fatuous answer.

“Well I never!” she says.

I fix a false smile upon my countenance, whereupon she insinuates her cumbrous body through the door, and sits down beside Betty.

“So you are going north for a holiday,” she says.

Betty bounces up and down on the seat. “Do you know Mummie?” she cries excitedly. “Fancy you knowing Mummie! I thought Mummie didn’t know anybody in Kiltwinkle. Of course I knew lots of children at school, but it was awfully dull for Mummy. Mrs. Watt said there would be lots of parties, and Mummie bought a new dress, and then nobody asked her.”

I plunge wildly into the conversation, wishing, not for the first time, that Betty were shy with strangers.
I suspect the Provincial Lady’s Vicky and Mrs. Tim’s Betty never met – but what good friends they would have been, had they done so. I also suspect that DE Stevenson had read the Provincial Lady books (the first of which was published just a couple of years before she started her Mrs. Tim books) and I don’t blame her at all for wanting to emulate them.

Mrs. Tim, especially these early sections, is deliciously moreish. Not a great deal happens, not in the way of linear plot – the attempts to find a house were hilarious, looking round increasingly unsuitable properties – this is mostly the quotidian, finding humour and pathos in the everyday. As the second half of the book arrives, Mrs. Tim heads up to Scotland sans husband, and becomes embroiled in the confusing love lives of various young folk. She even becomes an unwitting object of attraction herself (Stevenson rather cleverly using the diary format to show Hester’s oblivious innocence even while letting the reader know what is going on.) But, of course, Hester has eyes only for her husband.

Mr. Tim himself is rather more likable than his Provincial Lady counterpart – you feel that the Christie marriage has more laughs in it than the PL’s. At the same time, he is as bad as Robert when it comes to recognising quotations from Jane Austen…

Like all the rest of the Bloomsbury Group series, Mrs. Tim of the Regiment is a delight to read, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. Being honest, it doesn’t maintain the high level throughout – I much preferred the first half to the second, as has probably become clear – but it’s just the sort of book you’ll want to read once you’ve exhausted EM Delafield’s superlative Provincial Lady series. And if, somehow, you’ve not read the PL books yet – hie thee to a library!

Apparently there’s a whole series of Mrs. Tim books – and I’m told they’re also more narrative-driven. Though I don’t think I’ll be using up my Project 24 allowance on them, they’re certainly going into my Amazon Marketplace Basket to be pondered over for 2011… (edit: no they won’t! I’ve just seen the prices!)

Oh – and if you’ve got this far, do pop in tomorrow for a giveaway of… a mystery title! All will be revealed tomorrow….

Try Anything Twice

StuckinaBook All , , , 3 Comments

[N.B. this post migrated from my old site and, like all of them, it messed up the quotations a bit – this one has turned into one huge paragraph and I no longer know where the gaps should be!]

Good things come to those who wait, we are told, and that’s generally how I treat books which come to my shelves. A few leap immediately to hand, read within minutes of arriving, but most are left – like fine wines – to mature. And so it is that Try Anything Twice by Jan Struther, which arrived in October 2007 from lovely Ruth (aka Crafty Person), has finally been read. And it’s like a hot cup of tea on a wintery afternoon.

Jan Struther is best known for Mrs. Miniver – which I wrote a bit about back here – the voice of quintessential middle-class Englishness leading up to World War Two. Though she altered dramatically for the film, there was still that kernel of being England’s everywoman (within the remit of those with servants and children at boarding school and jolly outings.) Though Try Anything Twice doesn’t feature Mrs. M, the voice is instantly recognisable. Published in 1938, the volume collects articles and essays that Jan Struther wrote for Spectator, New Statesman, Punch, and other journals. They’re all from that middle-class world, but what an observant world it can be – whether noting the vagaries of updating an address book (‘Zazoulian, the little Armenian painter. His pictures are not very good, nor his conversation amusing, and it is eighteen months since you saw him: but a “Z” is a “Z”‘) or going to a Registry Office to find a nanny (one who is neither a dragon nor a duchess) or the poetic potential of a builder’s plans.

As always with short stories or essays or poems – anything where there is no uniform whole – it is near impossible to write a convincing review of Try Anything Twice, especially since I read it over the course of some weeks. Verity’s review is worth seeing, by the way, but for now I think the best way to talk about the book is to give you a sample. It’s not necessarily the best in the book, but it’s fairly representative of the style of Try Anything Twice. All of the book is actually available online, but of course (!) it’s better to get hold of the book itself. If you like the following, as they say, you’ll like the book. Ladies and Gentlemen; ‘With Love From Aunt Hildegarde’

THERE are three ways of choosing presents for other people. The first is to choose something you think they would like; the second, something you would like yourself; the third, something you think they ought to have. Of these methods the first is the wisest but the least common; the second is less wise but more usually followed; while the third is wholly unforgivable and accounts for much of the post-Christmas bitterness from which we are apt to suffer. My great-aunt Hildegarde is an almost fanatical devotee of the third method. Many people would call her an ideal aunt; that is to say, she gives us presents not only at Christmas but for each of our birthdays and often in between times as well. But her gifts have, so to speak, a sting in the tail; they represent her unspoken criticisms on our habits, customs and whole mode of living. Whenever we see her firm capable handwriting on a parcel, or a box arrives from a shop with one of her cards enclosed, we pause before unpacking it any further, sit back on our haunches and wonder what we’ve done wrong now. “I know,” says T. “Last time she dined here the spout of the coffee-pot was chipped and it dribbled all down her frock.” “No,” I reply, “I know what it is. The menu-card was propped up against the candlestick, and she said how awkward it was the way it kept slipping down.” And when we open it, sure enough, if it isn’t a new china coffee-pot it is a pair of menu-holders–contrivances which we particularly dislike, even when they are not made from tooled gun-metal in the form of two hedge-sparrows rampant, regardant and proper. Once she came to tea with me on a pouring wet day and found nowhere to park her umbrella. The next day a large tubular object arrived. It had vaguely military associations, but it had been so converted and distorted that it was difficult to tell whether it had originally been a large German shell or part of a small field-gun used in the Russo-Japanese War. A third possibility is that it was once a moth-proof travelling container for a Balkan field-marshal’s top-boots. At any rate, it takes up a great deal of room in the hall. And another time, I remember, she wanted to write a note at my desk and was scandalised because there was no proper pen and ink–although, as I explained, I had three fountain-pens, any of which I was willing to lend her. Four days elapsed and I began to breathe more freely. But on the fifth there came a small square parcel containing a silver-mounted ink-pot with my initials irrevocably engraved upon it (which accounted, no doubt, for the delay). Like the umbrella stand, it was a convert; but in this case there was no difficulty in guessing its original function. To make matters quite clear, Aunt Hildegarde had attached a note saying: “I feel sure you will like to have this little memento of poor dear Blackie, on whose back you took your first ride. This is the very hoof which she used to lift so prettily to shake hands. May it bring you lots of inspiration for your little poems!!” I groaned, filled it with fountain-pen ink and set it fair and square in the middle of my writing-table, where it remains to this day, a constant reminder of the agonies and humiliations of childhood; for it was the self-same hoof with which Blackie once stood for a full five minutes on my toe, I having neither the strength nor the courage to remove her. I do not wish to look a gift-hoof in the mouth or to seem in any way ungrateful, but the thing is getting on our nerves. Not only are we developing an inferiority complex about our own home but we are becoming self-conscious about entertaining Aunt Hildegarde. We dare not give her grapes, lest she should think that we are hinting at grape-scissors; nor lobster, for fear of invoking a set of silver-plated picks. But however careful we are we cannot think of everything. We did not, for instance, foresee that she would give us an electric clock for Christmas. It is true that when she came to stay with us a month ago our drawing-room clock was not behaving quite as a good clock should. One day it was a few minutes slow and she missed the weather forecast on the wireless. And another day it ran down altogether and made her late for church. “Your Uncle Julian,” she said gently, “used to wind all the clocks in the house every Sunday morning.” But this mild fragment of reminiscence did not at all prepare us, though perhaps it should have, for the grey maple rhomboid which now adorns our mantelpiece. At least, it looks like maple, but it is actually (so the accompanying leaflet informs us) made of steel, which can neither shrink nor warp, neither rust nor tarnish. It runs off the electric mains; it needs no winding; it is guaranteed to keep absolutely perfect time; and ever since it came into the house we have felt acutely ill at ease. Our old happy-go-lucky days are over. No more can we think comfortingly as we start out rather late for a dinner-party: “Oh, well, perhaps our clock is fast,” nor, when we arrive there to find hostess champing and fellow-guests ravenous, can we murmur, “We are dreadfully sorry, but our clock was slow,” for our friends have already got to know about our new, our abominable possession. Gone too are sundry minor pleasures, such as listening for the radio Time Signal and leaping up to make a half-minute adjustment; and, better still, squandering pennies in a lordly way by dialling T.I.M. And gone–worst of all–is the small friendly sound which used to accompany our thoughts, the balanced alternation of tick and tock, like the footsteps of a little dog walking very quickly beside you on the pavement. Time now proceeds for us in a series of hard metallic clicks, one every minute, each identical with the last: it is a large, slow, hopping bird of prey which follows relentlessly behind us. For fifty-nine seconds it stands still; we escape it; we are immortal; and then with a sudden deft leap it catches us up again. Better never to escape; better to have our little trotting dog. But there is nothing to be done about it. If we did not use the clock, or if we banished it to the dining-room, Aunt Hildegarde would not only think us both mad and decadent–for what sane responsible citizen would not jump at the opportunity of being always certain of the time?–but she would also be terribly hurt. It was touching to see her when she came to tea yesterday, gazing up with reverent eyes at the angular, impersonal, implacable monster on the mantelpiece. “Your Uncle Julian,” she said, “would have found it such a boon.” The vulture took another hop forward.

Just what the doctor ordered

StuckinaBook All , 11 Comments

I’m am back in the land of the living! Sorry to abandon you for so long – I did mean to at least put up some photographs, but post-flu exhaustion left me feeling more or less dead in the evenings, which is when I usually do my blogging. But now I am fighting fit (relatively speaking) with only an annoying cough which seems disinclined to go away.


As I mentioned in the previous post, any sign of illness and I stop being able to read. Hugely irksome, as you can imagine. But I did manage to read one book last week – the font was sufficiently big, and the story adequately undemanding, while yet being rather wonderful – it was Joyce Dennys’ Repeated Doses. As the title suggests, it is not the first in the series. And, using my last months of spontaneous book-buying, I scurried away to buy Mrs. Dose the Doctor’s Wife and The Over-Dose. These are, respectively, the first and third books in the series, published between 1930 and 1933.


I say series. These books are divided into various sections – not really short stories, but more like episodes in various lives. Like Henrietta in Joyce Dennys’ now much-beloved Henrietta’s War (wrote about it here), and Dennys herself, all the heroines are doctors’ wives. Or rather, all the stories are about doctors and their families – usually with an instrumental wife. Though they all have different names, they have a shared characteristic running through (I believe) all three books – that of ‘false nosery’, in Dennys’ words. Let me explain, by quoting the first book:

All Doctors’ Wives wear False Noses. This fact is not generally known, except to Doctors and their Wives themselves. Even their children hardly ever realize, until they grow up and possibly become Doctors or Doctors’ Wives, that their mother went through her married life with a False Nose firmly fixed to her face. There have been cases when even the Doctor himself has forgotten that the Nose he sees as breakfast is not the Nose he wooed. But these are exceptional cases, for Doctors are, as a rule, discerning and disillusioned people.

A Doctor’s Wife must wear a False Nose to disguise herself, and thus persuade her husband’s patients, and even more, the people who are not her husband’s patients, but who might be, that she is like Caesar’s Wife, above suspicion.

She must, if possible, however dark her thoughts and evil her intentions, persuade people that she is a model of wifely devotion, motherly love and womanly yearnings.
If she meets the Vicar being carried in at her front door with his throat cut, as she goes out to a Bridge party, she must not divulge this spicy bit of gossip to her friends, and if during the afternoon somebody comes rushing in to say that the Vicar has been hanged, she is denied the exquisite pleasure of saying, and it is at such times that the False Nose hangs most heavy, “Excuse me, but his throat was cut, I saw it; your deal, I think.”

And so it goes. These are stories about the diplomacy of doctors’ wives, the peculiarities of the medical profession, and the length to which the wives will go to secure patients for their husbands. (That sounds more macabre than I intended…) In many ways, I think being in a doctor’s family must be quite similar to being in a vicar’s family – certainly in terms of diplomacy, presenting the Public Face of the Profession, and keeping schtum on all sorts of topics.

Dennys’ stories in Repeated Doses exaggerate a bit – a woman seeking treatment for a wart ends up in a Rest Home; a name mix up causes an international incident; baskets of fruit become the front line for deceit and intrigue. All great fun.


And, which is half the pleasure with Dennys’ books, they are illustrated by Dennys too. I’ve scattered some of those illustrations throughout this post, and they might prove irresistible to you… They make a lovely set of books – really thick, chunky books, with thick paper, and a feel of luxury quite unexpected for the early-thirties. Obviously they got printed just before printers started economising… I’m so grateful to have heard of Joyce Dennys, and these are real treats to enjoy, return to, and treasure.

Persephone Week 1: Princes in the Land

StuckinaBook All , , , 10 Comments

Right – Day One of the Persephone Week is finished, and so far I’m on track. I’ve read one book: Princes in the Land (1938) by Joanna Cannan. I think I’m supposed to link back to a central page, but I wasn’t sure which, so instead I’ll link back to two Persephone-related quizzes (with prizes!) on Claire’s and Verity’s respective blogs.

Since I’m hoping to read about six books this week, which requires a lot of reading, the reviews of them will be quite short. Hopefully enough for you to decide whether or not you want to investigate further the Persephone Books I’m reviewing…


I’ve been looking forward to reading Princes in the Land for quite a while, not least because it is often compared to one of my favourite Persephone Books, Elizabeth Cambridge’s Hostages to Fortune. Both are set in Oxfordshire; both concern the role of a mother, realising that her children and husband are not exactly what she expected. But where Cambridge’s heroine is pragmatic, wise, and selfless, Cannan’s is rather different. Having read Danielle’s recent review, and the blurb on the Persephone website, I wonder whether others have had different responses to the book… my views will become clear.

The novel opens with Patricia and Angela travelling with their mother, to live with the grandfather in their ancestral mansion. Patricia is travel-sick and miserable – no glamorous introduction to a ‘angular, freckled’ girl; a disappointment to their mother. Their mother ‘had been brought up to ring bells and now had no bells to ring’ (an example of Cannan’s concise, accurate summations of character) – as a poor relative, she must return to her father-in-law’s house, after the death of her husband. We speed through Patricia’s childhood here, and enter stage left a husband: Hugh. They meet in a train carriage, and have soon (after one or two incidents of note) married and set up house.

And the bulk of the novel follows this nuclear family of Patricia and Hugh, and their three children – August, Giles, and Nicola. For the most part, it chronicles Patricia’s illusions about them; the way her children form characters which are anathema to her. They don’t become murderers or drunks, but in her eyes a rejection of horses, an embracing of evangelical Christianity, a lower-middle-class villa, are all akin to her children beating orphans to death. It was here that Princes in the Land differed from Hostages to Fortune – where Catherine selflessly allows her children to follow their own paths, and sees them as acceptable, Patricia views any lifestyle other than her own ideal as dreadful. She has made sacrifices to her marriage, and initially seems an admirable character through and through – but by the end she appears increasingly selfish and unkind. This is mostly exemplified through her dissatisfaction with daughter-in-law Gwen. Her crimes are of the variety of saying ‘Pardon?’; using doilies; wanting to call her daughter Daphne. Patricia says at one point, without any evidence of irony, ‘Goodness knows I’m not snobbish.’ Does Cannan, somehow, agree with her? Can she be that blind? Patricia makes Nancy Mitford seem positively egalitarian. And, unlike Nancy Mitford, this horsey-huntin’-say-glass-not-mirror persona is presented without a shred of self-aware humour.

Which is odd, because Cannan writes quite wittily at times. For example, in describing Angela’s husband Victor – he is:

‘a pink young man with china-blue eyes and hair as golden as Angela’s, who could and did express all life was to him and all his reactions to it in the two simple sentences, “Hellish, eh?” and “Ripping, what?”‘
I suppose, in the end, I didn’t know where I stood with Princes in the Land. I don’t believe in judging a novel by the likeability of its characters, and Cannan can certainly write engagingly, sometimes amusingly, and in a domestic vein so familiar and welcome to Persephone fans. But I cannot sympathise with the character – her themes of a mother’s sacrifice, watching children grow, are ones I usually love, but the stance we seem encouraged to agree with is so prejudiced and, dare I add, proud. Though this only becomes concrete towards the end of the novel – before this, Cannan does show the family’s interlocking relationships from various, more generous angles… as I say, I’m not sure where I stand with the novel. It is certainly well written, and I’m glad I’ve read it, but… my overriding response is a desire to re-read Hostages to Fortune.

To Hear Ourselves…

StuckinaBook All , 3 Comments

I’m off to the cinema tonight to see The Time Travel[l]er’s Wife, the novel by Audrey Niffenegger which I wrote about in a scattergun fashion last October. Since I’m otherwise engaged, I’ll save an in-depth book review for another night, and instead introduce you to one of my favourite books, EM Delafield’s As Others Hear Us.

A common experience for those who’ve loved The Diary of a Provincial Lady but have exhausted the four wonderful volumes of that series, is to read some of her works, and realise how different they are from Provincial Lady land. Consequences (published by Persephone Books), The Way Things Are and Thank Heaven Fasting (Virago Modern Classics) and the most easily available. All great books; none remotely like the Provincial Lady. Her witty, light, self-deprecating take on life is shifted for social issues, real torment, and a rather sombre tone. In my experience of EM Delafield’s works (and I’ve read, ooo let me see, eighteen of her books) only two have the same light, amusing feel of DoPL: and As Others Hear Us and General Impressions. I’m struggling to engage with a few books, as I mentioned, so I turned to the old reliable: As Others Hear Us.

The title plays on the old saw, from a Burns poem, ‘O would some power the giftie gie us / To see ourselves as others see us.’ It was a quotation of which EMD was fond, since she also named a play To See Ourselves (the play from which her novel The Way Things Are was more or less adapted.) EMD transfers this ‘see’ into ‘hear’, and thus plays with dialogue. There are four sections to this book, involving longer-running characters etc., but the bulk of it are these little scenes. They are entirely dialogue, little excerpts from people’s lives. They show what a brilliant way EMD has at exposing the nuances of people’s characters and relationships, all through their own words. Difficult to describe, so I’ve included a couple in their entirety, which I typed up years ago for a wonderful EMD site. I think you’ll either read them and be baffled at why I find them hilarious – or, like me, you’ll be desperate to read more.

Before I share them, I must be honest and say… As Others Hear Us is ruinously expensive. I didn’t pay much for it five years ago, but a quick check on the usual secondhand book sites suggests that you’ll be lucky to find an affordable copy – this is more a title to track down in your library or their inter-library loan facility. On the plus side, General Impressions is fairly affordable, and is a similar thing. The scenes in that one aren’t entirely dialogue, if I recall, but they are still incredibly funny. Do go and find either book. I’d love to see them reprinted, but I suppose this sketch-orientated kind of book isn’t very fashionable anymore… who knows, maybe the tide will turn. Here goes – ‘The Reconciliation’, and ‘At the Writing-Table’.

The Reconciliation

‘I came around because I really think the whole thing is too absurd.’ ‘So do I. I always did.’ ‘You can’t have half as much as I did. I mean really, when one comes to think of it. After all these years.’ ‘Oh, I know. And I dare say if you hadn’t, I should have myself. I’m sure the last thing I want is to go on like this. Because really, it’s too absurd.’ ‘That’s what I think. It is all right, then?’ ‘Absolutely, as far as I’m concerned. What I mean is, I never have believed in keeping things up. I’m not that kind of person.’ ‘Neither am I, for that matter.’ ‘Oh no, dear, I know. But I must say, you took the whole thing up exactly in the way I didn’t mean it, in a way. Not that it matters now.’ ‘Well, it’s all over now, but, to be absolutely honest, I must say I can’t quite see how anybody could possibly have taken it any other way. Not really, I mean.’ ‘Well, you said that I said every one said you were spoiling the child, and of course, what I really said wasn’t that at all.’ ‘Well, dear, you say that now, I know, but what you said at the time was exactly what I said you said. Or so it seemed to me.’ ‘Well, there’s not much object in going over the whole thing all over again now it’s over, is there? But if you’d come straight to me at the time, I must say I think it would all have been simpler. It doesn’t matter, of course, now it’s all over and done with, but I just think it would have been simpler, that’s all.’ ‘Still, dear, it’s perfectly simple as it is, isn’t it? If you think I spoil the child, you’re quite entitled to your own opinion, naturally. All I said was, that it seemed a pity to tell everybody that everybody thought so, when really it was just simply what you thought. And I must say, I can’t help being rather amused, but we all know that lookers-on see most of the game – it just amuses me, that’s all.’ ‘Very well, dear, if you choose to be offended you must be offended, that’s all. As I said at the time, and still say, no one is fonder of children than I am, but to let any child go to rack and ruin for want of one single word seems to me a pity, that’s all. Just a pity.’ ‘Have it your own way, dear. I shouldn’t dream of contradicting you. Actually, it was only the other day that someone was saying how extraordinarily well brought up the child seemed to be, but I dare say that’s got nothing to do with it whatever.’ ‘Well, all I’ve got to say is that it’s a pity.’ ‘And if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s ready to take offense. I never have been, and I never shall be.’ ‘Besides, while we’re on the subject, I don’t understand about the blue wool, and never shall understand.’ ‘We’ve gone over the whole of the blue wool at least twenty times already.’ ‘I dare say, and I’m not saying anything at all. In fact, I’d rather not.’ ‘And if it comes to that, I may not have said very much about it – it’s not my way – but it would be an absolute lie if I said that I didn’t remember all that fuss about the library books.’ ‘I said at the time, and I still say, that the library books were a storm in a tea-cup.’ ‘Very well, dear. Nobody wants to quarrel less than I do.’ ‘As I always say, it takes two to make a quarrel. Besides, it’s so absurd.’ ‘That’s what I say. Why be so absurd as to quarrel, is what I say. Let bygones be bygones. The library books are over now, and that’s all about it.’ ‘It’s like the blue wool. When a thing is over, let it be over, is what I always say. I don’t want to say anything more about anything at all. The only thing I must say is that when you say I said that everybody said that about your spoiling that child, it simply isn’t what I said. That’s all. And I don’t want to say another word about it.’ ‘Well, certainly I don’t. There’s only one thing I simply can’t help saying . . .’
At the Writing-Table’Are you any good at whether a thing is EI or IE?’ ‘Not much, but I might.’ ‘Well, is it receive or recieve? I’ve written them both a hundred and forty-eight times on the blotting-paper, and they look completely wrong which ever I do.’ ‘”I after E except after C.”‘ ‘That’s muddled me worse than ever. Besides, I think you’ve got it wrong.’ ‘I dare say. Look here, the only thing to do is to leave it and not look at it and then go back with a fresh eye and you get it at once. I often do that.’ ‘Very well then, this is what I’ve said: Dear Mrs. Cartwright, I must say I was rather surprised to receive – or recieve – your letter about the sweet-stall at the Fete yesterday. As a matter of fact I was perfectly furious.’ ‘Oh, I wouldn’t put that, would you? Of course it’s quite true but isn’t it kind of undignified? Or isn’t it?’ ‘Oh, I haven’t said that. I was only saying it.’ ‘Oh, I see.’ ‘Dear Mrs. Cartwright, I must say I was rather surprised – or isn’t that strong enough?’ ‘Personally, I should put Dear Mrs. Cartwright, I was completely astonished and underline astonished. Because after all you were.’ ‘Oh, I was foaming, of course. I still am, if it comes to that.’ ‘Who wouldn’t be? And the trouble we took over those accounts!’ ‘That reminds me. What do you make six sevens come to?’ ‘Well – wait a minute. Give me a pencil and paper. I can do it if I add them.’ ‘How frightfully clever you are. I should never have thought of that.’ Seven and seven and seven and seven and seven and seven and seven.’ ‘Isn’t that one too many?’
‘I thought it was. Very well, seven and seven, and seven and seven, and seven and seven. That’s forty-two.’ ‘Good, how marvellous. I’m afraid it’s pence.’ ‘Like Alice through the Looking-Glass.’ ‘Why did she have pence? I don’t remember any.’ ‘I mean one and one and one and one and one and one and one.’ ‘Oh, the Red Queen. Yes.’ ‘I always love the kitchen picture.’ ‘I know. So do I. Well, Dear Mrs. Cartwright, I must say I was a good deal surprised, how would that do?’ ‘Isn’t that the same as before?’ ‘I said Rather before.’ ‘So you did. Personally I should put Absolutely staggered.’ ‘I easily might. What was I asking you about these sevens?’ ‘You said they were pence.’ ‘So they are, I’m afraid. How many did you say they made?’ ‘Forty-two or something.’ ‘Thirty-six would be three shillings, and six over. How very neat. Three and sixpence exactly. Isn’t it?’ ‘Wait a minute. I’ve lost the pencil. I make it three and sixpence, definitely.’ ‘I should think it’s bound to be right, if we both make it come to the same, shouldn’t you?’ ‘I should think so. Why don’t you get one of those marvellous little books that tell you how much everything comes to? People use them for wages.’ ‘I always mean to. I’ll make a note of it on the blotting-paper. There’s receive and recieve again, and they both look exactly the same as they did before. No fresh eye or anything.’ ‘How awful. I don’t suppose Mrs. Cartwright would know the difference, actually. She didn’t seem to me in the least intelligent.’ ‘Oh, she isn’t. But she just might, one never knows. I wouldn’t mind spelling it wrong, if she hadn’t behaved so badly about the sweet- stall.’ ‘I know exactly. I’ve got a frightfully good idea: what exactly have you said.’ ‘I’ve said: Dear Mrs. Cartwright, I must say I was rather surprised to receive – recieve – your letter about the sweet-stall at the Fete yesterday.’ ‘Very well, just put instead: Dear Mrs. Cartwright, I must say I was rather surprised to get your letter about the sweet-stall, and so on.’ ‘That’s marvellous! I must just re-write it, but I think it’s worth it, don’t you?’ ‘Absolutely. I do loathe writing letters.’ ‘So do I. I always think it takes such ages when one ought to be doing other things. Now, can you listen a minute? This is what I’ve put: Dear Mrs. Cartwright, I must say …’

Baking and Bill Maxwell

StuckinaBook All , 12 Comments

I’ll warn you at the beginning – this blog post does have some bookish bits, but you have to get through quite a lot on baking first. Not to be read if a) you loathe baking, or b) you’re on a diet…

A happy afternoon has been spent baking – Mel and I discovered that we had seven types of sugar in the house, and decided to put them all in some carrot cake muffins. Seven types of sugar, you ask (and the more literary-theory-obsessed amongst you may make mention of Seven Types of Ambiguity) – since I am never one to turn down a sugar-based question, I’ll list them. Caster sugar, golden caster sugar, granulated sugar, soft dark brown sugar, soft light brown sugar, muscovado sugar, icing sugar. The resultant carrot cake muffins are pretty delicious, though I says it as shouldn’t.


I use sultanas with the carrots, rather than walnuts or almonds as some recipes suggest – and added in some cinammon. Oh, and I rather distrust any icing made of cheese, so I sprinkled muscovado sugar on them about two-thirds of the way through baking, to give an extra crunchy topping when they came out. (By the way, the main sugar in them is soft light brown – the other six were added in small amounts, just for fun).

Oh, and I also made a chocolate orange sponge cake, which is very sweet and very nice. This isn’t Stuck-in-a-Baking-Tin, I know, but if anybody would like recipes, I’d be happy to include them soon…


This was all inspired by Darlene’s foray into baking, which she documented here. Do go and read the comments (which do include a very lengthy one from me, I must confess) as the blogging baking community is quite good with tips. Though like most eager bakers, there are some fairly arbitrary rules which I stick by, regardless of advice. (Does anybody know the difference in taste achieved by caster or granulated in a sponge cake? Is there any? I refuse to use granulated, but based on nothing but whim and prejudice.)

Right. And onto books… They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell was the third title selected in the Cornflower Book Group over at Cornflower Books. Sadly, since I’m already in four other book groups, I’ve not been able to join in with this one online – but They Came Like Swallows sounded absolutely wonderful when I read this introductory post, not least because it was under 200pp long. Karen very kindly gave me a copy of it, and eventually I was able to read the novel, whilst in Devon with my brother. And it is quite, quite brilliant.

My copy is at home, so I’m going to have to rely on my memory and all these wonderful comments from the Cornflower Book Group (including some pretty big spoilers, but then the book is more about writing than plot). In fact, I’ll keep it quick, because you can just as easily follow the links above and read their more erudite thoughts(!) The novel is divided into three sections – the two sons and the husband of Elizabeth, the silent centre of the book. Bunny starts off – a very nervous, anxious child, bullied by his brother and scared of his father, who just wants to be left alone with his homemade village. His love for Elizabeth burns through his every action, as does the isolation he feels in every other relationship. But Maxwell writes very cleverly – by the time we get to the sections from the perspectives of Bunny’s brother Robert, and father James, we realise that Bunny’s perspective is skewed. Not wrong, but very subjective. Three competing viewpoints coalesce into one brilliantly delicate novel – the various relationships between family members are all laced with misunderstandings, misconstruings, misapprehensions… all so realistic and uncomfortably possible.

Maxwell (and here is the bold statement) may be the best plain stylist I’ve ever read. Writers like Woolf are better at the detailed, mosaic, entangled writing. Austen is better at the balanced sentence; Wilde better at the epigram – but Maxwell perfects that type of writing that seems style-less but must actually take endless work. It flows perfectly – depths and minutiae of emotions are included without being obtrusive. The subtlety is in these familial depictions, not in the way the story moves – which is only a vehicle for Maxwell’s greater art. They Came Like Swallows has some pretty big plot moments, but the novel is much more about the interaction of a family – and that ambiguous, absent voice of Elizabeth ringing through every page.

Persephone Book Group

StuckinaBook All , , 6 Comments

And I am now back from my first ever Persephone Book Group! I do hope it’s the first of many, because the people were lovely, the discussion was fun, and meeting Persephone fans new or old is always a delight. I *am* a little worried that my Persephone obsession was a little too forthright… will have to temper my “Oo! Oo! I know that one!” for next time…

We discussed Flush by Virginia Woolf, which I read a few years ago and re-read last week. It’s all about Elizabeth Barrett and her courtship with Robert Browning, from the perspective of their dog Flush. I think it’s a brilliant book – mostly because it so successfully presents a new angle, a new way of perceiving things. Lots on smell especially – I liked this, on Flush’s astonishment that Mr. Barrett cannot tell Mr. Browning has been there:

‘Don’t you know,’ Flush marvelled, ‘who’s been sitting in that chair? Can’t you smell him?’ For to Flush the whole room still reeked of Mr. Browning’s presence. The air dashed past the bookcase, and eddied and curled round the heads of the five pale busts. But the heavy man sat by his daughter in entire self-absorption. He noticed nothing. He suspected nothing. Aghast at his obtuseness, Flush slipped past him out of the room.’

Critics haven’t always been enamoured by the novel, perhaps because the initial concept sounds a trifle silly. But in Woolf’s very able hands this is a clever, funny and very well observed book. I almost never get bothered about depictions of places in novels, but from the entirely new angle of a dog, I found descriptions of London and Italy fascinating.

The book group seemed, on the whole, to like the book a lot. Most of us didn’t know much about Elizabeth Barrett Browning before we started, but didn’t think that made much of a difference. Woolf’s slightly odd views on class were discussed, but so too her liveliness and breaking free from Victorianism. Whilst I love Flush, I don’t think it’s the most representative of Persephone’s books, and I’d be intrigued to see what the views are on other titles. Next time is Joanna Canaan’s Princes In The Land, and after that Rachel Ferguson’s Alas, Poor Lady. I’ve not read either of them, and sadly I’m going to miss the next one, but looking forward to July and Alas, Poor Lady.

If anybody from the book group is dropping in (since I shamelessly advertised this blog) please do say hello! I look forward to seeing you again.