1930s

The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sherriff

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This isn’t one of my 25 Books in 25 Days – not at the page count the Sherriff weighs in at! – but I wanted to add it to my participation in Jessie’s Persephone Readathon. And I read it a couple of weeks ago – my third Sherriff, but certainly not my last.

The Hopkins Manuscript (1939) isn’t my usual fare, inasmuch as it is science fiction – not a genre I usually rush towards. But I had previously read and loved a couple of his other books published by Persephone, The Fortnight in September and Greengates, and so I was encouraged to pick up my copy of this one. It certainly didn’t disappoint. The premise is that the moon is going to hit the earth – but that really is just the premise for a character study.

There is a short (fake) preface letting us know that this manuscript has been unearthed, centuries after the events of the novel – and apparently almost all vestiges of the UK have long gone. Experts comb the world to find any evidence of what that civilisation might have been like – and this manuscript is by far the longest discovered. It is called the Hopkins manuscript because it was written by one Edgar Hopkins – and he takes over the story once the novel proper starts. This is, I suppose, his diary.

Hopkins is interested in astronomy and part of the Lunar Society – which is where he is first warned that the moon is likely to hit the earth. In a state of shock, but sworn to secrecy, he heads back to his normal life. And that life is quite a lonely one. He lives alone, except for staff and the poultry that he breeds in a mildly obsessive way, and seems to regard everybody else in his small village (Beadle) as a yokel and idiot. He often reflects that none of them would understand the calamity coming, and that he has nobody of sense to talk with. In short, Hopkins is not the most appealing narrator at the start – much as the gentleman at the centre of Greengates is a little obstreperous as things kick off.

To be honest, this first section of the novel could have done with a bit of editing. We know something seismic is going to happen, and it’s important to set up the world that will be disrupted, but I got a bit impatient waiting for the moon to do its thing.

But eventually, of course, it does. By now the world has been told what will happen – or at least the UK, because Hopkins doesn’t really seem to know that the rest of the world exists, at this point. Bunkers have been built, and prayers said. Most charmingly, Hopkins has befriended a small family who live across the valley from him – a Colonel Parker and his young nephew Robin and niece Pat. These are the educated society Hopkins has wanted (though apparently without wandering far to find it), and there are some touching scenes where Hopkins’ paternal side emerges – and where he watches their lights across the valley, taking comfort from it.

But comfort cannot last. The moon arrives. The world is not destroyed, but everything changes – and Hopkins finds himself living a far different life in a semi-ruined Beadle, growing closer to Robin and Pat, but increasingly isolated from everything else.

Sherriff writes the section of the moon’s landing so brilliantly – it is very tense, while still intensely human. The aftermath is similarly well told, and the central section of the novel was definitely the bit I enjoyed most. He draws the new familial relationships beautifully, and Hopkins gradually becomes a much more likeable character – each step and shade of his character changing being done slowly and believably.

But this is not the end. The final section of the novel looks at how different countries start feuding over the moon and its apparent economic qualities – all seen from the distant perspective of Hopkins. Humanity suffers at the hands of nations’ leaders’ greed and nationalism. Published in 1939, it certainly had relevance to the Second World War – but it felt extremely relevant to Brexit and Trump and far-right parties gaining ascendance across Europe today. Some evils only change their form, it seems.

If the other Sherriff novels I’ve read have felt very much about individual groups of people, with only faint links to class or other wider issues, this one is much more a state-of-the-nation type novel. While still, of course, keeping humanity at its core. I daresay the science of what would happen if the moon did start moving is all flawed, but that certainly doesn’t bother me – and doesn’t remotely affect whether or not this is an impactful novel.

I still prefer his other books, perhaps because this one did feel like it could lose 100 pages without any detriment – but this is still wonderful, and I’m keen to see what else Sherriff has written (and fingers crossed that Persephone publish more of it!)

 

The Progress of Julius by Daphne du Maurier

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I’m sneaking into the final hours of Ali’s Daphne du Maurier Reading Week to write about her third novel – The Progress of Julius (1933). My edition is simply called Julius – I don’t know when or why this change was made (unless perhaps it was to capitalise on the single-name success of Rebecca), but I prefer to go by the original title.

I picked this one up from my pile of unread DdMs because it had a name in the title, and thus qualified for my #ProjectNames informal reading challenge – it wasn’t one of her novels that I had heard discussed very often. Having read it, I can sort of see why…

It traces the life of Julius Levy from his birth right to the end – and his earliest days are spent in poverty in France. He has a loud and passionate mother and matching grandfather. Rather more negligible is Paul, his father, who is disparaged by everybody else in the household. He is an almost cartoonishly weak figure, good only for sitting in the corner and observing.

But Paul has a moment where he is not weak, or at least shows strength in the eyes of the world, and it leads to he and his young son escaping France – sneaking onto a train and travelling to Algeria. Here, as Julius grows, he begins to lift himself out of poverty through some legitimate projects – and lots of illegitimate ones. From stealing horses and selling them to tricking a tutor into educating him, du Maurier shows us a portrait of immoral ambition – and constant disguise. Julius only ever shows the face that is likely to win him the most reward.

Next stop – London. He has heard that this is the place to make his fortune – and make it he does, though he has been followed by the teenage prostitute whose room he frequented in Algiers. Elsa has disguised herself as a boy to sneak onto the boat with him, apparently unable to be without him. (One of the less successful plot elements, particularly towards the beginning, is how Julius is apparently an irresistible personality to all – when, to the reader’s eye, he seems to have very little to recommend him.)

With Elsa, Julius’s selfishness tips over into a sort of sadism:

The shoulders of Elsa began to shake, and her head bent lower and lower. Julius had to cover his mouth with his hand to prevent himself from laughing. He had discovered a new thing, of hurting the people he liked. It gave him an extraordinary sensation to see Elsa cry after she had been smiling, and to know that he had caused her tears. He was aware of power, strange and exciting.

And so it continues throughout his life. At each stage, he is ruthless and selfish – he’s what we would now call a sociopath. His financial success is the only thing that motivates him (at least until another figure comes into his life, in the final third of the book). He is, frankly, vile.

Du Maurier tells her narrative well and engagingly, but it is very straightforward. There is nothing like the twists in Rebecca or the moral ambiguity in My Cousin Rachel. And it was a bit conflicting – the novel is well written, but it is deeply uncomfortable to read.

On the one hand, plenty of the characters are anti-Semitic – initially to Paul and, later, to Julius. Despite having a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, and thus technically not be ethnically Jewish himself, it is taken for granted by all characters and the narrator that Julius is Jewish. And though the narrative does not endorse these insults, you have to ask yourself what Daphne du Maurier was doing in writing this novel.

Nowhere does it suggest that Julius’s behaviour is technical of all Jewish people, or that he is intended to represent anything more than a single character – but it certainly didn’t sit well to have a Jewish character whose life is motivated solely by financial greed. This was, of course, a stereotype around in the 1930s – one being used, even as this novel was published, to stir up hatred against Jewish people in Germany. It is hard not to feel disgusted at the portrait du Maurier has painted, and at the author for painting it.

I don’t need characters to be likeable – but, even if he hadn’t been Jewish, with everything that suggests about du Maurier’s intention, he is so relentlessly terrible that it isn’t all that interesting. He has no nuanced character, nor does he especially develop. We just see him being appalling to person after person, never learning from his actions, or reflecting on his behaviour. It is a uniform and stylistically well written novel, but – as well as being almost certainly anti-Semitic – it feels perhaps a pointless novel too.

A Thatched Roof by Beverley Nichols

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Yes, my love of Beverley continues apace – and I decided recently to pick up the next of his Allways trilogy, A Thatched Roof (1933). I rushed through, and adored, the Merry Hall series last year – but stalled after the first of the earlier Allways trilogy, Down the Garden Path. Would I prefer this one?

In short, yes. I certainly enjoyed Down the Garden Path, but it didn’t live up to my love for Merry Hall et al. A Thatched Roof definitely felt like a step in the right direction – with more humour, more rounding of the eccentric neighbours, and, crucially, less about gardening. Because here he moves inside.

The low lintels of the cottage have many disadvantages, but they have one supreme advantage. They afford an immediate topic of conversation. They make things start, quite literally, with a bang.

And so starts Beverley. I enjoy reading about gardens and gardening when it doesn’t rely on expertise or references to visuals that don’t appear – but I found Down the Garden Path a bit too heavy on gardening and light on narrative. I don’t mind the ratio so much when he is talking about putting a window into his study, or knocking down a section of wall and finding a surprise alcove. I love reading about interiors and renovations. I also love reading Beverley get snobbish on the topic of other people’s taste, because it is delightfully catty, and the outrage he directs on this topic to the people who rent it from him for a while is quite vicious, in a harmless sort of way. Great fun.

The locals begin to come to life more. There is Mrs M., the local busybody and interferer; there is Undine, who swears by water diviners and thinks everything heavenly (as long as it doesn’t smack of modernity). There are a cast of lesser characters, including a wonderfully lazy and cross housekeeper – none of them shine as brightly as the fond antagonists of Merry Hall, but they offer their own entertainment.

Not least when the topic of electric light comes up. This takes up much of the final section of the book – as they debate whether or not it should come to the village (and then Beverley rebels and gets it all for himself, listing for us the wonders of illuminating statues and stairways). He doesn’t care at all that others can’t share his electricity – indeed, he is not always the most likeable of people, but he writes beautifully and we can charitably assume that a lot of what he writes is self-lampooning or exaggeration. Hopefully…

I bought this book way back in 2004, on the strength of the title and the age of the book (and perhaps, had I flicked through the first few pages, the reference to The Provincial Lady Goes Further). It’s good to have finally read it – and I’m sure I’ll move on to the third of the trilogy before too long. I don’t know if I’ll revisit the Allways books, but it certainly fitted the mood I was in at the time, and that sort of dependability is to be cherished. Now, if only I had an edition with Rex Whistler’s illustrations on the dustjacket…

Excellent Intentions by Richard Hull

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Who doesn’t love the British Library Crime Classics? I’m amassing them far faster than I can read them, but earlier this month I did read Excellent Intentions (1938) by Richard Hull, which is one of their more recent publications. I was beguiled by the description of it being an unusual twist on the detective novel. And the reason it’s a twist is because we start in the courtroom, with the accused in the dock…

“May it please your lordship – members of the jury.” Anstruther Blayton rose to his feet and, as was his habit, moved some papers that were near him in an unnecessary and fussy manner. At the age of fifty-two he was, he knew, comparatively young to have been selected by the Attorney-General to act as leader in a trial which was arousing a certain amount of public interest. Even though he had been known for some time as a leading K.C. on the circuit, it was his chance and he meant to make the most of it.

That’s the opening paragraph, throwing us right into the midst of the trial. But – crucially – we do not know who the accused is.

As the trial continues, the scenes described run parallel to it. So, as the brilliantly-named Anstruther Blayton talks us through the scene of the death, we then jump to seeing it – Mr Cargate, taking snuff on a train, and dying almost immediately. Cargate is that stereotypical murder victim from this genre – universally disliked, and rightly so. All manner of people are suspected, from his household staff to the inheritors to a group of people involved in (of all things) the stamp trade.

I don’t know if Hull was a philatelist or simply did a lot of research, but buckle up to learn a huge amount about stamps. Unless you already know it, in which case… well, I hope he got the details right. I could have done with perhaps less of this information, not least because I spent the whole time marvelling that anybody could care whether or not a particular stamp did or did not have a dot of ink in a particular place. But Hull does a good job of immersing us in this world.

Hull writes with wit, which always helps this sort of novel, and many of his characters are very vivid – particularly in the silent sparring within the courtroom. The actual plot seems like it might be rather flimsy, but don’t form your opinions until the final page… and perhaps not even then. A worthy addition to the BLCC series.

Buttercups and Daisies by Compton Mackenzie

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OK, that’s it. I’m going to have to start buying all the Compton Mackenzie novels I see, aren’t I? I read Buttercups and Daisies (1931) before my 25 Books challenge started, but didn’t manage to write about it – and I bought it in Hay on Wye recently. I always like to start one of the books I buy on holiday, and the intriguing opening pages of this one made it my nomination.

Here are the opening paragraphs – which, accompanied by an illustration of Mr W, were what made me both buy the book and start it immediately:

“This,” Mr. Waterall announced, on a fine Saturday morning in late September, as he gazed over the top of his paper at his wife, “this is what I have been looking for for years.”

Mrs. Waterall’s impulse was to suppose that her husband was enjoying one of those little triumphs to which he was periodically addicted. He had a habit of putting articles away in safe places, forgetting the place immediately afterwards, and accusing every member of his family, from his wife to the boy who came in to do the knives, of having interfered with his arrangements for security. Mrs. Waterall could not be blamed for assuming that. This was one of the mislaid treasures.

“For years!” Mr. Waterall portentously repeated. “Have the goodness to listen, my dear.”

Mrs. Waterall, realising that her husband wanted to read something from the Daily Telegraph, jumped to the conclusion that he had discovered another cure for baldness. She hoped it would not be as complicated a cure as the last one he had tried, when he had sat for two hours in the bathroom every Sunday morning, wearing upon his head a hemisphere of indiarubber which has kept firm by the vacuum and was connected by a long tube to an electrical apparatus emitting fizzes and blue sparks.

But what he has actually found, in fact, is a cottage in Hampshire for sale. I say cottage – it is a ‘two-roomed bungalow’, but Mr Waterall has bold ideas about what he can turn it into. He doesn’t intend to move his wife, daughter, and two sons there permanently – but he certainly intends for it to be their country house. Off he goes, to meet the man selling it. For some reason, I can never get enough of house hunting scenes in novels, particularly if they’re amusing ones, and Mackenzie’s is a corker. It becomes more and more apparent that the man selling the bungalow is a charlatan, who lies and evades questions and flatters Mr Waterall’s ego until he has agreed to take it. All he needs to do is add a few more rooms, buy some trees, and he’ll be good to go.

The novel shows how his long-suffering wife, adventurous boys, and simpering girl (simpering mostly because she knows how best to placate him for her own advantage, to the ire of her brothers) are carted out to the middle of nowhere. All does not go well. The buttercups and daisies of the title are certainly ironic. Little Phyllis falls down a well. A cow wanders in, because they don’t have a back door to the kitchen. The neighbours range from amiably mad to obstreperous.

And I loved reading all of it.

The other Mackenzie novel I’ve read, Poor Relations, was also very funny – with a put-upon protagonist whose success comes with the price of having all manner of relatives expect to live off him. In Buttercups and Daisies, we exchange an empathetic lead for one who is a well-meaning tyrant. His absolute certainty of his own rightness, and the fact that he blights lives around him without being remotely malicious, puts him in the fine tradition of characters like Mr Pooter. Mackenzie is a very amusing writer, with an excellent use of the narrative voice that undermines the character – and it’s all extremely funny.

As the novel goes on, we get more from the brothers’ perspectives, which I found a trifle less enjoyable – perhaps because it feels like we’re supposed to be on their side as they plot pranks, trespass etc., and they didn’t seem particularly likeable to me. And the tide of the novel gets taken up with whether or not the community should be called Oaktown or Oak, which does work as a conceit, but comes a bit late in the day to be the main thrust of the novel.

So, it’s not perfect – but, particularly in the first half, it’s rather wonderful. And the second half is also fab, even if I wish Mackenzie hadn’t broadened his focus so much. But one element that doesn’t falter is the ego and bravado of Mr Waterall. How I wish there were a sequel, so I could find out more about him!

There isn’t a sequel, but there are an awful lot of other Mackenzie novels out there. It seems a shame that he is basically synonymous with Whisky Galore and nothing else, when he clearly was far from a one-trick pony. Any recommendations from anyone?

25 Books in 25 Days: #19 The Land of Green Ginger

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When my dear friend Stilo asked if I’d read The Land of Green Ginger, I said no but thought she was talking about the Winifred Holtby novel of that name. I also haven’t read The Land of Green Ginger (1937) by Noel Langley, but it had the added distinction that I hadn’t heard of it. I’d only heard of Langley’s novel Cage Me a Peacock, and had read nothing by him – and was only about 70% sure he was a man.

Well, Stilo said she and her mum loved it, and lent me her copy – illustrated by the wonderful Edward Ardizzone. It’s a sort of sequel to Aladdin, about his son Abu Ali (who can talk from birth).

“I understand you called the Queen Mother a Button-Nosed Tortoise?” he inquired.

“That’s not quite true,” replied his SOn and Heir politely. “I only said she had a Face like One.”

“He only said you had a Face like One, Mamma,” Aladdin explained weakly.

“And what right had he to say even that?” demanded the Widow Twankey indignantly. “Even if there were such a thing as a Button-Nosed Tortoise; he hasn’t seen one!”

“True,” agreed the Son and Heir, “but I’d know him as soon as I saw him!”

“How?” the Widow Twankey challenged him.

“It’d look like you,” said the Son and Heir simply.

Fast forward a bit and as a young man, he has to go on a quest to win the love of a fair maiden. Yes, it’s a children’s book – but it’s extremely funny. I love any author who can get humour from mixing tones successfully. Playing with the expectations of register, and distorting them, is the sort of whimsical wit that I rush towards – and The Land of Green Ginger was great fun. I’m keen to see what other sorts of things Langley wrote…

25 Books in 25 Days: #8 Death in the Clouds

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I thought it might be nearer the end of the 25 days when I started depending on the addictive joy of Agatha – but I could resist no longer, and picked up Death in the Clouds (1935) by Agatha Christie. It’s a relatively early Poirot novel, and thus I could feel relatively assured of it being a good’un.

The murder takes place, as the title suggests, on a plane – called the Prometheus – and Madame Giselle is discovered dead. The only sign is a puncture mark on her neck – and so all the passengers are under suspicion. Well, all except one – because Hercule Poirot happens to be on the flight.

We follow the usual twists and turns of a Poirot novel, and my foolish belief that I’d worked out the ending turned out (but of course) not to be true. Sadly no Hastings or Ariadne Oliver, both of whom I love and always want to pop up in a Poirot, but it’s a neat murder mystery with all the clues laid out well – if only the reader is able to spot them… And there’s the good fun of a detective novelist, Clancy, on board – with Agatha Christie obviously enjoying teasing the profession. Here’s Inspector Japp on the topic:

“These detective-story writers… always making the police out to be fools… and getting their procedure all wrong. Why, if I were to say the things to my super that their inspectors say to superintendents I should be thrown out of the Force tomorrow on my ear. Set of ignorant scribblers! This is just the sort of damn-fool murder that a scribbler of rubbish would think he could get away with.”

Hunt the Slipper by Violet Trefusis

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Last Bank Holiday weekend, I decided to go and spend a bit of time at a National Trust property, enjoying the sunshine and reading a book or two (or three). None of the books I was reading at that juncture felt quite right – and so I scouted round my shelves until I found something that did. And I chose Hunt the Slipper (1937) by Violet Trefusis.

I’ve read a couple of other novels by Trefusis before. I loved Echo, and quite quickly read Broderie Anglaise, which I didn’t much like. Then I came to impasse and waited a few years, clearly. The cover to Hunt the Slipper was enough to persuade me – that, and the fact that it fitted one of my empty years in A Century of Books.

Trefusis’s novel is about privileged, artistic, middle-aged types – experimenting with love and with detachment. At the centre is Nigel Benson, on the cusp of 50, and living with his sister Molly. He has been something of a lothario, but is becoming a little more interested in fine furniture and architecture. Into his life – because she is the new wife of his close friend Sir Anthony Crome – walks a young woman called Caroline. She has little time for manners, airily says what she thinks, doesn’t really understand the mores of his world. And they fall awkwardly, uncertainly in love. In Paris, of course.

Trefusis has a rather assured and engaging tone – quite arch, witty, and the right level of detachment from her characters. Here’s the opening paragraph:

Molly Benson was clipping a small yew with a virtuosity, a flourish that would have put many a professional topiarist to shame. The click-click of her secateurs, monotonous, hypnotic, was sending her brother to sleep, the newspaper on his knees had slithered to the ground, and his head lolled… Molly had hoped this would happen. Poor pet! He gets so little, she thought, meaning sleep. She was glad to contribute to that little. An excellent sleeper herself, she was rather proud of his insomnia. It set him aside as a superior being. Like Nietzsche, he only obtained by violence what was given others freely.

It’s her wonderful writing style that stands out. And particularly the ways that characters observe and misunderstand each other – and how they see a whole scene, including crockery, sideboards, walls, landscapes. They each build their own interpretations of surroundings, and Trefusis convinces us that they are whole people. Often her turns of phrase and small similes are perfect – and this helps elevate the story above the traditional love triangle tropes. I rather liked this excerpt:

“Well, good-bye, my dear,” he said, with a sickly heartiness. “I shall look forward to seeing you in May. Don’t forget my address is the Grand Hotel, Florence.” 

“Good-bye, Nigel. I can never forget all you’ve done for me.” They were like guilty correspondents who imagine that so long as the end of their letters is above-board, nobody will inquire into the rest.”

I certainly preferred the sections of the novel that weren’t about love affairs. It’s something I find rather tedious to read about, and is the reason Broderie Anglaise was a misfire for me – but she is rather more clever about it in this book. We don’t get pages of people pouring their hearts out, or a narrative that expects us to weep when they weep. The characters are no less sincere, but Trefusis knows better than to expect us to buy into it completely.

Incidentally, the title is explained at one point:

He did not suspect that by one of Love’s infallible ricochets she was behaving to him as Melo had behaved to her. Her cruelty was Melo’s legacy; her indifference to him was out of revenge for Melo’s indifference to her. Love had passed from one to the other, furtive, unseizable, like the slipper in ‘Hunt the Slipper’.

I still wish I could read a Trefusis novel where she’s not writing about romantic love – because I think she’s better and more interesting on other topics – but I’ll keep reading whatever she has written. She might mostly be remembered now as a footnote in Bloomsbury love triangles, but I think she deserves more than that.

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

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My book group read Vile Bodies (1930) by Evelyn Waugh – his second novel, and the fifth one I’ve read by him. I have a mixed history with Waugh, and this one hasn’t helped clear things up much.

The novel focuses upon a young man called Adam – a journalist who is engaged to Nina – who is trying to make his way in the world, and to gather together the money to afford a wedding. Around him there are an astonishing number of characters, most of whom are aboard a sea voyage in the opening, confusing pages of the novel. There is Mrs Melrose Ape and her gaggle of ‘angels’ with wings, called Chastity, Charity, and the like. There’s a Jesuit priest we don’t hear much from afterwards. There is Agatha Runcible, a bizarre and mildly hysterical character. There’s all manner of other people who come and go, without much certainty.

Adam is an outsider in the world he tries to enter – sometimes as a gossip columnist, sometimes as a gentleman. His attempts to get money go disastrously wrong, miraculously right, and back again, over and over – with a drunken Major playing a significant role in all these moments. And the people Adam is observing are the Bright Young Things of the 1920s – ‘Bright Young Things’ was the original title of the novel, and the title of the film adaptation, and Waugh has good fun mocking their insouciance and inconsequentiality.

But inconsequence is a hallmark of Waugh’s novels in general, and it’s my sticking point with them. Actions never have moral consequences. People routinely ruin each other’s lives for no reason, and don’t give it a second thought – which is one of my least favourite things in fiction. I don’t mind dark humour, and if people’s hubris or sheer accident mean disaster happens, I can chuckle at it. But those who selfishly destroy other lives without reason – well, I don’t find it funny even when it’s satire, and that rather spoils the joke for me. One gets the sense that Waugh isn’t a terribly nice person.

Having said that, there are other moments I found very amusing (hence the conflict!) The on-again-off-again wedding was dealt with enjoyably. Nina’s father – Colonel Blount – never recognises Adam, and is always saying how much better his prospective son-in-law is than the other suitors he’s met (all of whom are Adam). And Waugh has a brilliant way with a turn of phrase – such as:

She wore a frock such as only duchesses can obtain for their elder daughters, a garment curiously puckered and puffed up and enriched with old lace at improbable places, from which her pale beauty emerged as though from a clumsily tied parcel.

Waugh’s style is recognisably his, but there is also a heck of a lot of Ronald Firbank in here. (I felt rather chuffed that I thought this, as I learned in the afterword that Waugh also thought this – though the sycophantic editor of my edition, Richard Jacobs, disputes it.) Firbank had jumpy narratives, lots of dialogue, and a lack of clarity about what was going on – and all this appears in Vile Bodies.

Of the five Waugh novels I’ve read (Put Out More Flags, The Loved One, Scoop, Decline and Fall, and Vile Bodies) I really like The Loved One, and very much enjoyed Scoop. And I really disliked Decline and Fall and Put Out More Flags, for their intense spitefulness. Vile Bodies is the Waugh novel that falls most in the middle of my spectrum – I relished the bits I found amusing, recoiled from those I didn’t, and spent most of the first 50 pages not having a clue what was going on.

The Priory by Dorothy Whipple

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It’s turning out to be all Whipple all the time on Stuck in a Book right now. Well, long before I started Random Commentary, I was already reading the monster that is The Priory (1939). It’s enormous. My copy is 528 pages – I basically never read books that are over 500 pages, and that’s why I’ve had my copy for nearly 14 years (gasp, how did time pass that quickly?)

I bought it just before I started university, while on a trip to the Bookbarn to buy books for my course. This was, ahem, not for my course – but I couldn’t resist. And it was only when I got home that I discovered that my copy was… signed by Dorothy Whipple!

Obviously my copy is much older than the Persephone edition – which I do also have, as I can’t bring myself to get rid of either copy. And it starts like this…

It was almost dark. Cars, weaving like shuttles on the high road between two towns fifteen miles apart, had their lights on. Every few moments, the gates of Saunby Priory were illuminated. Every few moments, to left or to right, the winter dusk was pierced by needle points of light which, rushing swiftly into brilliance, summoned the old gateway like an apparition from the night and, passing, dispelled it.

The gates were from time to time illuminated, but the Priory, set more than a mile behind them, was still dark. To the stranger it would have appeared deserted. It stood in dark bulk, with a cold glitter of water beside it, a cold glitter of glass window when clouds moved in the sky. The West Front of the Priory, built in the thirteenth century for the service of God and the poor, towered above the house that had been raised alongside from its ruins, from its very stones. And because no light showed from any window here, the stranger, visiting Saunby at this hour, would have concluded that the house was empty.

But he would have been wrong. There were many people within.

So – what’s The Priory about? The house in question is called Saunby Priory, and is the vast home belonging to the Marwood family. There is grumpy widower Major Marwood, who lives only for the cricket season – which he throws large sums of money at, while the rest of the year he is a fierce penny pincher. There are his daughters Christine and Penelope, still in the nursery though now newly grown up. And there is a handful of servants who occasionally war with each other and occasionally sleep with each other (in a tactful 1930s way, of course).

Curiously, the Priory never felt very big to me. After that introduction, the scenes inside the house are rather claustrophobic – people worrying about space, getting in each other’s way, or being moved to make room for others. I wonder how deliberate that was.

There are a series of stages, where the entrance of a new character into the scene changes things – the first being the shy, anxious woman who will become Major Marwood’s new wife: Anthea. She is old enough that she believed she would always be a spinster, and is keen to accept his fairly ungracious proposal – which he makes by phone, because he doesn’t want the bother of going around to her in case she says no. There are also men who enter stage left to woo the girls; there is a passage of time in London. It is all very involved, and spaced evenly throughout the hundreds of pages – like an ongoing soap opera of events, neatly paced and always meeting the anticipated dose of emotion. There is also humour, particularly at the beginning, though the tone of the novel grows a little more melodramatic as the pages go by.

The Priory doesn’t have the psychological nuance of some of Whipple’s other novels. (That’s my view anyway – see review links at the bottom for different opinions!) Because her tapestry of events is so protracted, and must be filled, each one gets its moments of alarm and pathos, and everybody reacts in heightened dialogue before neatly moving onto the next moment. For instance, Anthea moves from being a timid new bride to ruthlessly running the household for the protection of her new babies, but settles into the new role so comfortably that it doesn’t feel as though a psychological shift has taken place so much as a new set of characteristics has been introduced. The same is true for the daughters as they experience marriage, parenthood, and adult woes.

Which is not to say that what is here isn’t a joy to read. It is – I moved through the novel very happily, enjoying every page for the entertaining soap opera that it was. I suppose my only point is that Whipple can do better, in terms of insight and depth – but not every novel needs to be insightful and deep. Some can just be engagingly written and immersively enjoyable – indeed, that is no mean feat. Yes, it could have been 200pp shorter without losing very much – I’d have advised staying in the Priory and not wandering off around the country – but I can’t disagree with the tribute that E.M. Delafield gave the novel in The Provincial Lady in Wartime:

What, I enquire in order to gain time, does Mrs. Peacock like in the way of books?

In times such as these, she replies very apologetically indeed, she thinks a novel is practically the only thing. Not a detective novel, not a novel about politics, nor about the unemployed, nothing to do with sex, and above all not a novel about life under Nazi régime in Germany.

Inspiration immediately descends upon me and I tell her without hesitation to read a delightful novel called The Priory by Dorothy Whipple, which answers all requirements, and has a happy ending into the bargain.

Mrs. Peacock says it seems too good to be true, and she can hardly believe that any modern novel is as nice as all that, but I assure her that it is and that it is many years since I have enjoyed anything so much.

 

Others who got Stuck into it:

“The best thing about this book is the characters. Whipple develops them so skillfully, and I loved how she did it by showing the reader through their words, thoughts, and actions, not just telling us.” – Books and Chocolate

“It is a beautiful novel, worthy of the highest praise and Whipple is an author, whose writing I look forward to reading more of, in the near future.” – Bag Full of Books

“Not a lot “happens” in this novel; most of the action centers around emotion. It’s all about subtlety here.” – A Girl Walks into a Bookstore

There is also an enjoyable write-up in the Persephone Forum.