1940s

Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgins

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I really should start making better note of where I get my book recommendations, because I do like to acknowledge them properly. All I know is that Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgins (1946) had been on my Amazon wishlist for quite a few years when I bought a copy in the US in 2015. And what a nice copy it is – or was; it rather fell apart as I read it, sadly. Though perhaps appropriately. Anyway, many thanks to whoever suggested it!

Project Names brought this one to the fore. Indeed, when I was thinking about reading books with names in the title, as a loose project, it was this novel that came to mind first. I didn’t know anything about it. I haven’t seen the 1948 Cary Grant film, though I’d be keen to, and I kept getting it mixed up with V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas (which I haven’t read, but I imagine is very different). I love books about houses, I love books from the ’40s, and I was excited to start it. And, you know what? It’s great fun.

The sweet old farmhouse burrowed into the upward slope of the land so deeply that you could enter either its bottom or middle floor at ground level. Its window trim was delicate and the lights in its sash were a bubbly amethyst. Its rooftree seemed to sway a little against the sky, and the massive chimney that rose out of it tilted a fraction to the south. Where the white paint was flecking off on the siding, there showed beneath it the faint blush of what must once have been a rich, dense red.

It’s not often that the title of a novel sums up the whole plot, but it pretty much does here. It’s unusual for a novel to have a single arc of action, uninterrupted by subplots or a broader scope, but Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House is that book. It’s very impressive. Whenever I’m trying to write, I find sustaining the interest – and sufficient words – for a full scene is often quite tricky. In this novel, Hodgins starts with Mr and Mrs Blandings house-hunting, and steadily takes us through every moment of the process of finding and buying the house, changing their mind about what to do next, hiring an architect, constructing a property, and getting the fittings in. More impressively, it is very funny and very engaging.

I particularly love reading about every step of house buying/building/decorating when I’m not having to do it myself. And thank goodness I didn’t read this while I was buying my own flat, because every stage of the process goes wrong. Not in a Laurel and Hardy broad comedy way, but through a very believable series of mishaps and poor decisions. Whether it is the estate agent’s bluster, or the architect’s lack of realism, or the difficulty of finding a water source, everything adds a complication. Mr and Mrs Blandings blunder on, squabbling and occasionally remorseful, but keeping their vision of a completed home in mind.

The most remarkable thing about Hogdins’ writing is its even pace, and the way that it is clearly unhurried while still keeping the reader hooked. Ultimately we know that nothing particularly momentous is likely to happen, and the humour is kept up so we never feel too much like we’re witnessing a tragedy. My only major quibble with this edition (and, I believe, most other editions) is the illustrator. William Steig is well regarded, but his cartoons lean heavily towards the broad and fantastical, and are (to my mind) completely out of keeping with the tone of the book. It’s a shame, because he would definitely enhance a different type of book, but I found myself rather dreading them appearing. It spoiled the effect of the restrained, human prose.

But yes, what a fun, clever, well written book. Nothing showy or over the top, and the perfect thing to read if you are well settled in a house you don’t want to sell, renovate, or decorate.

By Auction by Denis Mackail

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Denis Mackail’s 1949 novel By Auction is one I’ve been reading on and off for months, but I finally finished it recently. It’s not his best… it was a little bit of a slog to get through at times, sadly. But I wanted to post a little about it, because there are moments I found brilliant.

The novel is about a young man seeing his ancestral home – or the objects therein – be auctioned off to pay debts and such. As he wakes up for his final morning there, and then sees the auction, it brings back a whirlwind of young memories (particularly of his brother, who died at war) and a series of young women who seem more or less interchangeable to me. The dashes between past and present were slightly confusing, and I couldn’t always work out which young women were where. But, anyway, if I didn’t relish these sections – I loved when Mackail was writing just about the auction. That was captivating, and almost always irrelevant to the plot. And I wanted to share this section on the auction, that I thought was brilliant:

“Going – ” said Mr Murcher, once more. Looked round, but only for an instant, for he knew his own congregation by now; and rapped – for at his desk he no longer just jerked – with the butt-end of his pencil-case. He had now achieved almost his maximum speed.

His skilled, photographic mind knew exactly which members were, except as part of the essential background to this production, no use at all. Which kept their heads. Which could be relied on to lose them. Which wanted larger bits of furniture. Which wanted oddments. Which – very important, this – had a weakness for what in a shop would have been quite unsaleable. Which were quick, which were slow; not always the same thing as which were rash and which were cautious. Which were rich, yet perhaps mean. Which were poorer, yet if led on, and personally addressed – for he would remember all names, too, or get them swiftly from his clerk – might be reckless.

He was a conductor. This was a symphony. Unrehearsed, and in a sense with a new score. But he was attuned to it. One symphony, after all, if you have experience, is much like another. The pencil-case was his baton. It started each theme. It singled out strings, brass, woodwind, or percussion; in other words the various characters gathered round him. Occasionally it combined them, in a great, orchestral swell. Then it paused. “Going – ” he said. The theme was over. He began again.

There was ballet, too; of a somewhat simple yet rhythmic nature. For perpetually, as he spoke, cajoled, jeered – Tod sometimes felt that he went a bit far with his jeering, but had to admit that it often gained its effect – or cracked jokes, the four strong men, singly, in pairs, or once or twice as a trio, came gliding up the gangway or in from the wings, with objects and articles of different sizes.

Always, or almost always, as one object or article was being exhibited and appraised, another was being removed, and yet a third was awaiting its turn. The strong men were quite expressionless. They neither led the laughter – not that Mr Murcher was so inexpert as to crack a joke every time – nor joined in it. Nor, again, did they seem aware of the baton.

Yet their steady, relentless coming and going, and the gradual but incessant redistribution of the goods in the tent, was more than rhythmic; it was slightly hypnotic. At one and the same moment you could see what you had lost or won, what you must instantly decide whether to go for or not, and what was on the point of taking its place.

Past, present, and future, as one might say, formed the basis of this choreography; which as calculated to disturb even the steadiest nerves, for who can bear all three together?

We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood by Emily Kimbrough

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This 1943 book is a play on words that I didn’t spot until I’d finished it, embarrassingly. For it is about following Our Hearts to Hollywood – more specifically, the 1942 book Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, in which Emily Kimbrough and Cornelia Otis Skinner hilariously recounted their tour of Europe in the 1920s. It’s a brilliant book, and I think relatively well known in the US – if you find a copy this side of the Atlantic, snap it up and you won’t regret it.

Hollywood moved fast in the 1940s, and almost immediately a film version was in the works – and Kimbrough and Skinner were asked to go to Hollywood to help write the script. (The film was released in 1944 – things really did move fast! – and there was even a sequel in 1946, Our Hearts Were Growing Up, which Skinner and Kimbrough were unable to prevent despite legal action.)

We Followed is pretty slender in terms of plot. It essentially shows how the two women are a bit like fish out of water in the dizzying whirl of Hollywood. Imagine what it would feel like to them now! But it’s good fun to see them get overwhelmed by the grandeur of their hotel, starstruck by various stars they encounter (few of whom meant anything to me now, I’ll confess), and try to get their heads around writing the dialogue. Or, more precisely, holding off writing the dialogue as any number of other meetings take place to determine an outline – once anybody realises that the two have even arrived.

Throughout, Kimbrough documents the sort of affectionate ribaldry and rivalry that only good friends can have – with her own ironic dose of teasing Skinner about her theatrical background (clearly, simultaneously, admiring it). There is no real butt to any of the jokes – everything is very good-natured, and witty in a self-deprecating way rather than anything more malicious.

It’s always interesting to read a book written by two people, and wonder how they did. Having now read quite a lot of Cornelia Otis Skinner’s books and this by Emily Kimbrough, I can make an attempt at piecing together how their different styles cohered so gloriously in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. And I think it’s fair to say that Skinner provided all the sharpest wit and the funniest lines. Kimbrough is more delicately amusing, and brings the sense of wonderment and almost naivety. Don’t expect any exposés of famous people, or any people – there is no dark side to this Hollywood. There is perhaps an inefficient side, but that’s about as dark as it gets.

I’m having a really good year for books about the film industry, thinking about it. Christopher Isherwood’s Prater Violet, Darcy O’Brien’s A Way of Life Like Any Other, the extraordinary non-fiction The Devil’s Candy by Julia Salamon, and now this. Four very different perspectives on movie making, but somehow working very well together – and all very good.

If Kimbrough is at her best alongside Skinner, this is still a wonderfully enjoyable book to read. (I wonder why it wasn’t written by both of them?) If you’ve loved Our Hearts Were Young and Gay then I think you’ll relish following them to Hollywood with this one – to see a bit about the book’s afterlife, and to enjoy a snapshot of Hollywood in the 1940s.

The Shrimp and the Anemone by L.P. Hartley #1944Club

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My second (and probably final) read for the 1944 Club was L.P. Hartley’s The Shrimp and the Anemone, which i am grateful I am typing, because I can never say that word. It’s the first book of the Eustace and Hilda trilogy, and covers about a year in the young lives of the brother and sister.

I bought the trilogy many years ago, and I think I also had this book separately until I realised that it was a duplicate. While I read The Go-Between a decade or so ago, it was only last year that I started to explore his other work – specifically The Boat, which was brilliant. And so I was pleased to see that one of my Hartleys could coincide with the 1944 Club, even if it meant lugging around the chunky book pictured above.

It opens at the beach, and we don’t have to wait long to see the shrimp and the anemone in question. Eustace is nine; his sister Hilda is four years older, and they are playing on the sands. Eustace is looking in a rockpool, and sees an anemone slowly swallowing a shrimp – he is a sensitive child, and is keen to save the shrimp. Hilda comes to help extricate it – but, in doing so, both the shrimp and the anemone are killed. It is rather a graphic depiction of a relationship that goes through the whole novel (and, I believe, the whole trilogy). Hilda is domineering and possessive; Eustace is anxious to please. It’s leaping ahead a bit, because this comes in the second half of the novel, but it crystallises their sibling relationship well:

For the first time, then, he obscurely felt that Hilda was treating him badly. She was a tyrant, and he was justified in resisting her. Nancy was right to taunt him with his dependence on her. His thoughts ran on. He was surrounded by tyrants who thought they had a right to order him about it was a conspiracy. He could not call his soul his own. In all his actions he was propitiating somebody. This must stop. His lot was not, he saw in a flash of illumination, the common lot of children. Like him they were obedient, perhaps, and punished for disobedience, but obedience had not got into their blood, it was not a habit of mind, it was detachable, like the clothes they put on and off. As far as they could, they did what they liked; they were not haunted, as he was, with the fear of not giving satisfaction to someone else.

A lot of the novel is simply about this fraught relationship – one filled with love, because Hilda is not trying to inflict pain; she believes she is doing the best thing for both of them, to the extent that she considers the question at all. I found it fascinating, because I’ve never quite got my head around what it must be like to have a sibling who is either younger or older than you. I know that’s the norm, but it seems to me like it must be quite odd – not being on the same footing, as it were. And Hartley captures that inequality well.

Into this world comes Miss Fothergill, an old lady who is largely alienated from the community by her disabilities. We see these through Eustace’s eyes, so I’m not sure exactly what they were – but they lead to her being in a wheelchair, and having deformities in her hands and face. Hilda forces Eustace to speak to her when they encounter her on a walk – and, unexpectedly, he (after some misadventures on a paperchase!) ends up visiting and befriending her – leading to various seismic changes in Eustace and Hilda’s lives towards the end of the novel.

I didn’t find this as wonderful as The Boat, possibly because it doesn’t try to have the humour of that novel. And I’ve found every novel about children that I’ve read since Alfred and Guinevere by James Schuyler somewhat deficient in dialogue, because Schuyler captures so well how young siblings talk. And if Hartley’s child characters lean towards the adult in how they converse, they are wonderfully realised in how they think and relate. Eustace’s anxieties are drawn perfectly, and their relationship rang very true. I’m not very good at carrying on with a series after I’ve started it, but I should move onto the next two before I forget the first of the trilogy – it will certainly be intriguing to see how this relationship develops as the brother and sister age.

Company in the Evening by Ursula Orange #1944Club

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I loved the first Ursula Orange novel I read (Tom Tiddler’s Ground) and was glad that the 1944 Club provided an opportunity to read another. Company in the Evening is one of the Furrowed Middlebrow reprints – extremely welcome, especially given how much Scott has made us all want to read Ursula Orange over the years. And, yes, it’s another really good’un.

The novel is from the perspective of Vicky, a woman who has recently divorced and is looking after her young daughter (born after the divorce) while also working at a literary agency. She is managing life rather well, but her mother can’t believe this is possible – and decides that Vicky should take in her sister-in-law. Rene has been living with Vicky’s mother, after being widowed (a very WW2 element to the story) – and she makes the move to Vicky’s household, fitting neither in the role of servant or relative. She will provide, Vicky’s mother optimistically hopes, ‘company in the evening’.

Vicky is more a real character than a likeable one. Or, perhaps, she becomes likeable because she is so understandable. She does not particularly want Rene to move in with her, nor does she know quite how to speak to her. Orange is very good in the scenes where Vicky tries to reach across the intellectual and social chasm between herself and Rene, wanting to find the right topics and language, but also (because she is only ordinarily nice; nothing special) not putting in quite as much effort as is needed. She is definitely an intellectual snob and, to a lesser extent, a class snob – but it is undeniable that this chasm would exist, even if Vicky cared less about it. The women are two different to understand one another.

Meanwhile, she starts to reconnect with her ex-husband – recognising, for the first time, that he might want to make something of the role of father, and that she never really gave him the chance. Looping back to the title – might he become the aforementioned company?

The dynamics of the unusual household are done extremely well. We always know what people are or aren’t likely to say, do, and feel, and understand how awkwardly these elements cohere – or don’t cohere. It is a funny novel, but not in the way that Tom Tiddler’s Ground was. It’s the war – set in 1941, if memory serves – and a more sombre light is cast over the book.

Having said that, all the stuff at her literary agency is amusing – particularly her dealings with an author who sends all her best stories elsewhere, and is maddeningly unhelpful in meetings. I love reading about anybody engaged in literary work, and this was all rich material for what a literary agency was presumably like in the 1940s.

Dorothy Harper wafted herself out of the office, all pearls, fur-coat and scent. I am sure that she always pictured herself as bringing just a little colour and romance—a breath of the outside world—into our drab lives. As neither of us ever did anything but listen patiently while she talked her society prattle, perhaps we encouraged her in this conception. I was ‘Miss Sylvester’ to her, as I was to all our clients. I am sure that had she known that I was (like her) a divorcee, she would. have been deeply shocked. Little typists in offices (she would think) have no business to be also divorced women with private lives of their own.

The oddball humour is perhaps an odd fit with the social anxieties – and with all the motherhood aspect, particularly when Vicky’s daughter has a health crisis. But I think it works well together – because, of course, people’s lives have funny moments and unhappy moments, and Orange has written something that is naturalistic in tone, if not in every word spoken. I’m so grateful that Scott and Furrowed Middlebrow have brought Ursula Orange back into print – and you can read his detailed thoughts about this novel on his blog.

25 Books in 25 Days: #17 Soap Behind the Ears

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I discovered my love for Cornelia Otis Skinner a while ago, and when I was in America in 2015, I ordered most of her work to my friend’s apartment. It was much cheaper to do that and carry then back then to pay for them to be shipped to England, and her books are very hard to find here. Since then, I’ve been rationing out her very funny collections of essays – this time, picking up Soap Behind the Ears (1941).

She writes very amusingly about the trials of everyday life – as a mother, as an actress, and as an observer of the ridiculous. Think Diary of a Provincial Lady meets Victoria Wood, but American. It’s all very diverting, and I can’t get enough of it. Which is a brief review, but I hope an encouragement to anybody who doesn’t know her to give her a try – her most famous book is the glorious Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, written with Emily Kimbrough, about travelling around Europe.

My favourite piece was about trying to get new clothes for her young son – just the right amount of exaggeration in it. And here’s an excerpt from ‘The Body Beautiful’, about trying to get fit at a sort of trainer/clinic hellscape:

The time dragged almost as heavily as my limbs. Finally Miss Jones said I was a good girl and had done enough for the day (the dear Lord knows the day had done enough for me!) and I might go have my massage. I staggered out and into the capable arms of a Miss Svenson who looked like Flagstad dressed up as a nurse. She took me into a small room, flung me onto a hard table and for forty-five minutes went to work on me as if I were material for a taffy-pulling contest. She kneaded me, she rolled me with a hot rolling pin, she did to me what she called “cupping” which is just a beauty-parlor term for good old orthodox spanking. After she’d gotten me in shape for the oven she took me into a shower-room and finished me up with that same hose treatment by which they subdue the recalcitrant inmates of penitentiaries.

25 Books in 25 Days: #9 Tell It To A Stranger

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When I go to an independent bookshop, I try to always buy a book – to support them. And in 2009 in Woodstock, I bought Tell It To A Stranger (1947/1949) by Elizabeth Berridge. Both those dates are there, as the book selects stories from two collections – but I think it’s chiefly 1947. Now, I read the first half of this earlier in the year, but finished it today (which technically fits my ‘finish 25 books in 25 days’ motto). Look, I was at dinner and the theatre after work today, so I didn’t have much time.

The stories here are often about the effects of war – whether that is loneliness or readjusting to the old life or grief. Berridge draws so sharply, encasing dramatic moments in the everyday lives of ordinary people so subtly that you almost don’t realise until they’re upon you. It’s as though you’re scanning across a pleasant domestic scene and suddenly notice that somebody has a knife in their back.

In a quick review, I can’t summarise each story – and I think that might almost be pointless. Rather, I shall just say that Berridge is a very adept crafter of stories and I heartily recommend the collection, perhaps spacing them out a little. I’ve got a few of her novels on my shelves too, so it’ll be interesting to see if Angus Wilson (who wrote the preface) is right, and she is equally adept at both.

25 Books in 25 Days: #4 Our Heritage of Liberty

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Image result for stephen leacock
Image via WikiCommons.

I’ve loved Stephen Leacock for years, and was intrigued when I found Our Heritage of Liberty (1942) by Stephen Leacock in Hay-on-Wye a couple of years ago.

It’s a brief (75pp) history of liberty – from the medieval world to the 1940s, via Rousseau, the Victorians, etc. etc. Curiously, it is largely only about Western Europe and the USA – Leacock largely overlooks his own country of Canada. It’s quite interesting as a potted history, but I found it most valuable in the final quarter – where he talks about the various conditions of freedom in the 1940s, from housing to working. It’s not as witty as I’d hoped Leacock might be (Milne, for instance, can be very amusing even on serious topics – c.f. Peace With Honour), but it’s pretty good. It’s also interesting that every age thinks itself the exception and pinnacle…

To-day there are no new lands, and the machine in a certain sense has become the master, mankind the slave. Most of the habitable world has been explored and appropriated. Invention still goes on, but finds its readiest application in the means of death. Nor can even the industry of peace follow its perpetual changes. Nor is there left any longer the escape from civilisation, the new start in the wilderness. The last frontier is vanishing. From our narrowed world there is no getting away, except by what mathematicians call the velocity of escape – meaning to be fired off into space at the rate of seven miles a second – on which terms no traveller returns.

We cannot wonder that this imprisoned feeling, this loss of one’s own control, breeds in many people something like despair, a wistful longing for the “good old times”.

25 Books in 25 Days: #2 Prater Violet

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My second book for this challenge is Prater Violet (1946) by Christopher Isherwood – the second novel I’ve read by him, and apparently one I bought in Ambleside in 2012.

Completely coincidentally, this (like book #1 in my 25 Books in 25 Days) is another novel about the cinema – though looking at the 1930s and the arrival of talkies. Christopher Isherwood (or at least a character of the same name) is roped into the weird world of scriptwriting, slightly reluctantly. It’s a very fun account of working with a histrionic but visionary Viennese director, scathing cutting room experts, offended actresses, and all. I liked it much more than the previous Isherwood novel I read (Mr Norris Changes Trains) and I’m now really excited about reading more of this witty, self-deprecating Isherwood.

“You see, this umbrella of his I find extremely symbolic. It is the British respectability which thinks: ‘I have my traditions, and they will protect me. Nothing unpleasant, nothing ungentlemanly, can possibly happen within my private park.’ This respectable umbrella is the Englishman’s magic wand. When Hitler declines rudely to disappear, the Englishman will open his umbrella and say: ‘After all, what do I care for a little rain?’ But the rain will be a rain of bombs and blood. The umbrella is not bomb-proof.”

“Don’t underrate the umbrella,” I said. “It has often been used successfully by governesses against bulls. It has a very sharp point.”

“You are wrong. The umbrella is useless…Do you know Goethe?”

“Only a little.”

“Wait. I shall read you something. Wait. Wait.”

The Plague and I by Betty MacDonald

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The nice people at Post-Hypnotic Press gave me some codes for review copies of their Betty MacDonald audiobooks… approximately forever ago. I listened to The Egg and I (which I’d previously read) and finally remembered that the codes were still kicking around somewhere – so I recently downloaded and listened to The Plague and I (1948). As with The Egg and I, it was narrated by the excellent Heather Henderson.

I did a little poll on Twitter to try and establish whether ‘plague’ rhymes with ‘egg’ in American English – it sort of does when Henderson says it – to work out whether or not the title was intended to be a pun on The Egg and I. Jury’s out. But the ‘plague’ in question in TB. Back in the days when this was a much more real threat in America, Macdonald caught it from a man in her office – who, it turned out, had known he had TB and hadn’t bothered to do anything about it. The only cure is to go and rest in a sanatorium – not in the Swiss alps, as one might imagine, but in an American facility that was free to those who couldn’t afford the enormous bills of most places. As a young single mother, Macdonald was shunted high up the waiting list.

But we don’t get there for a while. I’ve discovered that Macdonald likes to ramble around a topic for a while before she gets to the gist of a book. And so we hear all about her family’s history of hypochondria and illness for a while – for rather too long a while, in my opinion, as by the time we get to the main point of The Plague and I, it feels as though we’ve been waiting impatiently in the wings for hours.

Once we get there, though, The Plague and I is dependably funny – Macdonald writes wonderfully about all the different roommates she has – but also rather harrowing at times. Fans of The Egg and I will know that Macdonald can write very amusingly about hardship, but there is a distinction between calamitous events on a farm and the Kafkaesque cruelty of the sanatorium. On the one hand, they are trying to save their patients, and perhaps have to be cruel to be kind. On the other hand, there are so many draconian rules (no talking, no coughing, no using the bathroom) – that they won’t tell people until they break them – and patients never have anything explained to them. To be suddenly moved into solitary confinement, or taken for an operation without being told what it will be – it must have been terrifying, and Macdonald manages to convey that, while also finding (with hindsight) the ridiculous in each situation, and laughing at it.

Her fellow patients include Kimi, a Japanese girl who is kind, delivers occasional sharp humour, and forever mourns that she is too tall to find a husband. I could have done without Henderson’s impersonations of a Japanese person – it felt a little uncomfortable – but I don’t really know what is usually done in such situations with an audiobook. And then there’s another sympathetic patient, whose name escapes me for the moment – who complains a lot, but is intelligent, and sees Macdonald as a comrade in arms. Besides them, most of the others get short shrift from Macdonald – whether the femme fatale type, forever talking about how sleepy she is, or the young woman who doesn’t take any of it seriously.

We know, of course, that Macdonald survived TB – but, from within, she never knew how long she’d be there, or how well she was. The whole experience sounds maddening and horrifying, but she turns it into an entertaining and often laugh-out-loud book. Henderson’s narration wonderfully judges the frustration, bonhomie, and nervousness that make up Macdonald’s persona in The Plague and I. If you haven’t read this, or any Macdonald memoir, I very much recommend listening to the audiobook.