1965

Frederica by Georgette Heyer

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Believe it or not, I’ve only read one Georgette Heyer before – I listened to April Lady and really enjoyed it. In the three years since, I’ve bought quite a few Heyer novels but haven’t actually got around to reading any of them. A little while ago, I thought I’d see if any of the Heyer titles on my shelves matched gaps on A Century of Books – and landed on Frederica (1965), which comes rather late in her publishing career.

Like most of Heyer’s novels, this is a Regency romance – and she certainly enters into the style and ethos of a novel from the period. How many 1960s novels would open with this lack of urgency?

Not more than five days after she had despatched an urgent missive to her brother, the Most Honourable the Marquis of Alverstoke, requesting him to visit her at his earliest convenience, the widowed Lady Buxted was relieved to learn from her youngest daughter that Uncle Vernon had just driven up to the house, wearing a coat with dozens of capes, and looking as fine as fivepence. “In a smart new curricle, too, Mama, and everything prime about him!” declared Miss Kitty, flattening her nose against the window-pane in her effort to squint down into the street. “He is the most tremendous swell, isn’t he, Mama?”

Lady Buxted responded in repressive accents, desiring her not to use expressions unbefitting a lady of quality, and dismissing her to the schoolroom.

Uncle Vernon – more commonly known as the Marquis of Alverstoke, or just Alverstoke – is very wealthy and very selfish. His sisters are forever importuning him with requests to use his power and connections to help their various offspring, and he languidly refuses to do any such thing because it doesn’t interest him. There is a very believable grown-up-siblings dynamic between them, with a fair dose of Mr Bennett being needlessly antagonistic to his wife in Pride and Prejudice, all the while intending to help. But more often than not, Alverstoke won’t do anything for anybody else unless he finds it interesting. It’s not a very attractive character trait, truth be told, and it’s fortunate that Heyer manages to make almost every occasion an example of an exception to the rule – so the rule is really just what we are told, and the exceptions are what we are shown.

Bursting into this contented world are the Merriville family. They are oprhaned and as desolate as you’d expect of a family who will never have to work for a living. Oldest of the lot is (as we might expect from the title) Frederica – a sensible, clever, funny and caring woman who considers herself on the shelf as a spinster, aged 24. Next is Charis, who has that Regency trio of characteristics: beautiful, dim-witted, and kind. And finally three brothers, one of whom is away at Oxford. The other two are Jessamy, pious and anxious, and Felix, enthusiastic and boisterous.

It’s an enjoyable whirlwind to encounter, and Alverstoke finds himself rather taken aback. Having initially turned down the opportunity to help them as guardian, he ends up agreeing when he sees that they aren’t really mercenaries – and that Frederica is a capable, unsentimental woman. From this point onwards, none of the negative character traits that we’ve been led to believe beset Alverstoke ever really appear again.

What makes Frederica so fun is Heyer’s unceasing commitment to the Regency vibe. It’s a rich, detailed prose which you can’t read quickly, as the verbal sparring between characters is delightfully Austenesque and the narrative voice itself is, if not on Austen’s level, still great fun. Here, for instance, is Alverstoke trying to get Frederica to be chaperoned in town:

“I was under the impression that I warned you that in London country ways will not do, Frederica!”
“You did!” she retorted. “And although I can’t say that I paid much heed to your advice it so happens that I am accompanied today by my aunt!”
“Who adds invisibility to her other accomplishments!”

and here is Alverstoke being wonderfully bitchy to his sister:

“Do you mean to tell me that Mr. Trevor read my letter?” demanded Lady Buxted indignantly. “Your secretary?”
“I employ him to read my letters,” explained his lordship.
“Not those written by your nearest and dearest!”
“Oh, no, not them!” he agreed.”

The only downside to Heyer’s commitment to verisimilitude – in my opinion – is the vast quantity of era-appropriate slang, particularly from the boys. Here’s a selection, just flicking through: basket-scrambler, ninny-hammer, Friday-faced, high fidgets, rumgumption, Queer Nabs, mawworm, and so on and so forth. I can see how some readers would love these touches of authenticity, but they always took me out of the action. They were the only times it felt like Heyer’s researchw as being unceremoniously dumped into the dialogue.

To go back to the hero and heroine: what really warmed me to Alverstoke was his reluctant devotion to the young boys. (I didn’t need to warm to Frederica, as I loved her from the off.) And Heyer does the boys so well – especially the youngest, who believes he is offering a great treat to the men he meets by talking to them at length about mechanics, and being escorted to mills or something. Her eye for young people is so accurate, and timeless.

The Marquis believed himself to be hardened against flattery. He thought that he had experienced every variety, but he discovered that he was mistaken: the blatantly worshipful look in the eyes of a twelve-year-old, anxiously raised to his, was new to him, and it pierced his defences.

Frederica is a long book, and did feel long. My copy was about 300 pages but the font is tiny – I see other editions are around the 400-page mark. There are some brilliant set pieces – a runaway dog; a chase after a hot air balloon – but most of the novel is simply the steady, detailed study of these people interacting, squabbling, matching wits and falling in love. I had to relax into it and not expect anything to happen quickly – but, on those terms, it was a total treat.

The Carlyles at Home by Thea Holme (25 Books in 25 Days: #8)

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Today, I read The Carlyles at Home (1965) by Thea Holme in order to participate with Jessie’s Persephone Readathon. I don’t remember when I picked this one, but I suspect it’s been on my shelves for quite a few years.

I know very little about Thomas Carlyle – or, rather, I knew very little about him. I knew he was a historian, and that was about it. I certainly haven’t read anything by him. Somewhere or other, I had picked up the idea that he didn’t treat his wife Jane very well – but that was something that had become exaggerated in my mind, for whatever reason. According to The Carlyles at Home, Jane had a life that wasn’t noticeably more difficult than that of other Victorian wives in high society (and without much income) – which is not to say those lives weren’t hard, of course. But she was not the ill-treated woman I’d imagined.

Holme’s book is divided thematically, and then organised seemingly at random. There are sections on the Carlyles’ servants, on dress, on an extention they built on top of the house, on the garden. It is all thoroughly researched and told in an engaging, almost conversational manner. I suppose, ultimately, the amount to which you find the book interesting is strongly proportional to the amount to which you find the Carlyles interesting (and, to a lesser degree, the period).

I have to admit that I don’t find them especially interesting, and I don’t have the same fascination for the late 19th century that I do for the early 20th century. So I could certainly appreciate the way in which this was told, particularly when Holme pulls humour out of anecdotes relayed in the Carlyles’ letters (I loved the saga of the young women next door and their annoying piano playing) – but I don’t think I was the ideal audience by any means. If it had been about Virginia and Leonard Woolf, told with the same style and skill with an anecdote, then I’d have found it glorious. So – take that as you will!

One thing I did love was the illustrations which were at the top of each chapter, by Lynton Lamb – including the one at the top of this post.

Stoner by John Williams #1965Club

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Everybody was reading Stoner by John Williams about seven years ago, largely because Vintage Books sent a review copy to pretty much everyone in the known universe. According to Kim’s review for the 1965 club, it was also the toast of the book blogging world around 2005, but that was before I joined it. Well, better late than never, I’ve finally read it – and isn’t it brilliant?

I had put it off for ages because all I knew about it was (a) it was set in a university, and (b) it was called Stoner. So perhaps naturally, I’d assumed it was about drug-taking. Mais non – Stoner is, rather, the lead character in this novel that looks at his life from studenthood and though the following decades.

Stoner has left a farming family for the bright lights of university – leaving the agriculture course for the English literature course, once he discovers his deep love for that subject. At the same time, he thinks he may have fallen in love with the beautiful, distant Edith. She gives him little encouragement, but he is beguiled, and they marry.

It is not a successful marriage – but it does produce a daughter, Grace, to whom Stoner is patiently devoted, and whom he almost single-handedly looks after in her infancy.

The trials of an impetuous marriage are one strand of the novel; the other is Stoner’s career as an English lecturer. He is, at first, competent but little more. I loved reading about his transformation into an inspiring teacher:

When he lectured, he now and then found himself so lost in his subject that he became forgetful of his inadequacy, of himself, and even of the students before him. Now and then he became so caught by his enthusiasm that he stuttered, gesticulated, and ignored the lecture notes that usually guided his talks. At first he was disturbed by his outbursts, as if he presumed too familiarly upon his subject, and he apologised to his students; but when they began coming up to him after class, and when in their papers they began to show hints of imagination and the revelation of a tentative love, he was encouraged to do what he had never been taught to do. The love of literature, language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print – the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly.

I suspect Williams shared Stoner’s love of literature and of studying it – or, if not, is very good at conveying it. It reminded me of the most glorious moments of revelation I felt while studying. Any writer who can manage to put across the wonder of literature is doing something great in my book.

But things are not so simple here, either. He has friends in the department, but he also makes an enemy – one with long-lasting effects on his personal and professional lives.

Those lives are distinct throughout much of Stoner, not least because his wife has very limited interest in his career. I wondered if this was a fault of the novel, but I suppose it rings true. Many of his find that the traits we have in the workplace do not quite translate outside of it, and perhaps it is accurate that Stoner’s determined enthusiasm in the classroom finds its opposite in his passivity within marriage. He is certainly a rounded and convincing character – so sympathetic, and yet often frustrating.

Above all, Stoner is stunningly written. The prose is somehow beautiful and poetic without ever seeming to stray from everyday language. It is an amazing combination, and I don’t know how he achieves – nor how he makes this gradually unwinding portrait of a man and his environment so compelling to read.

The only significant criticism I have it is that Edith, his wife, is less well drawn. Her character is always a little undeveloped, and her nature changes so often and so violently that she often seems only a foil for the next stage of Stoner’s life. The psychology behind her actions is often explained, but never quite as convincing as the totally believable motivations (good or bad) behind everything Stoner says and does.

But, yes, I can see why this was such a success when reprinted – and I’m thrilled that the 1965 Club meant I finally read it.

I. Compton-Burnett by Charles Burkhart – #1965Club

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Ivy Compton-Burnett didn’t publish a book in 1965 – indeed, she didn’t publish one after 1963, except posthumously – but that’s no reason why I can’t find a way to sneak her into the 1965 Club. Because thankfully Charles Burkhart published a book all about her in that year. He seems to have written several books about ICB, and who can blame him, but this one is stridently called I. Compton-Burnett. (Incidentally, he is not the musicologist, so far as I can tell.)

This book is low on pages (about 130), but each is jam-packed with text, so it’s not quite as short as it initially seems. In it, Burkhart attempts an overview of all of ICB’s writing, identifying the main characteristics of it and, fairly often, defending her against prevailing opinion. His expertise in her work is quite dizzying, and it makes for a very satisfying inquiry – even if I did have to skim past quite a bit, having still got nine of her books to read,

The opening is of especial interest for the 1965 Club, as it attempts to set the literary scene. While asking why she is so well-reviewed and so little read, Burkhart also makes a few comments about the state of 1965:

Advertising is one of the typical arts of our age; and since it is a noisy age, there is a sustained shout of superlatives for every new product, whether of the literary imagination or the soap manufacturer. On the dust jackets of their books, all writers are praised; because the ‘soft sell’ has not yet reached the publishing world, the same tired troop (“remarkable”, “powerful”, “stirring”, and so on) are deployed for every first novel about sensitive adolescence, every raw and wriggling specimen of neo-romantic neo-brutalism. The babble of adjectives is sustained at such intensity, especially in America, that it tends to move right out of the range of human hearing. It is charity to suppose that this was the intention.

Every age considers itself frighteningly modern, of course, and these censures have only increased. But what is interesting is his identification of her novels as portraying the ‘eccentric family’, and doing so eccentrically – and seeing how eccentricity is considered by the critics and the masses. It is a very intelligent and well-judged exploration that makes no assumptions.

He goes on to consider the archetypal plots of ICB novels – tyrants, secrets, secrets being revealed, neighbours prying etc. – but is quick to say that they are not all the same, and nor are all the characters or their dialogue amorphous. I have been guilty of saying that her novels are all alike, but Burkhart is correct. Compton-Burnett’s signature is always clear, but the characters are almost always fully-formed, and the dialogue filled with individual traits. They perhaps all have the same unworldly register, but retain their own idiolects nonetheless. As he points out, in disputing the idea that her characters are characterless, the reader is never in any doubt about what any one character thinks about any other. Considering her households are always filled with many people (often around 20), this is extremely impressive. He also quotes Frank Kermode, who describe how conversations progress in ICB’s novels perfectly: “by exploiting in each remark unobvious logical and syntactical implications in the previous one”.

After looking at various themes (religion, ethos, money etc.), the final chapter looks at each novel in turn – assessing their quality, highlighting their successes, and reminding me of which I have or haven’t read.

I. Compton-Burnett is certainly not an introduction to that author – it only really works if you’ve read a substantial number of her novels already, and perhaps is only truly for the person who has read everything ICB wrote. But I loved it. Such an indulgence to read somebody who appreciates ICB as much as I do, and knows her work far more intimately. How I agree with him when he says “in comparison with her writing[,] most other modern writing seems unfinished, its aim diffuse and its style impure”. I’m not sure he answers the question that you might be able to make out in the photo above – Burkhart makes no grand conclusions about ICB’s greatness or the likelihood of her longevity. Judging by the fact that she is completely out of print in the UK (I think), it’s not looking good for her posterity in 2065 – but she has her devoted audience still, and this book would be a welcome addition to any of their libraries.

The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark #1965Club

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I hadn’t realised I was quite so close to the end of Muriel Spark’s prolific output – having read The Mandelbaum Gate for the 1965 Club, I’ve now read 19 of her 22 novels. Yep, I like Spark a lot. And one of the things I tend to like about her is how much she packs into a short work. Many of her books are around 200 pages or fewer – whereas The Mandelbaum Gate is just a few pages shy of 400. How would I feel about one of her longest books?

Sometimes, instead of a letter to thank his hostess, Freddy Hamilton would compose a set of formal verses – rondeaux, redoubles, villanelles, rondels, or Sicilian octaves – to express his thanks neatly. It was part of his modest nature to do this. He always felt he had perhaps been boring during his stay, and it was one’s duty in life to be agreeable. Not so much at the time as afterwards, he felt it keenly on his conscience that he had said no word between the soup and the fish when the bright talk began; he felt at fault in retrospect of the cocktail hours when he had contributed nothing but the smile for which he had been renowned in his pram and, in the following fifty years, elsewhere.

That’s the opening paragraph, and we are immediately in Spark territory. Who else would have written that final bit? And who else would start off a novel with a quirky, irrelevant meandering about different forms of poetry. Freddy has something like diplomatic immunity, and crosses back and forth between Israel and Jordan – through the Mandelbaum gate – through which many others cannot pass. (By the way, the gate was named after a man who owned a nearby house, and so it sneaks into #ProjectNames by stealth.)

One of the people who probably should be more cautious about passing through the gate is Barbara Vaughan, a ‘half-Jewish Catholic’ who has followed her archaeologist fiancé out to the Holy Land. As a character points out, you can’t be half-Jewish – as her mother was Jewish, so was she – but Barbara is a keen Catholic who is awaiting confirmation about whether or not her fiancé’s first marriage can be annulled by the church.

And, indeed, something happens to her. In true Spark style, the moment is thrown into conversation casually, sometime after it has happened – before we dart back and forth in time and location. To add to the confusion, Freddy suffers temporary memory loss (perhaps because of sunstroke; perhaps because of something more sinister), and so when he is the ‘future’ section, he can’t remember what we have yet to learn in the ‘past’ section.

If you’ve read much Spark, you’ll be familiar with how she plays fast and loose with narrative conventions, and particularly the idea that things should be relayed in chronological order. In most of her novels, the narrator will throw in prolepsis that reveals, in a darting moment, something that might have been the denouement in the hands of another writer. Well, if she does that in a 200 page novel, she does it doubly so in a 400 page novel. I’m not going to lie – I was often quite confused, but I went with it.

Because what made The Mandelbaum Gate enjoyable is what makes most of her novels enjoyable – the peculiar characters, never quite behaving how you expect. The wry narrative voice that doesn’t trouble to make things too easy for the reader. And delightful turns of phrase. Always expect the unexpected.

It did feel to read something set in Israel and Jordan, and it is very concretely set in a particular time – 1961, to be precise, during the trial of Adolf Eichmann, which makes occasional appearances in the background. The cast of characters goes far beyond Freddy and Barbara, and I was particularly fond of Alexandros, a shopkeeper who has befriended Freddy.

As I said, I didn’t always know what was going on, and the disorientation is at least partly deliberate. And I don’t think The Mandelbaum Gate is quite the same success that her shorter novels can be – but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I might. I thought Spark’s powers and peculiarities might be spread far too thinly over a longer book – but she sustained them in an admirable, if not quite as perfect, a way.

 

-time

The Millstone by Margaret Drabble

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I bought The Millstone (1965) by Margaret Drabble in 2009, in Chester, but I think that must just have been based on name recognition – and on this extraordinary cover. Penguin really did have some interesting cover designs in the 1960s. But what made me pick it up recently is how often people have told me that it is very similar to my much-loved The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks. I recently re-read it, and it seemed like a good time to tackle The Millstone. And, man, it’s similar.

I’m glad I’m so familiar with The L-Shaped Room, otherwise reading them so close to each other would have confused me a lot. Both are about young pregnant women; both are living alone; both are pregnant after their first and only sexual encounter (and didn’t particularly enjoy that); both consider doing a makeshift abortion by getting drunk on gin. It’s hard not to think that Drabble might have got inspiration from Banks. But there are certainly differences too.

My career has always been marked by a strange mixture of confidence and cowardice: almost, one might say, made by it. Take, for instance, the first time I tried spending a night a man in a hotel. I was nineteen at the time, an age appropriate for such adventures, and needless to say I was not married. I am still not married, a fact of some significance,but more of that later. The name of the boy, if I remember rightly, was Hamish. I do remember rightly. I really must try not to be deprecating. Confidence, not cowardice, is the part of myself which I admire, after all.

This is the opening paragraph, and the first person narrator is Rosamund. She is dealing with this pregnancy alone – but only because her parents have taken a convenient extended trip abroad. She is not in an l-shaped room; she is in her parents’ large home in a posh area. Her sister is not helpful, and she doesn’t want Hamish in the picture, but her friends are good and she can continue writing her thesis about Elizabethan poets. (The least realistic section of The Millstone is how easily Rosamund eventually gets her thesis published and then immediately gets a job in academia – perhaps this sort of thing was possible in the 1960s, but it certainly isn’t now. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

Again, like The L-Shaped Room, there is not much plot. It is, instead, more of an emotional portrait – seeing how Rosamund copes with every stage of this new life. Unlike Banks’ novel, the birth of the child is not the end but the middle – we also see how she copes with being a new mother, with its own crises. There are certainly funny moments, or perhaps rather a wry tone, but what makes The Millstone impressive is the nuanced and interesting way Drabble takes us on Rosamund’s journey. There is very little dramatic, but there is a lot of life – not idealised, certainly, and Rosamund is too real to be wholly sympathetic, but I really enjoyed it. A great deal more than the only other Drabble novel I’ve read, The Garrick Year, which was rather tedious. Drabble is much better on motherhood than casual adultery, it turns out.

Is it as good as The L-Shaped Room? To my heart, no. It couldn’t be. And I think perhaps to my mind, too – but it’s still rather good and has made me want to explore more of her novels. Any recommendations?

Closely Observed Trains by Bohumil Hrabal

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Closely Observed TrainsJust a quick post to point you in the direction of my latest blog post for Vulpes Libris: Closely Observed Trains (1965) by Bohumil Hrabal. Go and have a gander here; I’ve ended up reading rather a few Czech writers over the years. And by that I guess I mean three. But, still.

I seem to be in a bit of a reading slump at the moment, actually. Which is a shame, as I have a couple of books to read for the next podcast, and one for book group… well, hopefully blitzing a few episodes of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on Netflix will put my mind back into reading. For now, I’ll just keep singing the excellent spoof Face Your Fears. Check it out.

 

Mrs Harris MP – Paul Gallico

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Is it a bird? Is it a ‘plane? No, it’s actually a book review on Stuck-in-a-Book! Sorry that it’s been so long since my last one. Especially since I’m going to talk about a book I finished over six weeks ago…

When I went to the Lake District a while ago, I took a range of books – some that benefited from a long, uninterrupted read on a train, and some that would fill gaps between dashing off on multiple buses to get to a wedding, get on a train, etc. And I turned to Mrs Harris MP (1965) by Paul Gallico when I was tired from the long journey and sitting on a bench waiting for a lift (that eventually didn’t come… but that’s another story).

Anybody familiar with Mrs Harris Goes to Paris (also published as Flowers for Mrs Harris) and Mrs Harris Goes to New York will doubtless already know and love the redoubtable Mrs Harris. A London char, she is a wonderful mix of no-nonsense and fairy tale. Her greatest dream, in the first book, was to own a Paris couture dress; in the second she heads off to New York on a quest, and in the third she wishes – as you may have guessed from the title – to become an MP.

The novel opens with Mrs Harris and John Bayswater the chauffeur disagreeing over a political broadcast. She thinks it’s all two-face hogwash, and that she could do better herself… which isn’t long off happening. ‘Live and Let Live’ is her political mantra, and it is tangled up with an argument about giving working people a chance, not being teddy boys, and above all not lying. She makes, still – perhaps more than ever, quite an appealing prospect in the world of politics. She is not interested in spin and self-promotion; she wants to stand for the little people. And Mrs Harris is so full of vim and character that the bland, careful politicians don’t stand a chance.

Except things are a little more complicated than that. In all his novels, to some extent or other, Gallico seems to offer a sting in his fairy tale. Sometimes that sting is extremely dark (as in the very brilliant Love of Seven Dolls), sometimes it’s fey (Jennie), but it’s always there. In Mrs Harris MP it appears in the machinations of her supposed political ally… and appears perhaps more subtly in the after-effects of Mrs. Harris’ political campaign.

Like the other novels in this series, Mrs Harris MP is light and frothy and completely enjoyable. All of which means that it was probably very difficult to write. Mrs Harris is a wonderful creation – and perhaps equally wonderful, in my eyes, is her timid but loving friend Mrs Butterfield. It’s all quite silly, with (in this one perhaps more than the others) a note of the serious – and if you are sick of deceitful or boring politicians, or of a government that sidelines the poor, then this might provide some much-needed respite.

Relatively Speaking

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It seems a bit of a habit with me to see plays somewhere towards the end of their run.  I saw the brilliant All My Sons on its final night, and by the time I blogged about Peter and Alice, it was off the stage.  Well, you’ve got until 31 August to see Alan Ayckbourn’s Relatively Speaking (1965), and I deeply encourage you to do so if you possibly can!

We had a lovely surprise when we arrived (‘we’ is me and Andrea, my frequent theatre-buddy) at Wyndham’s – our balcony seats were upgraded to brilliant circle seats, right in the middle of the row and tickets which would have cost nearly double what we spent.  Sadly that was because of poor ticket sales (which is absurd on a Saturday night in London, but is encouraging for anybody hoping to grab a bargain on any night) – why people weren’t there, I can’t imagine.  It was the best comedy performance I have ever seen on the stage (All My Sons is still the best play I’ve seen, but nobody could call it a comedy.)

It’s difficult to write much about Relatively Speaking without giving away elements of the plot (which I’d accidentally spoilt for myself the day before seeing the play, by starting Ayckbourn’s The Crafty Art of Playmaking) but suffice to that the whole thing is a delightful, perfectly executed example of crossed wires, dramatic irony, and conversations at cross purposes.  The first scene opens in Ginny’s (Eastender’s Kara Tointon) flat with a semi-clad Greg (Max Bennett) wandering around the place.  There are mysterious phone calls and unexplained packages (“It’s a book! From the book people!”) and poor Greg is getting suspicious of Ginny (a pair of slippers under the bed need some explaining) – yet also getting increasingly in love with her.  They exchange wonderfully witty dialogue, affectionate but with a layer of one-upmanship, while she avoids anything definite and he proposes in the most adorably inept and heartfelt manner.  Both characters are a little rough-and-ready, with hearts in the right place, and the audience is certainly drawn into wanting the best for them… but Ginny is off to visit her parents. (Or is she?)

The next scene sees Sheila (Felicity Kendal – YES, FELICITY KENDAL) and her husband Philip (Jonathan Coy) on the patio of the lovely Buckinghamshire house, engaged in a marital dynamic which seems to be of long standing.  Sheila is a slightly downtrodden wife, but one who could never be entirely trodden down, one feels.  Jonathan Coy is given the only unsympathetic character of the foursome, as a slightly self-important, blustering businessman.  He goes off to find a hoe to do some vigorous gardening, and, through the sidegate of the excellent set, Greg arrives… He wants to come and ask Ginny’s dad for her hand in marriage, and has somehow caught the train that Ginny missed.

And this is where the fun starts.  For reasons which might already have become clear, but which I shan’t spoil just in case, nobody is quite on the same page as each other.  Least in the know is poor Sheila, and Felicity Kendal is absolutely perfect at her dialogue – her replies show that she has no clue why she has got embroiled in these conversations, and yet is willing to go along with it all, out of sheer kindness.  Kendal was every bit as wonderful as I’d hoped and expected.

But she had a match!  Max Bennett is sublime as Greg.  I saw him in Luise Miller a while ago, and remember being impressed by him, but he excels at comedy.  Everyone’s comic timing is exceptionally good, with quickfire back-and-forth conversation delivered beautifully, but Bennett manages to make his character entirely lovable.  He is decent and proper, but also quick-witted, witty, and down-to-earth.  It’s rare that a play has a character whom you love and appreciate entirely, but Relatively Speaking manages to have two – which is, indeed, half the cast.  Philip was never intended to be sympathetic, so he’s out, and Kara Tointon – though very good – never seems quite to grasp which direction she wants to take her character in, and she sort of fell between two stools.

But the real star of the piece is Alan Ayckbourn.  His writing is perfect.  It is, of course, a standard of farce and comedy to have characters misunderstanding each other, but Relatively Speaking is crafted so brilliantly, with layer after layer of different crossed wires between different characters,  Even better, the responses characters give are believable, and it is also always credible that other characters wouldn’t realise they were on different pages.  So difficult to engineer, and so slickly done.

If you want to laugh for two flying-at-the-speed-of-light hours, and have the chance to go before the end of August, PLEASE give yourself a treat and see this utterly delightful play.  I quite want to go straight back and watch it again…

How The Heather Looks

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This delightful book was part of my Reading Presently project, where I read books I’ve been given as presents, but… nobody knows who gave this to me!  I was sure it was my friend Clare, but she denies all knowledge… I know it was *somebody*, because it appears in my birthday present post here… so, if it was you, let me know!  Because I’ve read it now, and I love it.

The full title, which does the job of summarising the book for me, is How The Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children’s Books (1965) by Joan Bodger.  Even if the book had nothing else going for it, I was sold by the inclusion of ‘joyous’ in a subtitle.  Well done, Joan Bodger, you win my approval – and, when we look at the words surrounding it, thinks just keep improving. The title itself is taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson:

I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet I know how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart was given.
What Bodger (excellent name) means by this is that, although she and her family have not visited the sites of these children’s books, they are already deeply familiar with them through reading and re-reading, and loving, books steeped in the British countryside. And the book documents how they do visit them, coming all the way from America to do so.

How The Heather Looks, really, rests on a false premise: that the settings, houses, and landscapes of children’s books must be based on actual places.  I’m a big advocate of the fiction-is-fiction line of thought, and feel rather disappointed if I find that an author has not been as inventive as I’d hoped – particularly with characters-based-on-people.  I’m much more willing to allow a building or tree copied from life, but I don’t expect it in the way that Bodger and her family do.

Luckily for them, they’re satisfied without conclusive proof – or, indeed, much more than fanciful detail.  A stray cat is, they’re sure, the model for a decades-old children’s book; a certain patch of river cannot be other than Ratty’s favourite place to mess around in boats (there is, actually, a lovely story attached to that expression in How The Heather Looks, which I will leave it for you to discover.)  I suppose, if one has not seen much of the British countryside, then any of it will provide an illuminating backdrop for British rural literature.  And it is almost entirely rural, from Beatrix Potter to C.S. Lewis – via (for Joan Bodger is not averse to the odd nostalgic moment for adult literature) Daphne du Maurier:

Hour after hour we drove through mist or rain under lowering skies.  The children were too tired even for crankiness.  I remember the green hills giving way to great brown sweeps of moor and long stretches of roadside, where we saw almost no evidence of human habitation and only a few sheep, as wild as mountain goats.  Once in a while, when the rain lifted, I would see a high crag or tor in the distance, and sometimes, in the hollows, the gray glint of a tarn.  We were pleased to discover how easily a lifetime of reading ables one to fit the right words to the landscape.  We had climbed to what must have been almost the highest point on the road when I saw an inn, a large, low, rambling building with beetling roof and a board that creaked in the wind.  Glancing back, my heart missed a beat when I read the sign: Jamaica Inn.  The day before we might have stopped, but now we flew past as though a pack of smugglers were at our heels.  At least, I thought, we could not be far from the sea.
Notice how she does not tell you that it’s connected with Daphne du Maurier – she trusts you to know.  That’s a theme of How The Heather Looks, actually; not a lot of background info is explained, because Bodger takes it for granted that we all love and cherish the same books.  This rather threw me in the first chapter, on the unknown-to-me Randolph Caldecott, but after that I think I was fine.  Even her son Ian, 8 years old, seems to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of British children’s literature, and a photographic memory for it too.

I haven’t mentioned the Bodger family properly, have I?  They’re pretty fab – ‘our family is incapable of passing even a shelf of books without pausing to take a look’.  (My family all enjoy reading, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a whole family of unashamed biblioaddicts!)  There is Ian, who loves soldiers and adventure, and befriends children wherever they go; Lucy, aged 2, who seems (her mother suggests) to believe they have simply hopped into the landscape of one of her stories, and fully expects to meet Mrs. Tiggywinkle – and then there’s husband John, a researcher, who is surprisingly absent from the page.  (This becomes less surprising when you realise that their marriage was ending while Joan Bodger wrote the book; only the tip of the ice-berg for a horrendous period of Bodger’s life, with which I shan’t colour this review.)

For there is nothing tragic about How The Heather Looks.  It truly is joyous.  The Thomas family once had a literary holiday, travelling along the South Coast to see various sites of literary importance (including Jane Austen’s house and the area which inspired Winnie the Pooh) and it was, as I recall, an entirely splendid holiday.  We don’t have the Americans’ scorn of distance, willing to drive from Edinburgh to Cornwall to get a pint of milk, but we managed to cover a fair distance nonetheless – and see some wonderful sites, which stay with me.  I still have the photograph of A.A. Milne’s house on my wall – it was taken illicitly, running down the driveway of a private residence… Not so, the Bodgers.  In (unsurprisingly) my favourite part of the book, they do for tea with Daphne Milne – A.A. Milne’s widow – in his house.  So casually, she throws in that they wrote ahead and got the reply: “I am always happy to meet friends of dear Pooh.”  Can you imagine that happening today?  In the same way, she finds out from affable locals where Arthur Ransome lives, and (although he foreswears interviews) charms him into submission!

How The Heather Looks feels a bit like a glorious dream.  Perhaps that is partly because Joan Bodger is looking with determinedly rose-tinted glasses at a halcyon summer from the vantage of a difficult period, but perhaps it is simply because she is a good writer, and the summer was halcyon.  I could call the book enchanted, I could call it a delight – but I think Joan Bodger picked the best description when she wrote her subtitle.  It really is, above all, joyous.

Now, if only I could remember who gave it to me…