Towards the end of A Book A Day in May, I read Virginia Graham’s Everything’s Too Something! (1966) and said I wanted to write about it a longer length – because it is such a delightful book, and I didn’t want to short change it.
I first came across Graham because Persephone Books publish her poetry – and that led me to her absolutely delightful correspondence with Joyce Grenfell, published as Dear Joyce, Dear Ginnie. From there, I turned to Here’s How and Say Please, which are a spoof how-to guide and a spoof etiquette guide respectively. She has that Provincial Ladyesque humour, combining self-deprecation and wry wit, and I relish it.
Everything’s Too Something! is a collection of essays that were originally published in Homes and Garden. Do magazines like that still have humorous columns in them? Are they of such joyful quality? Across the 36 short essays in this book, Graham covers some topics that link to Homes and Garden – though, curiously, they include how awful it is to have to tour around somebody’s garden. But really she turns her attention to anything – anything, that is, that would fall into the attention of a middle-class, middle-aged woman in the 1960s.
This ‘review’ is likely to end up being simply a list of quotes that amused me, so let’s just go with that. I think she (again, like E.M. Delafield’s Provincial Lady) is very good at the comic list, getting exactly the right balance of relatable observation with the slightly outlandish. For instance, here on friends of friends whom you haven’t met…
The friends of friends are always a problem. Some can be ardently welcomed into the circle, but there are always a number who not only do not get loved but are more or less mythical. Joyce can go on talking about Enid for years; how well she cooks ravioli, how she has composed a trio for horn, bassoon and drums, how sweet her chilren are, how ill her mother is, what she said to the magistrate, where she gets her corsets and a host of other intimate details relating to her life. And yet one never gets round to meeting the woman. ‘You would love her I’m sure,’ says Joyce. ‘I’m sure I would,’ you reply half-heartedly.
I’m not sure Graham would have considered herself at the forefront of 1960s feminism, but she does her bit for exposing the foibles of the patriarchy – mostly by satire. There’s a funny section on not trusting male drivers, for example, and there’s this from an essay on men and women living together:
It is unfortunate how many women are idea-prone. A man is an impractical creature, and a woman often can’t help having an idea which would get him out of the mess he is in – and, incidentally, the mess she will have to clear up. She might, for instance, have an idea about getting out the step-ladder instead of balancing the telephone directory on a stool on a table.
She might have an idea that it is better to start a bonfire with small sticks rather than full-grown trees. She might even go so far as to have an idea that the nails she has been handing one by one to her husband for an hour, might to advantage be parked on some adjacent shelf, or even in his pocket.
Then there’s this little snapshot of courtship vs marriage:
I remember my husband, when he was my fiancé, licked down, with his little pink tongue, all the envelopes for our wedding invitations. When it came to our first post-marriage party he refused to lick down one because, as he confessed, it made him feel sick and always had. The only thing a wife can deduce from this is that love wanes on marriage, and that her dear one is not prepared to feel sick for her now the nuptial knot has been tied.
Graham was 56 when the book was published, and had got to a time of life when she could write this next excerpt, though from the vantage of 38 I feel much the same some days:
The nice thing about getting to my age is that there are so many nice things to complain about. Of course, the young complain too, but their grumbles are usually concerned with more cosmic things such as the Condition of Man. The Condition of the Roads doesn’t worry them at all.
Most non-fiction published nowadays is described as ‘important’, and there’s definitely space for books which challenge our worldview, shows us about lives we know nothing about, educate us and so forth. I’m not sure how often, today, books are published like Everything’s Too Something! – that is to say, trivial and diverting, but also exceptionally well written. Caitlin Moran is the closest that comes to my mind, though even her writing has become increasingly keen to be important. I love that there is also room on the shelf for someone like Graham – whose writing couldn’t possibly be considered important, but is absolutely wonderful nonetheless.