Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett is perhaps one of those names who is more remembered than read nowadays, though I know there is a very active Arnold Bennett Society that always seems to notice when I review one of his books. Hello! And I have read a small number of them now – Buried AliveThe Old Wives’ TaleA Great Man. Now I can add Riceyman Steps (1923) which was given to me by my friend Simon when he was sorting out his late mother’s library.

Riceyman Steps is, I discovered, a real flight of steps in London – though without that name, I believe. George has done a lovely blog post, retracing the different places that are featured in the novel – but what I can’t quite understand, either from contemporary or contemporaneous photos, is the ‘tiny open space (not open to vehicular traffic) which was officially included in the title Riceyman Steps’. In the novel, this space is home to various domestic residences and, more importantly to the plot, a second-hand bookshop and a confectioner’s.

The bookseller is a man with extraordinary name Henry Earlforward, a man heading towards middle age whose abiding passions are running his bookshop and economy. His every move is motivated by saving pennies, whether that be underpaying the maid who comes to clean or in ensuring fires are only lit in rooms which absolutely cannot do without them. At the same time, he is not avaricious. He is content to make a profit on a book – to sell for two shillings something that cost him one, even if he suspects it is worth ten times as much. His miserliness is combined with a sense of decency.

His thoughts, as the novel opens, are also occupied with the woman who runs the confectioner’s. As Bennett’s witty narrative mentions, it is only some rather unloved chocolates in a display case that make the shop warrant the name ‘confectioner’s’; it is otherwise rather a standard corner shop, though I don’t think the term would have been used then. Mrs Arb is a widow of about Earlforward’s age, and they have in common the services of the maid Elsie.

For much of Riceyman Steps, this is a rather sweet novel of middle-aged love. Neither is demonstrative, and you get the sense that either of them would have managed quite well if romance had never knocked at their door – but, together, their straightforward competence finds something quite lovely kindling. Their admiration for each other begins with a recognition of the other’s good sense of economy. It never gets to any great belting passion – but it does lead to one of the more touching marriages that I’ve read in fiction. Mrs Arb moves into the bookshop – as does Elsie, now that she can be the live-in maid for a married couple – and life continues.

I love any descriptions of bookshops, perhaps particularly from this period. Much like the opening pages of Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell, I enjoy the shorthand of early 20th-century authors telling you who customers are. And I also love Bennett’s affectionately wry glances at the house of a bookseller who, in his bachelor days, had allowed the stock to run rather wild. Even his bath is filled with books.

Mrs Arb had to step over hummocks of books in order to reach the foot of the stairs. The left-hand half of every step of the stairs was stacked with books – cheap editions of novels in paper jackets, under titles such as ‘Just a Girl’, ‘Not Like Other Girls’, ‘A Girl Alone’. Weak but righteous and victorious girls crowded the stairs from top to bottom, so that Mrs Arb could scarcely get up. The landing also was full of girls. The front-room on the first floor was, from the evidence of its furniture, a dining-room, though not used as such. The massive mahogany table was piled up with books, as also the big sideboard, the mantelpiece, various chairs. The floor was carpeted with books. Less dust in the den below, but still a great deal. The Victorian furniture was ‘good’; it was furniture meant to survive revolutions and conflagrations and generations; it was everlasting furniture; it would command respect through any thickness of dust.

Bennett is out of fashion, but I think his prose is wonderful – he gives all those details that Woolf mocked him for in ‘Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown’, but he also has a dry sense of humour, and a genuine affection for the people he’s created. I enjoy him most when he sees their foibles but wishes them well, and as a god he dispenses small joys and small agonies equally.

The agonies get greater as the novel progresses, and I would have preferred something that didn’t veer quite so dramatic. But it is a drama that stems from his characters’ weaknesses – specifically their pecunious natures. The good sense that brought them together also threatens to pull them apart when it is taken to extremes. It’s a shame – for me, at least – that Riceyman Steps couldn’t just have been a sweet novel about a couple finding compatibility later in life than they might have imagined. Perhaps that wouldn’t have been as popular at the time. But there is enough of that in the novel, and of a depiction of a corner of London at a specific time, to relish and enjoy before hearts start beating faster and trouble enters this particular version of unshowy paradise.

The History Book On The Shelf…

Sorry to start this post by setting the cultural barrier quite low… if you don’t recognise the lyric in the post title, then consider yourself much more highbrow than me.

As promised, The History Boys by Alan Bennett. I did the unthinkable and came to this play through the film first – in fact, I still haven’t seen it on stage, but I have read it. What first attracted me to the film was the shots of Magdalen in the trailer – I thought it would be fun to see my place of residence on the big screen. As it turned out, the shots from the trailer were about all you saw of Magdalen in the film. Which makes sense, as they only go to Oxford towards the end…

A bit of plot synopsis, for those who don’t know. It’s a 1980s boys’ school, and eight students are going for a place studying History at Oxford. They have a wise, quirky, lonely teacher Hector – and in is brought a savvy, slightly awkward teacher Irwin. In between is the quite wonderful feminist teacher Mrs. Lintott. The play is really about different styles of knowledge and uses of it, and the purposes of education. Hector has taught them enormous amounts of interesting facts, but focuses equally on re-enactments of famous film scenes, and practising French through rather bizarre scenarios. Irwin is all about getting them into Oxford, teaching them the way to answer interview questions which is a little edgy, a little conspicuously different. Hector thinks examinations ‘the enemy of education’, and thinks with the boys that he has ‘lined their minds with some sort of literary insulation, proof against the primacy of fact’ – Irwin sees this trivia as ‘gobbets’ to be sprinkled into any exam or interview answer.

I didn’t think much of the film. All the acting was great, but the fact that almost everyone was lusting after each other (which I missed out of the synopsis because it’s complicated and quite dull) rather ruined it. Reading the play, there are so many fascinating ideas in it – alongside genuine wit – and it isn’t all clear-cut. It seems that Hector is right to start with – but so much of the entertainment of the play comes from these ‘gobbets’, out of context, out of passionate discovery. Tricky. The depiction of Oxford is hideously out of date, even for the 1980s, but Bennett’s introduction detailing his own application experiences is worth the cover price alone.
Bennett’s major achievement is having so many distinct schoolchildren. So many in fiction are good or disruptive or clever-but-misunderstood, and so forth – these are all intelligent creations and memorably characterised. Dakin – cheeky, bright, canny – is the most impressive, perhaps, but I grew fond of vulnerable Posner and authentic Scripps. Having seen the original cast members in the film, they are inextricably linked in my mind – especially Frances de la Tour’s beautifully sardonic portrayal of Mrs. Lintott – and this helped a reading of the play.

Do seek out a copy to read, or hopefully a local theatre will put it on (is someone still touring with it? I don’t know. Obviously the original cast aren’t). And you could watch the film, but it doesn’t do The History Boys justice at all.

Common/Uncommon

Had a lovely time at home, soaking in the countryside, and am now back in my usual blogging spot of Oxford – specifically the desk of the back bedroom in Regent Street. While down in Somerset (or Zumm as I affectionately label it) I was able to offer my lovely Aunt Jacq. a cup of tea, for she also lives in Zumm, and she reciprocated with much more exciting gifts…

No, not my birthday of anything – she just saw them and thought of me. It pays to make your opinions known, doesn’t it?! Well, you all know I love Virginia Woolf – and I’d ummmed and ahhhed over the Alan Bennett for a while, glad the choice was made for me.

Haven’t used the mug yet, but a car journey too and from Bristol to see The Carbon Copy (the whole Clan together for a few hours at least!) allowed me to read The Uncommon Reader, and greatly did I enjoy it. Haven’t read any Alan B before, though did see The History Boys film, and have vague recollections of Talking Heads being on in the car in my younger days. It was great fun – I’m sure everyone knows the plot by now. The Queen bumps into the local library van, and, out of politeness, borrows an Ivy Compton-Burnett. Love her or loathe her (ICB, that is), you have to acknowledge she’s not a great one with which to start the long path of literacy:

‘She’s not a popular author, ma’am’.

‘Why, I wonder? I made her a dame’.
Mr Hutchings refrained from saying that this wasn’t necessarily the road to the public’s heart.

As she pursues more and more books, with the help of kitchen boy Norman who becomes her constant aide, her royal duties start to suffer… This book, as well as being witty and just the right combination of absurd and plausible, also offers some genuine insights into the realm of reading, without being too truism-y. ‘I think of literature,’ she wrote, ‘as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but cannot possibly reach’. Ever felt like that?!!

And just a final word about the sketch. Not a great one today, I’m afraid, so if you need a clue just think ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.