The Camomile by Catherine Carswell #ABookADayInMay – Day 3

Off to 1920s Scotland for the latest in my A Book A Day In May journey – and The Camomile by Catherine Carswell. The narrator is Ellen Carstairs, a clever, slightly cynical woman in her early 20s. She is a gifted musician – though currently using this talent to teach reluctant children – and lives in a slightly bleak flat in order to escape the oppressive attentions of her religious aunt. Deep down, and growing steadily less deep, is her ambition to write professionally rather than play the piano.

I say she is the narrator – this is sort of an epistolary novel, though Ellen seldom seems to pay any attention to any letters she might get from her correspondent, long-term friend Ruby. We learn very little about Ruby, and I do wish she was less of a shadowy construct. The letters that Ellen sends her are intentionally in the style of a detailed journal – so it’s really just a conceit for Ellen to share her reflections on the people and events she encounters, not quite at the openness that a diary would reveal, though not far off. (And, indeed, the latter part of the novel becomes a diary instead of these letters.)

The novel gets off to a slightly slow start. Well, a very slow one initially, with a reminiscence of a long-ago music lesson – it’s a bizarrely anticlimactic way to open a novel. Luckily it’s tidied away quickly, and we get into the novel proper. Ellen is clearly very naive and immature in some ways, still in the hinterland between childhood and adulthood, but it is impossible not to warm to her. Carswell has created a heroine with tried-and-true traits that will endear her to most readers: Ellen is bookish, more familiar with life from literature than experience; she is slightly stubborn and judgemental but quick to repent and try to do better; she has high standards and expectations, and we want her to achieve them. I suppose it is a coming-of-age novel, even though she is older than the usual age for such heroines.

I am for ever straining after Reality with a capital R, and life seems to fob me off continually […] I don’t of course know what reality is, but I do hope some day I shall. I suppose getting married and having children would bring one face to face with it. But then that may never happen to me. Anyhow not for years and years.

As the novel progresses, this reality comes closer to home. What starts as wry observations and gradually emerging ambitions becomes more about the genuine prospect of marriage – and whether or not it is possible to pursue her hopes of being an author with the particular man who has proposed.

The title of the novel comes from Shakespeare – ‘The camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows’ (1 Henry IV). Carswell makes it overt that the camomile in question is Ellen’s aim to become a successful, published writer. But it is also broader than that: Ellen is herself the camomile. The way she responds to being trodden on by repressive relatives and acquaintances is treated comically – but the prospect that she will be more permanently trodden down by marriage, and whether or not she will have the resilience to grow despite this, becomes a more serious theme in the novel.

I think The Camomile gets better and better as it keeps going. For a while it’s not clear what the point of the book is, but once that becomes clear, the fine writing and perceptive character study have something firm to cling to. And, throughout, it is funny in the slightly barbed way that an Austen heroine can be. For example:

My other new pupil is Sheila Dudgeon, who wants a course of ‘finishing lessons’. The only difficulty about her ‘finishing’ is that she has omitted the formality of beginning.

This was a re-read for me, and I’ll leave you to guess why I might be re-reading a 1920s novel. It’s an interesting, deceptively deep read, and I’d love to hear more people’s opinions on it.

Others who got Stuck into this Book:

“No surprise that this novel was chosen by feminist press Virago for republication in the 1980s, for it is all about female self-determination in the face of almost universal societal disapproval.” – Leaves and Pages

“Sometimes I read a book and think ‘How dare the author assume that I want to know what is going on in her head in such detail?’ – and I can think this while simultaneously enjoying the book.” – Clothes in Books

“I wasn’t really able to whip up any sympathy for her and was glad when this book was finished.” – Adventures in Reading, Running and Working From Home