The Spring House by Cynthia Asquith

We all know that the quality of a book is no guarantee that it will stay in print. The ones that survive almost always have merit, but the ones that disappear could be equally brilliant. And I was reminded of that yet again with The Spring House (1936) by Lady Cynthia Asquith. I’m going to warn you up front: this book is incredibly difficult to get hold of, but if you do have the chance then leap at it.

One of my favourite Instagram accounts is Virginia at Old Book Dreamer. She mostly reads mid-century women writers and has the most astonishing book collection – astonishing for the beautiful editions, but also because she manages to get hold of books that seem to have almost disappeared. It was she who recommended Asquith’s novels to me – not this particular one, but The Spring House was the first I managed to get hold of. And, indeed, I think Asquith only wrote two novels. I’m so grateful that Virginia directed me to her.

Though published on the cusp of World War Two, The Spring House is set during World War One. The heroine, Miranda, is living at her palatial family home that has been turned into a convalesence hospital for soldiers. In her mid-20s, she has a soldier husband who was in Canada at the outbreak of war and has had to remain there, and a young son called Pat. Among the cast of characters are her kind, slightly anxious mother, a witty friend called Gloria, a naively virtuous nurse called Vera, and her officious Aunt Madge. And then there are the men…

Miranda is considered a good person by everyone who knows her, the reader included. And it’s perhaps curious that nobody seems at all censorious about her various relationships with men. While she hasn’t committed adultery, there are several flirtatious friendships – with Richard, with Horace, with a pacifist poet and a demanding portrait artist – that are accepted fact in her social circle and seem to matter more to her than her absent husband. We learn so very little about him for most of the novel. Nobody seems to lament his absence or even particularly to notice it. It’s a curious slant on the traditional anxious-wife-on-the-home-front image that we are accustomed to.

Here she is with Richard who, as the novel opens, is perhaps the man getting closest to her heart (and, like the others, doesn’t give her husband a second thought):

Richard complained that she did not really care for him, but only for his admiration.

“To you I am only one of many. You ration me. I want long draughts of your company: not just tantalising sips. I wish you hadn’t got such a hospitable heart, that is, if you have any at all.”

Miranda winched.

[…]

“You only want admiration,” he went on. “You can’t stand any heart-searching. All you want is a superficial, stationary relationship.”

As always when pressed, Miranda felt herself losing all sense of her own identity. Everything seemed slipping from her. She felt like an actress in a badly-rehearsed play – as though she had forgotten her part. But something must be said.

“Oh, please, Richard,” she quavered, “must you be so interrogative? We used to be so happy.”

She spoke with a paralysing sense of unreality. The scene seemed something she had read about, and her mind, as we often the case, split into mutually critical parts. If only she could be spontaneous, instead of always her own censor! How much easier it would be to speak out on this sort of occasion if one had read less, she thought, not for the first time. If only I hadn’t read so many novels! They tie one’s tongue by making everything seem a cliché.

That ended up being quite a long excerpt, but I think it gives you a good sense of who Miranda is as a character – and who Asquith is an author. Because Richard isn’t wrong (without being entirely right). And Miranda just wants to be let alone to live as makes herself and others most content – including, later, getting involved in nursing. But what makes the scene and character so unusual for me is how conscious Miranda is of her perception and her reactions – not just in comparison to the other women she knows, but in comparison to the long line of fictional characters she’s encountered in books. And nothing can warm a reader to a character more than them being a reader.

But she is not alarmingly self-aware. She treads the line constantly between self-awareness and self-delusion, as the narrative often highlights. When her usually irritating Aunt does something requiring some sympathy, the narrative notes, ‘Never able to distinguish between pity and affection, she at once began to feel fond of her.’

Quite a lot of the novel has happened when the main plot comes along. He is a soldier, a friend of Miranda’s brother, home on leave. And with a speed that would be irritating if the novelist weren’t keenly aware of it, they fall in love. The main stage of the novel is then occupied by the rush and shock of feelings Miranda hasn’t experienced before, and the attempt to fit him into her life. The husband is remembered, but really only as a sad obstacle.

This is the perhaps the main thrust of The Spring House, but I am writing about it briefly because I didn’t find it as interesting as other relationships in her life – particularly her two brothers, Robin and Stephen. The way Asquith writes about mourning a sibling is subtle and beautiful. It is surely no coincidence that Asquith’s own brother died during World War One. There is a ring of authenticity to so much of The Spring House, and it’s worth remembering that Cynthia Asquith was in her late 20s during the war. Despite being written a couple of decades later, there are many elements that conjure up the war vividly and often with an unusual perspective. For example…

It was some weeks since Miranda had been in London. She was struck by its air of resigned adaptation, the prevalance of khaki, the number of slightly wounded to be seen in the streets, and the look of subdued sorror on so many faces. The sight and sound of marching soldiers still moved her like a fine line of poetry, but the Join-our-jolly-Picnic recruiting posters angered her, and she sickened at the grim sight of the sacks hung up for bayonet practice in Chelsea Barracks. As she approached Waterloo Station, she passed the ongoing draft of guardsmen, about three hundred moving as one, and many women running along by the side of them.

Asquith is clearly a very excellent writer. Her talents seem to have mostly been turned to memoirs and ghost stories, but she turns her hand to novels with a beautiful elegance. Here’s an example of her writing that also helps explain the title:

Slipping a coat over her nightgown, she stole downstairs and out of the back door. It was very mild, but the beauty of the still night made her shiver. The lawns were silver with dew, as silver as the giant soaring stems of the beeches. She hurried to the little wooden hut with a thatched roof that was perched half way up the hill from which one looked down on the House. It had been built for her as a surprised birthday present when she was six. The ‘Spring House’ she had called it as a child, because she preferred spring to summer, and the name had clung. A favourite refuge of her childhood, it always drew her back. Wherever she might be, she felt it was here that she would wish to bring any great perplexity, joy or sorrow. Within its shelter she seemed able to shrink back from the glare of life into the golden haze of her girlhood; or, if she chose to invite them, memories of early childhood came flying back to her heart.

Harder to convey is her excellence at creating place and character. Miranda is such a vivid, rounded character that it feels almost scandalous that so few contemporary readers have had the chance to meet her. You know how some characters are so alive that they should be recognised and celebrated in readerly circles? Elizabeth Bennet, Cassandra Mortmain, Anne Shirley, Mrs Danvers, John Ames and so on. It’s absurd to me that someone as alive as Miranda should only be met by a handful of living readers.

Does the book have flaws? Yes, there is a tendency to self-analysis and philosophising that could wear a bit then. I could see somebody losing patience with the way people openly and unrealistically discuss themselves and others. Love at first sight is also a red flag for some readers, and I did find the romantic relationship one of the least interesting (though still quite interesting). But The Spring House has that special something which overcomes any drawbacks. It’s one of the most immersive, beautiful novels I’ve read in many years and has reminded me what I love so much about interwar writing. Since it’s not set at the time it’s written, I don’t think it could fit into the British Library Women Writers series – but it would be a brilliant find for Persephone or a similar publishing house. We can but hope.