A Glass of Blessings – Barbara Pym (1958)

A Glass of Blessings is the May read for members of the Librarything Virago group who are taking part in the Barbara Pym centenary read-a-long – due to my birthday reading project in May I decided to read it early. A Glass of Blessings is one of the ten Pym novels I had read before – but I have to say I hadn’t remembered much about it. I have heard a few people say that it is their favourite Pym novel, and although it isn’t my favourite, I enjoyed it enormously. It feels very much like a quintessential Pym novel – so therefore for a Pym fan – what’s not to like?

“Oh Wilmet, life is perfect now! I’ve got everything that I could possibly want. I keep thinking that it’s like a glass of blessings – life, I mean…”
“That comes from a poem by George Herbert, doesn’t it?” I said. ‘When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by …”
“But don’t forget that other line … how when all the other blessing had been bestowed, rest lay in the bottom of the glass…

In ‘A Glass of Blessings’ we are back in the familiar parochial territory that we first encountered in Some Tame Gazelle, Jane and Prudence and Excellent Women. Wilmet Forsyth is our narrator, in her early thirties; she is a nicely mannered well-dressed attender of high Anglican services. She lives in her mother-in-law’s house with her husband Rodney in a respectable suburb of London. Not having really very much to do, Wilmet likes to believe she is able to do good to others, accompanying her mother-in-law to The Settlement – an institution of some unspecified charitable kind – where the exceptionally good, but rather drab Mary Beamish is often to be found. However Wilmet is bored, her husband is slipping into comfortable middle-age – a little fatter and balder than when she had first met him, with his job in The Ministry that he disappears to each day. Wilmet contents herself with the company of three local unmarried priests – helping with the search of a new housekeeper for the clergy house, introducing them to Bason who had previously worked at The Ministry with her husband – a job Bason had proved unsuited for.

“Now’ said Mr Bason moving us on like a guide. ‘I think we might take the merest peep in Father Thames’s study. I expect you would like to see that.’
He had already opened the door before we could express any opinion and I crept forward rather guiltily as if expecting some kind of retribution to fall on me.
The first impression was of a rather crowded museum, for there seemed to be a great many objects arranged in glass-fronted cabinets and on the mantelpiece. The room was dominated by an enormous desk of some rich-looking wood. This rather surprised me, for I had not hitherto had the impression that Father Thames was the scholarly type of clergyman; though, on thinking it over, I supposed that every parish priest must have a large desk, if only to answer his correspondence and prepare his sermons.”

Also providing a welcome distraction – which starts to almost become a rather unsuitable infatuation – is Piers Longridge – the rather unsuccessful brother of Wilmet’s best friend Rowena. Piers works as a proof reader – and teaches Portuguese at night classes that Wilmet and Sybil –her mother-in-law decides to attend.
Wilmet is a likeable character although she seems quite vain, constantly examining herself and her motivations, she often sees herself as not being quite as good as she might be. Wilmet often fails to understand the people around her including her husband and especially Piers, her imagination really running away with itself at times. As the novel progresses Wilmet begins to learn something about love and her relationships with the people in her life, beginning to appreciate the friendship of Mary Beamish rather more than she had done previously. Sybil provides a lively contrast to her daughter-in-law – living life to the full, springing a surprise of her own in the end and proving that she at least has a positive attitude to life and the living of it.
Readers of previous Pym novels will be delighted with the references to characters from Excellent Women and Jane and Prudence – there is even a passing mention of Archbishop Hoccleve from Some Tame Gazelle. I was rather delighted that Wilmet and her friend Rowena had once nursed tender feelings for Rocky Napier. Pym’s wonderfully dry humour and keen observation help to recreate this world that must now surely be gone forever – if it ever really existed, yet it is a world I feel perfectly happy in.

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Their Eyes were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston (1937)

There are novels that I feel myself unequal to reviewing properly, this is certainly one of those novels. An American classic that I suspect will improve even further with subsequent readings.

I bought this novel recently and then discovered that the classic club had chosen it as their sync read, well I was delighted to have an excuse to read it so soon. It is a deeply touching novel, lyrical and evocative and I suspect will prove to be very memorable. From the first line of this novel, the writing is sublime.

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”

Written in the late 1930’s in those still very difficult years for African-American people between slavery and the civil rights movement, Their Eyes were watching God is a novel about a young woman’s search for the freedom to be herself. Janie Crawford has been raised by her grandmother, a woman born into slavery, whose idea of freedom and security compels her to arrange a marriage between sixteen year old Janie and a middle-aged man with sixty acres. Janie is a light-skinned black woman, with long straight hair to her waist – her colour and appearance something for which Janie is judged for, and drooled over by both men and women throughout the novel. Janie is destined to be dictated to, decisions taken out of her hands first by her grandmother and then by the men in her life. It is Janie’s search for her own voice and independence that is at the heart of this wonderful novel. Janie finds her first marriage to be a disappointment – falling short of the ideas of love she had hoped for.

“Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!”

When Joe Starks come walking down the road –with a story of a new town called Eatonville in Florida, a town just for black people, he turns Janie’s head and she goes off with him to start a new life.

he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon. He spoke for change and chance.”

Only Janie doesn’t find the freedom she thinks she will, tied to a man who likes the sound of his own voice and telling people what to do, Janie finds herself suffocated, working in the store and being criticised for what she does. It is only after this second marriage that Janie finally finds her true love, a man who seems far from perfect, going by the name of Tea-cake, he is twelve years younger than Janie, has no money and gambles, all he has to offer her is a packet of seeds. However when it comes to Tea-Cake Janie makes her own decision, ignoring the disapproval of the people of Eatonville Janie decides to take a chance on what she has always been looking for.
As the novel opens Janie – now around forty years old, returns to Eatonville after an absence of nearly two years. The last the town saw of Janie she had been leaving with Tea-cake – now she has returned alone. Did Tea-cake take all her money and run off with a younger woman? That is what the local gossips think, upon her return Janie tells her story to her friend Pheoby Watson, the story of her great love for Tea-Cake and how she has come to return on her own.
With its rich poetic language and vibrant authentic speech of depression era African-American people, “Their Eyes Were Watching God’ is a deeply poignant novel about a woman’s struggle to find herself.

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The Swan in the Evening – Rosamond Lehmann (1967)

Rosamond Lehmann (1901 – 1990) was a very distinguished British novelist who wrote eight works of fiction, seven novels and volume of short stories, of which I still have two to read. I really loved these books, one of which I have read twice and also enjoyed Selina Hasting’s biography (although she doesn’t come out of that book quite so well). I was therefore quite keen to read this book – Rosamond Lehmann’s only work of autobiography, however I must admit to approaching it with some slight trepidation. I was nervous of it I suppose, because I knew from the blurb that it relates Rosamond Lehmann’s psychic experiences that followed the death of her beloved daughter Sally in 1958. Now when it comes to all things psychic and spiritual I am not exactly what could be called a believer. However I do believe that things can happen to people that are difficult for the rest of us to understand, call it self-deceit or call it spiritualism it is no doubt real to them.

 
The Swan in the Evening is told in three sections , the first section about Rosamond’s childhood, the second section sets out her relationship with her daughter Sally, the third section is about the time following Sally’s death and Rosamond’s unexpected psychical experiences. I found the first two section’s very readable, written with Rosamond Lehmann’s beautiful gift for prose, the descriptions of Rosamond’s childhood quite poignant. Death is always present in this little book, in the first section of the book Rosamond tells of her family’s stableman William Moody – who’s adored little daughter Wilma died tragically of diphtheria – Moody’s grief so terrible and so memorable to her all those years later. Young Rosie was often concerned with death, the risk to pets and the demise of birds, trying to save them from raspberry nets and creating a little bird hospital. Beautiful Dora from the local sweet shop is murdered, which little Rosamond discovers only after having run there on a Wednesday to find the shop unaccountably closed.
I suspect that following the death of her daughter Rosamond Lehmann placed greater importance on events from the past – giving them the status almost of omens. Thus perhaps do the bereaved sometimes lie to themselves.

“Since Sally was nearly always in my thoughts it is no wonder that, as I prepared for bed in my hotel room, looking out over the sea towards the lights of the mainland opposite, another memory of her should have slipped, very quietly and clearly, into the forefront of my mind. Once, when she was five years old, as we walked together on the downs above Compton in Berkshire where we spent the war years she said, without the slightest warning:
‘One day…one day..’
‘What about one day?’
‘One day I might call you and call you and call you over the whole world. Over the whole world, and you might not answer. What shall I do then? Her voice seemed to toll. Taken aback, I quickly promised her that I would always answer.”

Rosamond Lehmann had two children, Hugo and Sarah known as Sally, but she seems to have a particularly close relationship with her daughter. The portrait that is painted of this relationship, and the dreadful tragedy of Sally’s death is very moving, Rosamond’s grief was naturally extreme.

“All the details I treasure of her beauty – the ravishing lines of her lips in smiling (the archaic smile –she really had it – its mysteriously subtle curve), her rather gliding walk, her odd slow buoyant grace when she danced, the something unforgettable about the modelling of her eyes and eyelids – their extended outer corners, the grey-blue large iris flecked with green, the cut of the luminous lids, like segments of magnolia petal …such images seem to set her in an antique world; in some golden age of plastic and poetic harmony, meaning beauty; startling me now only a little more profoundly than they always did.”

So although I admit I found the psychic element slightly disturbing and odd – making me re-evaluate a woman whose work I admire enormously, the whole book I found strangely beguiling and hard to put down. That though, is almost certainly because it was after all written by Rosamond Lehmann – and I just love the way that she writes. As I mentioned above – the Rosamond Lehmann who emerged from Selina Hasting’s biography is not a woman I would find it easy to sympathise with – selfish shallow indulging in affairs which she put ahead of her family, but although I find the woman who emerges from A Swan in the Evening, to be someone who thinks very differently from me – I do find her surprisingly likeable, and I am glad of that.

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Nightingale Wood – Stella Gibbons (1938)

Nightingale Wood is a really delightful Cinderella type tale from the author who of course is better known for having brought us Cold Comfort Farm. However I think that the novel is a little deceptive, it is not as light as it may appear, and there is a complexity and poignancy to it that is especially well done. Gibbons has captured a rural community of the 1930’s with its class divisions and restrictions, highlighting the differing social positions of her characters and the way those positions are perceived by others.
Viola Withers is just twenty one, newly widowed of a much older husband, she finds herself obliged to go and live with her in laws at The Eagles in Essex. This household of women; Mrs Withers, middle aged daughters Madge and Tina and their three female servants are all very much in thrall to Mr Withers, a strict patriarch preoccupied by the management of other people’s money. The Wither’s invite Viola to live with them, out of nothing more than a sense of duty, and Viola’s gentle soul quails rather at the coldness she finds. Mrs Withers regards her daughter-in-law with some suspicion, a former shop girl who married her son rather suddenly; her main occupation seems to be keeping her husband calm. Tina, thirty five, and secretly in love with Saxon the chauffeur – twelve years her junior, hopes that Viola will bring some much needed life to The Eagles. Madge on the other hand nearing forty having never really grown up, is only concerned with hunting, fishing and dogs. Madge – famously known for “not howling”, sobbing hysterically as she begs her father to allow her a puppy, is pitifully memorable. Stella Gibbons portrays the family at The Eagles with her familiar humour, but there is a definite sharpness to it – which is very telling.

“The family at The Eagles was assembled in the drawing-room at that dreary hour when tea is long over and dinner not yet in sight. It was a tranquil scene; it would have annoyed a Communist. Five non-productive members of the bourgeoisie sat in a room as large as a small hall, each breathing more air, warmed by more fire and getting more delight and comfort from the pictures and furniture than was strictly necessary. In the kitchen underneath them three members of the working class swinked ignobly at getting their dinner, bought with money from invested capital. But perhaps this is not a very interesting way of regarding poor Mr Wither and the rest….

Not far away from The Eagles, and another rung or two up the social ladder are the Springs, Mrs Spring, her bookish niece Hetty and her son Victor, handsome and full of confidence, he is the undisputed Prince Charming of the neighbourhood. Victor is unofficially engaged to Phyllis a rather hilariously awful character that Gibbons is so good at creating. Victor Spring may be the Prince Charming of the piece, but he certainly appears to not be in any way a hero. At a ball which serves to bring some much needed distraction to the inhabitants of The Eagles, Victor first really notices Viola, despite having already given a lift to her and Tina when caught in a rain storm – his intentions however are anything but honourable.

“Yes..of course, she was a widow. He had forgotten that. She looked the very image of innocence, she talked like a schoolgirl, but widows were not innocent. However young and simple a widow might seem, you could not get away from the fact that widows, presumably, were not…Well this girl was actually more experienced than old Phyl.”

What I really enjoyed about Nightingale Wood – aside from the humour and the wonderful characterisation – are the several different plot strands which weave together so nicely. Tina’s relationship with her unlikely seeming lover Saxon, Viola’s romantic infatuation of Victor Spring, Victor’s unsatisfactory relationship with the eminently eligible Phyllis, manage to be wonderfully satirical and touching. Without giving too much away – in the resolutions of these fairy-tale stories Gibbons is ever so slightly subversive. It all makes for a hugely readable and engaging novel – maybe less of a classic than Cold Comfort Farm –it is still well worth reading.

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Taking Chances – Molly Keane (1929)

This was my read for the Classic Club spin. I was delighted to have had this one selected by the draw, and having been looking forward to reading it.

It seems as if Molly Keane’s novels all follow similar themes; the dubious fortunes of a large Irish estate, the complexities of the family relationships of its inhabitants, some hunting and fishing thrown in. That at least is what I have been given to understand, this being only the third Molly Keane novel I have read. I enjoyed this novel enormously, as I did the other two Keane novels I read. Happily I have three other Molly Keane books waiting to be read, I am becoming a fan.
In Taking Chances, the estate is Sorristown, the family in question; Roguery, Maeve and Jer, who since the death of their parents have lived together quite happily, hunting and fishing and caring for the family home. There are also a couple of peculiar Aunts who pop up from time to time. A host of dogs, horses and faceless servants help to set the tone of this novel about Anglo-Irish aristocracy, and their easy existence, which is taken so much for granted. As the novel opens, Maeve is preparing for her wedding to Rowley, another local aristocrat, an event destined to change the comfortable domestic arrangements that the siblings have got used to. Jer the youngest, is devoted to Maeve who in turn favours her elder brother Roguery, Roguery (Sir Ralph) quite obviously loves himself best of all. Thus the scene is set for the upset that only an outsider can bring. Days before Maeve’s wedding, her bridesmaid Mary Fuller arrives. Rather beautiful, unconventional and slightly pagan Mary immediately fascinates Rowley, to whom she too feels inevitably drawn. Little do either realise what their initial meeting will lead to.

“She was exciting. Things, one felt would happen round her. Like the lady who rode to Banbury Cross ‘rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,’ Mary was a factor for disturbance. She was, Rowley felt sure, a person to be distinctly loved or disliked, never a person to be just tolerated.”

Naturally Maeve and Rowley’s wedding goes ahead, however Rowley’s feelings have been turned on their head in just a few days, and Mary is quite used to getting what she wants. The consequences of Mary and Rowley’s dalliance are of course far reaching. Watching from the side lines the slightly malevolent Aunt Edythe, and poor stuttering Jer seem only too aware of what has been going on. However Jer is just as devoted to Mary as he is to his sister, aware of how Mary is likely to hurt herself most of all.

“Those who suffered because of her might think of Mary that she hurt others, herself she could hurt; but Jer, knowing her better… knew she hurt herself perhaps most deeply”

Taking Chances beautifully captures the times and the class of people that Molly Keane herself hailed from. Full of both humour and atmosphere, Molly Keane’s world is one I enjoy spending time in. The Irish mists raise up around the reader, and one can almost hear the thud of horse’s hooves giving chase to a poor fox, hounds barking excitedly. Taking Chances is a romance, and it is also the story of desperate chances taken in the pursuit of happiness, the allegiances between people impacting on the outcome of those chances.

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The Life and Death of Harriet Frean – May Sinclair (1922)

Some books don’t need 500 pages in which to deliver a powerful punch. This 1922 novel could easily have been stretched to a much longer length, yet it is far stronger for being short. This novel about female self-sacrifice is sadly ironic, and unforgettable.
At 183 pages of fairly large type – this novel could be read in just one sitting – though I read it in two. Harriet Frean is the only child of Victorian parents, whose main concern when growing up is to make sure that she behaves herself beautifully.

“Ugly. Being naughty was just that. Doing ugly things. Being good was being beautiful like Mamma. She wanted to be like her mother. Sitting up there and being good felt delicious.”

As Harriet grows up she is often thrown into company with girls who are supposed to be her friends, but whom Harriet doesn’t really care for. When away at school Harriet meets Priscilla who becomes Harriet’s best friend, and swears to never marry but dedicate herself to Harriet. When later Priscilla does become engaged – she sends her fiancée to visit the Frean’s –and Robin falls in love with Harriet. Harriet sacrifices herself – sending Robin back to Priscilla – and continues to behave beautifully.

“There is a standard.” Harriet lifted her obstinate and arrogant chin. “You forget that I’m Hilton Frean’s daughter.”
“And I’m William Pierce’s, but that hasn’t prevented me being myself.”
Lizzie’s mind had grown keener in her sharp middle age. As it played about her, Harriet cowered; it was like being exposed, naked, to a cutting wind. Her mind played back to her father and mother, longing, like a child, for their shelter and support, for the blessed assurance of herself.”

Idolising her parents Harriet isolates herself from the world, seeing just a few of the same dull people she has always seen and only wishing to do what will please her parents. Harriet’s actions – towards Robin, and in other decisions she later makes – have unforeseen consequences. The Life and Death of Harriet Frean satirises the upper middle classes, and their way of life. Harriet is so busy behaving beautifully and congratulating herself on it that she totally fails to see the destructive nature of her decisions and the devastating effect they have on both herself and others.
I actually really enjoyed this strange little novel which was sent to me some months ago by Belva from the Librarything Virago group.

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Peking Picnic – Ann Bridge (1932)

I have recently enthused about my love of Virago books, especially when they come in an original shade of dark green – such is the collector’s obsession. Therefore it seemed fitting that the first book I read after the month of re-reading –when I could select from my teetering TBR – should be a Virago. This particular book was sent to me by Dee from the Libraything Virago group, as part of my lovely secret Santa Parcel. I have been so looking forward to reading it, and I haven’t at all been disappointed. Peking Picnic is a wonderful novel. Thank you Dee.
I have been reading this novel rather slowly – certainly the first half of it I did – due to having slept rather badly a couple of times last week – very out of character – which left me very tired. I found myself having to read whole paragraphs and pages over and over – as my poor tired brain found working out who was who a bit tricky at first. Strangely however I was glad that I had to read it slowly because the writing is so beautiful, just as with Illyrian Spring which I read last year – there is a wonderful sense of place which Ann Bridge has created.

“sitting back in her chair under an oleander, for a moment alone, what she saw with great clearness was a green field bordered with youthful Scots pines, on which small white figures ran about with happy cries. She heard the sound of wood on leather and leather on wood, and treble voices crying “how’s that?” and hurrahing eagerly if thinly.”

As conflict threatens between local warlords, Laura Leroy – an ambassadorial wife at the very heart of the British Legation at Peking, quietly misses her children and dreams of Oxford. Mrs Leroy is very much admired and respected in this diplomatic community. A host of interesting and diverse characters surround Laura Leroy as the novel opens; including Major La Touche – called Touchy by everyone, Laura’s friend Nina Nevile, Nina’s niece Little Annette, and Laura’s own nieces Lilah and Judith, Miss Hande an American novelist and various diplomatic staff such as Derek Fitzmaurice. Into this group comes Professor Vinstead a Cambridge academic of psychology, for who the idea of a Peking Picnic as a kind of welcome is conceived. This picnic is not the Sunday afternoon outing that we may think of when we see the word, but more of a camping expedition taking a couple of days, to see the great temple of Chieh T’ai Ssu .
As the trip gets underway friendships and romances blossom, Laura is called upon to offer advice and quiet good sense to the fledgling lovers, while, surprisingly finding herself not entirely unmoved by the lonely Professor. Things take an unexpected and dramatic turn however when the party are taken hostage by a group of dishevelled bandits.
This is exactly the kind of novel I love. A quiet intelligent novel, peopled with memorable and interesting characters. I have already said that the writing is beautiful – and it is – and good writing cannot be beaten. However there were even some moments which are also very funny. When Hubbard – Laura’s odd little maid suddenly appears in the middle of the captors – declaring she hadn’t been captured but had walked in –bearing dozens of cheap cigarettes for Laura and her friends – it is a delight.
Throughout the novel Ann Bridge uses repeated lines to poetry quoted and thought about by Laura and Vinstead particularly– such as: “come you not, a careless stranger, Him with reckless words to waken” which somehow bring a touching poignancy to the scene described.
This wonderful novel really will live in my mind for a while.

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Jenny Wren – E H Young (1932)

“In the sloping, one sided street called Beulah Mount, no two houses are alike. Some of them are flat fronted, a few are bow-windowed and some have flimsy, roofed balconies outside the first floor windows, and these, even when in need of painting, give an effect of diminished but persistent gaiety to a terrace built in an age of leisure and of privilege.”

Jenny and her older sister Dahlia Rendall have recently moved from their old home at the white farm, in the countryside to a house in Upper Radstowe. Here their mother has installed the first of her lodgers, young Mr Cummings, who knows about antique furniture and has ambitions for a shop of his own. Jenny and Dahlia are socially superior to their mother, taking after their gentleman father who had previously protected them from their mother’s common ways and the gossip surrounding a supposed affair years earlier. Now Jenny and Dahlia feel the sharp glances of their neighbours who see the still beautiful Louisa as not respectable and assume her daughters are no better. Dahlia is more laid back, but Jenny is acutely embarrassed by her mother, and lives in horror of her mother’s older sister Sarah descending on them. Next door – in another house of lodgers lives the vicious Miss Jewel, jealously guarding her lodger the curate Mr Sproat and watching Louisa with delicious disapproval, noticing farmer Thomas Grimshaw’s weekly visits and spying on Jenny and Dahlia too.

“Jenny stayed in the sitting room. She was wondering why, among so many disadvantages, they had to endure the daily annoyance of hearing their names mispronounced, when there were so many which could have been uttered without offence. This thought had often occurred to her father, and he had to blame himself. Louisa chose the first child’s name, when he was still sufficiently in love to forget how she would misuse it but, when Jenny was born, he insisted that her name must not end like Dahlia’s with a vowel, and characteristically overlooked the dangerous consonant. Jenny was registered, she was not christened, as Jennifer, and Louisa stubbornly refused to accept the abbreviations he and Dahlia used.”

Although a tentative friendship develops between Jenny and Edwin Cummings the lodger, Jenny dreams of another life, a life she feels must be denied her because of her mother. So when Jenny meets the handsome young squire Cyril Merriman – Jenny is afraid of him knowing her real name. Cyril meets Jenny secretly in the woods and fields that she loves – believing her to be called Jenny Wren. Dahlia meanwhile befriends the rather serious Mr Sproat, who given the task of finding more lodgers for the Rendalls, encourages the rather sad little Miss Morrison to make her home with them. Poor Miss Morrison, who sees Mr Sproat’s interest in her living arrangements as being something more than they are.
This is a novel about social inequalities and the dissatisfaction that this can cause. Dahlia and Jenny’s father married beneath him, and rued the day. He made sure that his daughters grew up young ladies, but they are now caught between the class they feel part of and their mother’s background, and the realities of living in a boarding house. Louisa works hard for her daughters, beginning sadly to acknowledge that she may be holding them back. Jenny and Dahlia have to learn that those things which are best for them and will provide for them a safer happier and more stable future are maybe closer than they thought.
Having read other E H Young books – I could see where the story was going right from the start, although this predictability didn’t in any way spoil it for me. I already have the sequel to this novel; The Curate’s Wife on my TBR and I am looking forward to it. Although not my favourite E H Young novel to date – that would be William, this is an excellent novel, I love E H Young’s Upper Radstowe, and the small disappointed lives she often writes about.

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The Children – Edith Wharton (1928)

The Children is the fourth Edith Wharton novel I have read this year. I have been reflecting on how glad I am that I have come to her fairly late. I first read The House of Mirth many, many years ago, when, I think, I was too young to appreciate her. I then re-read it in January and it remains one of my favourite reads of 2012.
The Children I think is probably a novel that is less well-known than some and according to the introduction to my edition by Marilyn French – much less appreciated. Yet I have to say straight off that I loved it.
The subject is one that many people (especially at the time when it was written) may have found rather distasteful – the infatuation of a middle-aged man for a fifteen year old girl. Future readers however will be pleased to know that this story is not Lolita. Judith Wheater is a charmingly honest young girl by turn maternal and childlike whose preoccupations are totally innocent and familial.

“The young face mounting towards him continued to bend over the baby, the girl’s frail shoulders to droop increasingly under their burden, as the congestion ahead of her forced the young lady to maintain her slanting position halfway up the liner’s flank.”

Many Edith Wharton novels are known for their exploration of the old New York society into which she was born and within which she lived for many years. This old New York society with its mores, manners and conventions is very much in the background of this novel. The setting is Europe, yet the characters are from the very sections of society that Edith Wharton is famed for writing about.
While travelling by cruise ship between Algiers and Venice Martin Boyne an unmarried engineer from New York – and very much part of that old New York Society, although a poor one – meets the children of the title. Seven children ranging in age from a toddler to a girl of fifteen, they are a group of full blood, half and step siblings who are travelling with their governess and nursery maids. Judith the eldest has taken on the role of surrogate mother to the younger children. The children’s parents a group of self-centred wealthy nouveau riche – who live mainly out of hotels, and think nothing of marrying, divorcing, re-marrying, and squabbling over their children – are the other section of society that Edith Wharton portrays brilliantly, with a satirical slant. Martin is due to meet up with the woman he has loved for many years, Rose Sellars a conventional member of New York society is newly widowed and now free to acknowledge her feelings for Martin which her marriage had not allowed her to do. Drawn into the lives of the Wheaters however, Martin decides to stay for a couple of days in Venice before going on to Switzerland, and here he involves himself further into the lives of the children and their parents.

“Lady Wrench had snatched up her daughter and stood, in an approved film attitude, pressing Zinnie’s damp cheek against her own, while the child’s orange-coloured curls mixed with the red-gold of hers. “What’s that nasty beast been doing to momma’s darling?” she demanded, glaring over Zinnie’s head at Judith. “Whipping you for wanting to see your own mother, I suppose? You just tell momma what it was and she’ll…”

The children are determined to stay together, rather than be farmed back out to the various natural or stepparents who decide they want them at one time or another. Martin pledges to help, not admitting even to himself at first, his true infatuation to Judith. Martin does have very real affection for all the children, and does want to help them. However when the group follow him to Switzerland without their parent’s knowledge, Martin’s and Rose’s burgeoning engagement is affected. Martin is endlessly pulled between these two different worlds, the world of polite old New York that is represented by Rose Sellars and the less conventional world of the children.
The characters of the children are wonderful, they are funny and endearing, and the relationships between each of them and with Martin Boyne are poignant and deeply charming. Martin is a fool, but a sympathetic one nonetheless. Martin’s dilemmas and mistakes are age-old ones, the ending inevitable and beautifully poignant.

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The Wedding Group – Elizabeth Taylor (1968)

Elizabeth Taylor’s tenth novel first published in 1968 is not among her best and yet I enjoyed it enormously and I think there is plenty in it that is still interesting.
The novel centres on Cressy – a young girl who has been brought up in an odd communal family, a sort of religious/artistic community, presided over by her grandfather Harry Bretton. Like several of the characters in this novel Cressy is somewhat isolated – she wants to escape her family.

“Time always went slowly for Cressy, now that her school days were over. She had come home from the convent to nothing. To be part of a busy, useful, self-sufficing community, her mother had said… She would be expected to marry. Whom? Perhaps one of young men who come to work in the studio with her grandfather. They would live pennilessly in one of the out-buildings (restored) and take their place at the long dining table. She visualised it with the greatest ease.”

In order to make her escape Cressy finds a job and a small flat at an antique shop in the nearby village. Here she lives on things on toast and meets David – a local journalist who is several years older than Cressy. David’s mother Midge long separated from her much older husband relies on David’s presence in her life, while he is thoroughly tied to her apron strings. David’s father lives in his own self-imposed isolation in London, caring for his eccentric aunt until her death; he spends his time cleaning the silver. Midge likes the way things are and doesn’t much care for it to change. As David and Cressy begin to grow closer, Midge takes Cressy under her wing, and yet is unprepared for the inevitable engagement. When David is away from home, Midge is terrified, she is lonely afraid of burglars and works to manipulate these new changes to suit herself. She urges David and Cressy to live in a small broken down cottage, terribly overgrown that has the advantage of being isolated from everyone else but is very close to her.
Cressy is unprepared for grown up responsible living – she becomes more and more reliant upon Midge who is happy to help. David is equally unprepared for the responsibilities of marriage; he had rather unceremoniously finished a relationship with a rather acerbic woman closer to his own age in order to marry Cressy – who he often thinks of as rather a child.
As with so many Elizabeth Taylor novels marriage and loneliness figure strongly, the writing is good – although maybe not quite as good as in some of Taylor’s earlier novels, and I didn’t think the peripheral characters were as strongly explored as in many other novels. I was interested to note how Murdochian this novel felt in parts – especially the beginning. The artistic/religious community headed up by a rather elusive patriarch, a complex family living at close quarters. A few eccentric characters – particularly David’s father and his Aunt, two characters are even writing books (there is almost always someone writing a book in Murdoch). Having read 25 and a half of Iris Murdoch’s 26 novels I was pleased to note these little things.

(Just for fun – can anyone guess which Murdoch novel I got to p204 and wanted to hurl across the room and gave up on?)

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