The Headmistress – Angela Thirkell (1944)

It doesn’t really seem all that long since I last read an Angela Thirkell novel, but a Facebook group I’m a member of was holding an Angela Thirkell reading week – which finished yesterday, so I am a tad behind in my review. When I read The Brandons – I finally felt as if I started to connect with Angela Thirkell. I have now read seven or eight Angela Thirkell novels – and I think I could honestly say that I like them – but with reservations. One or two have contained elements that were just a bit too silly – and I certainly need to be in the mood for Thirkell. However, The Brandons was my favourite to date. Whenever I have reviewed Angela Thirkell novels I have had people tell me that her 1940s novels are her best, so, I snapped up this ancient orange Penguin of The Headmistress when I saw it in a charity shop several months ago. It’s a slightly longer novel than some of the other novels, something I didn’t immediately appreciate as my copy has only 320 pages, but the print is small.

Mostly I enjoyed The Headmistress – I had a few reservations – more of that later – but Angela Thirkell’s voice though still recognisable, is very slightly more sombre – it all seems a little bit more grown up – a sign, perhaps of the times in which Thirkell was writing.

War has come to the world of Barsetshire, bringing great change. Financial difficulties have obliged the Belton’s to let their large country house to the Hosiers’ Girls’ Foundation School. The school; evacuated from London had been seeking a more happier arrangement than the one they have had on a temporary basis in Barchester. Miss Sparling; the headmistress of the school, superintends the move, relieved on a personal level having had to lodge with Miss Pettinger, of the Barchester school, for which she is pitied by everyone. So, while the school set up home at Harefield Park, the Belton’s take a very nice house in the village.

The Belton’s three young adult children are all involved in wartime service, the eldest, Freddy is a Commander in the Navy, youngest son Charles in the Army – training in various places he is yet to be posted abroad. While the middle child Elsa – is involved in what is commonly called hush hush work, in a place that no one is supposed to have heard of, but everyone has. Mrs Belton is fortunate that her three children are able to get home fairly frequently – Charles, a little irreverent, energetic and often wildly enthusiastic about something or other, he had for me a touch of the Tony Morelands about him, while older brother Commander Freddy Belton, is a more measured man, reflecting the experiences he has already had. Elsa, has a little growing up to do, despite engaging herself to a wealthy Captain, fifteen years her senior. She is deeply upset at the sight of school girls galloping all over her former home.

There are many changes to be got over. The Beltons find it very strange to see a school setting up in their family home, school girls sleeping in their old bedrooms. Mrs Belton, rather likes the house in the village, from where she attends wartime working parties, yet she also feels something of the strain of helping her family adjust to the changes. Meanwhile, Elsa is doing her spoilt daughter act – she so wants to help her father – but goes about it in the wrong way and embarrasses both him and her new fiancé. Mrs Belton has a lot to worry quietly about and putting a brave face on things all the time is so very hard.

“What she would really like, she thought, would be to throw every single thing in her wardrobe out of the window and have everything new and to stop feeling tired and looking her age and go somewhere warm, if there was any warm place left in this horrible world now…”

Miss Sparling, the headmistress, is dauntless and practical, ably steering her girls through the changes that coming to Harefield Park has brought them. She soon makes her own friends among the locals, Mrs Belton is just one of them, elderly Mr Oriel the vicar – who once knew her grandfather, and Mr Carton, a middle-aged Oxford don vie for her society. There are some wonderful peripheral characters in The Headmistress – one of my favourites is Mrs Updike, surely drawn from life. Mrs Updike, is fairly accident prone, scalding herself, or cutting herself almost on a daily basis, happily declaring that she has ‘a perfect thing about…’ whatever it might be and launching into a long, involved and usually slightly muddled explanation.

Shakespeare readings, servants gossip, and a little romance find their way into the lives of this community in wartime.

“I never did take sugar in my tea, or in coffee,’ said the Vicar. ‘I have always disliked it. But I understood that by taking saccharine, we were somehow assisting the war effort.”

Heather Adams is the only one of Miss Sparling’s school girls that we really get to know – who in her typical class-conscious way, Thirkell lets us know that these girls are very much not of the same class as the Belton family. Heather is an unappealing girl, the daughter of a self-made man, she develops a rather crippling crush on Commander Belton.

So yes, there is quite a lot to like in The Headmistress – about which I had heard generally very good reports from other readers. It is witty and engaging, a gentle comedy of wartime manners. However, as I hinted above – I did have one or two small reservations and irritations.

Firstly, I was annoyed by the portrayal of a woman doctor – Dr Morgan, a rather peculiar figure, who tries to analyse her patients – no one seems to have any confidence in her – and all are rather relieved when good old (male) Dr Perry is able to sweep in with his reliable good sense and there is a sense that everyone is smiling indulgently behind the eccentric lady doctor’s back. Miss Sparling the headmistress has the confidence and admiration of everybody, presumably a spinster headmistress is within the scope of woman but a doctor! I am aware I might be being a little over sensitive. Then there was this little exchange:

“ …It’s no good asking you not to worry, Mrs Belton, but I would like to say again that I have every intention of marrying Elsa whether she likes it or not.’
‘What she needs is a good beating,’ said her mother, much to Captain Hornby’s surprise. ‘I’m ashamed of her.’
‘And Christopher’s the man to do it.’ Said Commander Belton unexpectedly.
‘I would like to beat her; very much indeed,’ said Captain Hornby dispassionately. ‘But I can’t stop to do it now. I’ve got to get back early tomorrow morning…”

Sorry – but what absolute bloody nonsense. It might well be tongue in cheek – but I don’t like it. It may have been a different era however I would say – in defence of different eras – that there were plenty of women writers writing at this period who would never have penned such stuff.

I’m now wondering if my reaction to the book was in any way affected by the physical edition that I read. Last week felt like a very long week, I was absolutely exhausted I still am – I was out two evenings after work, and so it ended up being a pretty slow reading week. Added to that I was struggling with the print size in that orange Penguin – and I began to wonder whether I would have got as irritated with parts of the novel had I not been squinting so uncomfortably at it.