The Soul of Kindness – Elizabeth Taylor (1964)

When I saw that The Soul of Kindness was going to be featured on the Backlisted podcast – (which I admit I don’t often manage to listen to but will do this time) – I decided the time had come to re-read it. I first read it almost exactly seven years ago and had very fond memories of it. I definitely appreciated it even more this time. Elizabeth Taylor is just so gifted at portraying awkward or unequal relationships. The quiet manipulation of one person over another – the suffocating loneliness of someone trapped in an unsatisfying relationship, the misery of unrequited love. The relationships in this novel are fascinating and portrayed to perfection, Taylor creates so many ‘types’ that we recognise instantly.

The Soul of Kindness of the title is Flora Quatermaine, a beautiful young woman, who is celebrating her marriage to Richard as the novel opens. One of our first glimpses of her is as her new husband is making a speech; stepping outside the wedding marque to minister to her doves. The eyes of many of her wedding guests follow her – she is the focus of attention and not the groom nervously making his speech. This is typical.  Flora is adored by everyone, an adoration she appears to feel is her due. She is always making an entrance.

“Here I am!” Flora called to Richard as she went downstairs. For a second, Meg felt disloyalty. It occurred to her of a sudden that Flora was always saying that, and that it was in the tone of one giving a lovely present. She was bestowing herself. “

Four years on and Flora has everything she wants; her husband Richard, a baby on the way and a lovely home in St. Johns Wood. Flora organises her life the way she likes it. Surrounds herself with people who indulge in what Richard at one time disloyally thinks of as “Flora worship.” She counts on Meg to never forget her birthday, Meg who always looked after her, protected her at school. She delights in helping Kit, encouraging his unrealistic expectations, buying him a suit that is embarrassingly expensive – sweeping aside everyone else’s cautions.

Mrs Lodge; is Flora’s housekeeper, Flora has made a special friend of Mrs Lodge and simply can’t imagine her life without her. Mrs Lodge hates London, and dreams of life in the country. The people, who surround Flora, conspire to protect her from herself, the truth of what she is. For Flora is a quiet, smiling monster. Flora only sees what she wants to see, hears what she wants to hear, she lives in a self-imposed bubble. She has her own ideas about the people around her and is blind to any alternative. Her father-in-law, Percy thinking her biddable when she first married Richard, soon revises his opinion.

Richard is a rather insipid character and very much feels like an also ran within his relationship with Flora. He develops an odd friendship with neighbour Elinor Pringle. Richard see something in her that he recognises, someone who like him, is rather alone within their marriage. This is a recurring theme; there are many lonely people in this novel.

Elizabeth Taylor’s minor characters are just as deftly explored as her central characters. Richard’s father; Percy has a lady friend Ba, whom Flora is certain he should marry. Flora is delighted when the marriage comes off, but Percy had enjoyed the years of visiting Ba in the evening, having that to look forward to all day, now he isn’t sure how to manage his evenings. Percy is brilliantly drawn, he hates the idea of foreign travel, and sulks like a child when Ba goes to France for a week. Meanwhile, Flora’s mother Mrs Secretan lives in the country with her companion/housekeeper Miss Folley, Miss Folley invents old love letters to read out to Mrs Secretan and makes spice cakes when Flora is expected to visit, these visits are always greatly anticipated by both women.

Meg and her brother Kit have to move to Towersey in the Thames Valley where they meet the bohemian painter Liz Corbett. Liz hears all about the wondrous Flora, but unlike everyone else, she absolutely refuses to believe in Flora’s goodness. Despite only being a very minor character in the novel – Liz’s attitude to Flora appears to be the only sensible one.

What I love about Elizabeth Taylor is how she is able to reveal the truth of people in their small private moments. This view of Percy remains one of my favourite excerpts.

“A quiz programme. Two rows of people facing one another. A pompous, school-masterly man asking the questions. Those answers that Percy knew he spoke out loudly and promptly; when he was at a loss he pretended (as if he were not alone) that he had not quite caught the question, or he was busy blowing his nose to make a reply, or had to go to help himself to whiskey.”

The subtlety of Elizabeth Taylor’s writing is masterly. She could have made Flora a shrieking harpy of a monstrosity, yet she is a more benign presence for most of the novel. Flora’s true personality creeps up on the reader as the novel progresses in quite subtle ways.

It would seem that The Soul of Kindness was not the best received of Elizabeth Taylor’s novels, nor the most successful. In The Other Elizabeth Taylor, the biography by Nicola Beauman, the author suggests that The Soul of Kindness is too long, that it would have made a very good short story or novella.

“It is in this novel more than in any of her others that she suffered from being forced, according to the conventions of English and American publishing, to spin things out to seventy or eighty thousand words.”

(Nicola Beauman – The Other Elizabeth Taylor )

I don’t really agree, there is nothing in the novel that feels forced or padded out to me. Certainly Elizabeth Bowen, a long-time friend and champion of Elizabeth Taylor apparently liked it a good deal and I for one wouldn’t want to argue with her. The writer and critic Philip Hensher described The Soul of Kindness as “so expert that it seems effortless.” That I can certainly agree with.